I glare at him, but my pulse does something stupid in my chest.
He flips the next one. “Depreciation.”
“Allocation of the cost of a tangible asset over its useful life.”
He doesn’t smile. He just keeps going. “Journal entry for wages owed at period end.”
“Debit wages expense, credit wages payable.”
He nods. “Good.”
We keep going. I get one wrong, then another. Each time, he doesn’t look smug or disappointed. He just puts the card back in the deck and makes me try again. My jaw aches from the effort of keeping my face neutral.
At some point, I answer one of the hard ones, and he says, “See? Easy.”
A laugh slips out of me, involuntary and real. Just a blur of air and sound, but it’s enough to light up his eyes. I press my lips together like I can take it back. I can't.
My stomach flips, annoyed with my own body.
He keeps quizzing me, steady as spring rain. He doesn’t flirt. Doesn’t tease. Doesn’t act like I’m cute for trying to claw my way into a future. He just helps. Which is, in its own way, more dangerous than any line or touch.
Because I can feel my shoulders dropping an inch at a time. I can feel the tension in my hands easing out. I can feel how hard it is not to lean in.
I miss another question. My mouth goes tight. “Fuck,” I mutter.
He shakes his head. “You know this.”
My spine stiffens like I’ve been slapped.
“Don’t patronize me,” I bite out.
His hand stills. His expression doesn’t change. “I’m not.”
“Sure sounded like it.”
He speaks softer. “You’re exhausted. That’s not an insult.”
I want to spit something at him — some retort about how exhaustion is for the weak, or how he’s got no idea what tired even means — but it curdles in my throat. The truth is, I am tired. I’m tired down to the cartilage. And I hate that he can see it.
“Don’t say things like that,” I force out.
He nods once, like he’s tucking the information away for later. “Okay.”
Then, back to business. He flips the card. “Try again.”
And I do. Because my body is a traitor.
I run through the rest of the stack. Every correct answer is another inch of distance I put between myself and failure. I nail the last one—something about the straight-line method and asset salvage value, which I only remember because I once came up with a mnemonic involving a hearse and a clown car. The victory is microscopic, but it makes me want to punch the air. Instead, I look at the clock over the counter and see that it’salmost exactly an hour later. My precision makes me feel better; I like it when numbers line up, when time behaves.
I snatch the flashcards back from Evan’s hand, ignoring the way our fingers brush—static, not accidental—and stack them into a perfectly squared-off block. “Time’s up,” I say.
He blinks, and for the first time tonight, he actually looks a little surprised. “Already?”
“One hour,” I repeat briskly. “That was the deal.”
He looks at the cards, then back at me. “We’re on a roll.”
“Yep.” I shove my notebook into my bag. “We’re done.”
