I bit my lip and looked back at my textbook, wondering whether I should dive to get ready now while he was distracted or take my stuff to the bathrooms to get changed in private.
“Um, hey,” he said, and I looked up again. He was sitting on his bed directly opposite me, his feet on the floor. He looked serious – just as serious as he had when he’d asked for my forgiveness. What else was going on, now?
“Yeah?” I prompted, seeing that he wasn’t going to come out with it on his own.
“I just…” he took one more of those deep breaths I was getting used to seeing. “I know I asked a big thing of you earlier. I’m really grateful.”
I shook my head quickly. “Don’t mention it again. It’s in the past now,” I told him. The last thing I wanted was for him to bring it up time and time again. It was done with, and it was better that way.
“I didn’t mean to – I just…” he stopped and started again, looking up at me. “I know it’s a lot, already. But I wanted to ask you for help.”
“Help with what?” I asked, my eyebrows shooting up. What could a scholarship jock like Olly possibly need from someone like me?
Olly swallowed. “It’s, um. Classes,” he said. And there it was. The classic scenario. He needed me to do his homework for him. “I’m really struggling. Like, really bad. I know we’re only in the first week. I just don’t understand anything they’re saying. I think I might flunk out.”
I nodded knowingly. It was a tale as old as time.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
Although the real question was: was I going to help him and fall into an old stereotype that could end up with us falling into old roles, or was I going to cling to old grudges despite my earlier words and refuse to help him?
“I need a tutor,” he said, looking up to meet my eyes. “And you’re so smart. Please. Can you help me understand enough to just keep my place?”
Olly
“I’ll help you.”
Those three words meant so much to me. I didn’t think Keaton understood just how much.
That first night when he saw me walk into the room was tough. I saw in his eyes how much he hated me. I understood that he was still afraid of me.
Getting his forgiveness was everything. It allowed me to feel like maybe I wasn’t the absolute worst person in the world.
But now, getting his help too…?
That was the icing on the cake.
And icing had always been my favorite part.
I tried to ignore the lingering thought in the back of my head that I still hadn’t come clean about everything. He didn’t know about my requesting the dorm. He didn’t know what had happened that made me leave our high school. He didn’t know the real truth.
I wasn’t about to dive in and tell him while things felt like they were going well.
“Alright,” he said, grabbing my notebook from me. We’d booked one of the campus library’s private study rooms so we’d be able to speak without being shushed. “Let me see what you’ve been jotting down.”
“Um,” I said, only just resisting the urge to snatch it back. He was going to see how stupid I was. But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? I needed him to see how much help I needed. “It’s, uh, not very…”
“Comprehensive,” Keaton said, flipping through a few pages as if he was expecting to see more. Everything but the first page was blank. “Where are the rest of your notes?”
“That’s all I did,” I said.
“There are no numbers,” Keaton said, flipping the pages again. “Didn’t you go through examples in class?”
“Yeah.” I folded my arms on the edge of the library desk. “I didn’t understand them.”
“That’s why you didn’t write them down?” Keaton asked.
I nodded.
