I wonder why.
But instead of asking, I dismiss that thought and click my tongue. “We definitely need to go over a fair amount of the material.”
“Ugh, seriously?”
“Sorry to disappoint but Rome wasn’t built in a day,Just Diana.”
“But everything?” She looks back down at the textbook before looking back up to me. “Isn’t that a little tedious?”
“Not everything,” I correct. “Just the parts you don’t understand.”
“So everything.”
Wow, she doubts herself a lot, doesn’t she? There are small parts of each chapter that we need to look over again but that doesn’t mean being nitpicky. “You are a lot smarterthan you give yourself credit for. There’s stuff you understand much better than others—plus, with my help, you’ll be a mathematician in no time.”
“Can ‘no time’ also equal by next week?” She adds air quotes.
I shrug. “No better time than now to get started.”
“It’s almost four.”
I check my watch. It doesn’t feel like four o’clock. “Time went by fast.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you working tomorrow?”
Diana shakes her head, her wispy curtain bangs slapping her face. “We start tomorrow, then?”
I nod. “Same time, same place.”
“Alright.” She packs her supplies and lifts her bag onto her shoulder—using her left hand instead of her right, which is a good thing—and before she can walk away from the table, I call out her name. She turns around with a puzzled look on her face.
“Just,” I begin. “Don’t lose hope, okay?”
Diana doesn’t respond. Instead, she studies me for a good minute before turning back around and walking away.
I find myself watching until a group of around ten people walks in my line of sight.
7
Can’t Believe I’m Doing This
Diana
After pressing play on my phone and allowing the sounds of The Weeknd to fill my ears, I continue my walk from the tutoring session, somewhat disappointed in myself for how little progress I’ve made in my work. My schoolwork is something I pride myself on being good at but now, I’m not entirely sure.
I hate it—the idea of not knowing. Not being able to prepare myself or having another backup plan.
When I find my house coming up on the street, I quicken my pacing until I reach the front porch, enter the passcode for the door, and open it to find all of my roommates scattered around the living room.
Lucia is at the table, painting her nails a deep green. Emma is reading a book—a romance novel I assume, based on the front cover—while her cousin Ronnie is eating a slice of pie and watching something on his laptop.
“Hey,” I say, staring at the half-eaten slice of pie on his plate. “Is that from my pie?” I didn’t even get to eat it yet.
Ronnie looks up from his laptop, eyes wide. “Shit, I thought it was Lucia’s.”
“It’s cherry pie, dumbass,” Lucia comments. “No one else in this house loves cherry-flavored anything like Diana.”
