“Mads, is that stuff so important?” I asked.
“Not when a guy is that scorching,” she said.
I exhaled deliberately, lowering my gaze to the ground. “I don’t know if he’s just being friendly or if there’s more to it. We only—”
“Well, you’d better figure it out fast, because he’s right there,” she said.
Grayson was perched on the rear bumper of his car, reading The Republic. Pretty much the sexiest model of literacy awareness I’d ever seen. I smiled as a jolt of recognition pulsed through my body. He was there for me.
“Bet you wouldn’t mind if he licked you like a Great Dane,” Maddie whispered.
“Mads!” I shrieked. Grayson grinned as we walked up to him. I slowed my pace, trying to calm my heart rate, which was racing for reasons that had nothing to do with exertion.
“Hey,” I said. Maddie waved and continued to walk past.
“Maddie, want a ride?” Grayson asked, over his shoulder.
She walked backward in the crosswalk for a moment. “No, thanks,” she called, mischief in her tone. “I think Wren wants you all to herself.”
I bit my tongue and held my breath as I watched her walk toward the bus stop.
“Still reading Plato . . . any good?”
“Kind of heavy. Some of it I can get behind, but I’m too much of a hedonist to relate to most of it,” he answered with a wink.
I nodded, pretending to understand.
His smile faded a bit as he waved to someone behind me. I peered over my shoulder to see Ava in sweats and a tee, opening the gymnasium door. She stood stock-still, eyebrows practically up to her hairline. This was fun. I waved too.
“See you bright and early tomorrow!”
Ava said nothing, her ponytail swaying behind her as she walked back inside.
“So how do you know Ava?” I asked.
“She kind of stalked me last year,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “She had this on-again, off-again thing with a friend of mine. She’s, um, a bit much.”
“When you say she ‘stalked’ you, you mean she was strategically putting herself in your path to be friends?” I asked, touching the tip of his sneaker with the tip of my ballet flat.
He laughed this infectious belly laugh that made the unpleasant events after school evaporate. I made him laugh. God, it felt great.
“Well, when the attention is unwanted, it crosses the stalking line,” he said, shoving the book in his jacket pocket and bouncing on his toes. “I hope I’m not crossing that line.”
I chewed my lip. By answering that question, I’d be admitting that I liked having him around. Which I did. A lot.
“No, no line crossed.”
“Good. Feel like getting a coffee?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you hate coffee?”
It was too cold for our usual (could you claim a usual spot if you only visited it once?) boat pond/coffee outing, so we ended up at the Starlight Diner. A place whose claim to fame was the World’s Best Pies, which were displayed in a six-foot glass case with shelves that rotated slowly to make sure each dessert had its moment in the spotlight.
“I don’t know, you seemed so passionate about it . . . I don’t do pretty coffee and all that,” I teased, taking a sip of my hot chocolate. He laughed.
“Don’t remind me what an asshat I was that day.”
“You weren’t,” I said, tucking some loose hair behind my ear. He leaned forward, eyes on mine, lips parted like he had something to say. My mind went blank. Breathe, Wren. There was no discomfort, no squirmy feeling, no wanting to fill the silence. I could have sat that way, looking at him, for hours.
“Here you go.” A redheaded waitress placed Grayson’s second slab of Boston cream pie in front of him. I finally looked away, smiled at her.
“Thanks,” I said.
Grayson grabbed his fork and tucked in. “That day in the park . . . what did you mean you were screwing up your semester?” he asked, before shoveling the pie into his mouth.
“You remember that?”
He chewed quickly, wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I remember everything.”
Now that made me squirmy. “I suck at math. It’s just not my thing, you know. I study, or at least I think I do, but then I just freeze on the tests.”
“You’re in luck. Math is my thing.”
“And that would help me . . . how?”
“I can tutor you.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure that would work,” I said, seriously doubting I could focus on anything with him so close.
“Totally legit,” he said, raising his hands. “I used to tutor at an after-school program once a week. I’m good.”
Oh, God, of course he is.
I cleared my throat. “And you could tutor me in algebra and trig?”
He was about to take a sip of his coffee, but he paused, the side of his mouth curling up, eyebrows arcing slightly. The gleam in his eyes made me blush.
“I could tutor you in anything you want,” he answered, voice low.
Holy crap, I walked right into that one.
“I might be interested. I’ll think about it,” I said. “But why the offer? Aren’t you busy with your own stuff? College applications and everything?”
He took his fork and played with the whipped cream left on his plate, making four little rows, then crisscrossing again. “The sort of schools that were on my wish list frown upon academic fraud.”
“Like where?”
He pressed his lips together, smiling slightly. “Harvard.”
I put down my cup and covered my eyes with my hands. “Oh, wow.”
He laughed. “It was a reach, but I figured why not? Penn was my top. NYU. Columbia . . .”
“But would they even find out?”
“Technically no, but the transfer after three years might make them wonder. And I’m too embarrassed to ask my old teachers for letters of rec. Besides, I would know. At one point that didn’t bother me, but now . . . it does. I’m thinking of going somewhere local, get a strong year in, figure stuff out, then transfer. I’m not even sure I want to go into finance anymore.”
“You still have more of a plan than I do.”
“I want to help you. That day in the park . . . what you said . . . I’ve been thinking about it ever since.”
I puzzled for a moment, trying to remember what else I could have said that made an impression.
“About being a number. What bullshit it is. You’re right. And I used to be so into that. Christ, I built my whole term-paper business around it.”
“But it is important,” I said. “It’s what they look at, isn’t it? I should take it more seriously. At least I’m trying to. In the meantime I’m ramping up my extracurriculars just in case my average number doesn’t measure up.”
He put his hand over mine, sending a charge through my body that made it hard to sit still. “You’re one of the most genuine people I’ve met. You’re not average, Wren. Not even close.”
I moved my thumb out from underneath his fingers and ran it across the top of his hand, forcing myself to lock eyes with him.
“Okay, tutor me,” I said.
He breathed out, squeezed my hand. He was about to say something when his phone went off, “Flight of the Bumblebee” sounding furiously from his pocket. He rolled his eyes and pulled his hand away.
“Sorry, I’ve got to take this. Hey, Tiff,” Grayson answered, eyes still on mine. I turned away to give him privacy. “I don’t understand. What?”
The waitress placed the check on the table. Grayson put his hand over it before I could grab it. I was about to protest but stopped. His eyes were dark, his face serious. Something was wrong.