When she frowned for a split second and forced her lips into a smile right after, I wished I had told her about the day at his office.
“That’s okay.” She tried to reassure me, but I was already regretting it. I wanted to sit on the couch and study with her.
Rosalie told me the night prior—timidly, under her breath—what kind of scores she pulled together in academics. I guessed she’d be smart. It’s a given in any engineering program, and even more so in financial engineering.
I couldn’t have predicted she secured top honors in undergrad, and a perfect transcript so far in graduate school. It’s much more than I can say of my own.
“Could we do another day?”
I sounded so hopeful. I tucked my hands so deep into my pajama pockets, they could’ve been stitched into the fabric. I’m not sure why I was worried, though. I should’ve known Rosie would smile back at me, nodding enthusiastically.
“Of course. Anytime we’re both free. You know where I live.”
“Anytime” didn’t happen for a while.
As it turns out, Rosie and I both share a secret love of procrastination. We made excuses to go through another three movie nights, and one night where I booted up my favorite video game and let her explore the open world.
“Anytime” turned into tonight—after a Wednesday lecture half-filled with things I didn’t understand, and half-filled with death glares I threw at Trent. He hasn’t tried to talk to me again. That’s for the best.
Over our cramped and aged dining room table, Rosie points to different parts of my assignment. Every word she says makes me hate her ex, and his brothers, more and more.
Listening to her explain this is different than sitting in that lecture hall. My professor’s voice is always so dull, sounding painfully tired of the formulas and coursework. But Rosie’s face lit up when I flipped my notebook open and showed her equations I’ve struggled through for years.
There’s a bright sparkle in her eyes. There’s a joy in her voice when she goes over how X becomes six and division becomes subtraction, and a passion beyond anything I’ve seen anywhere else. No industry professional I’ve been forced into meeting has ever oozed with a love formathlike this.
“That make sense, right?” She asks, grin unbridled and blinding.
“No. Not at all.” It should be sad how hopeless I am on this topic, but I smile too.
“Locke. Come on. There must be some part of you that gets a little bit of it?”
Her eyebrows rise above her reading glasses and her expression is hopeful. I hate having to pop her bubble of faith in me.
“I wish. I’m not very good at math.”
Rosalie leans back into her wooden chair, uneven legs sending a creaking sound throughout our dorm. “You want to be a software engineer… but you’re bad at math?”
“Ugh,” I groan and toss my pen onto the opened textbook. “That’s what Billie always says.”
“Sounds like she’s the smart sibling, then.”
My jaw drops. If I weren’t so amused, I’d be offended.
My roommate laughs and shrugs. “What? If you’re bad at math, and Grant really procrastinates at the rate Lil says he does, then Billie doesn’t have much to compete with.”
“Billie’s bad at math too.”
“Is Billie in a STEM program?”
A long sigh gets released from my throat. “No.”
“Exactly.”
I can only keep up the façade of annoyance for a few seconds before chuckling. “Fine. Billie is a better student. Technically. That just means I need to work on my assignments even harder.”
Rosie laughs, pushes her round reading glasses higher up her nose, and a thin strap of her maroon loungewear slips down her shoulder. I find a sudden interest in the assignment in front of me.
“I’m sure you’re notthatbad at math.”
