“I am.”
“Maybe you’re not. Maybe you just feel that way because I’m good at math.”
Her voice doesn’t teeter into a gloating tone. It doesn’t raise with cockiness—it stays level. Like what she said isn’t a compliment to her; It’s just a fact of life.
“You are good at math.” I repeat her words and find anything but that strap on her shoulder to stare at. “How did you get so good?”
The question held weight in many ways. To keep my focus off that damn piece of fabric, for possible advice on what I coulddo to not suffer in my classes anymore. And, without knowing, to cause Rosalie’s bright grin to spread across her face. Full of passion and joy.
“To be honest, I’ve always been kind of good at math. It was always my favorite subject in school. When my parents immigrated from the Philippines, it was with my Tito, so he lived with us. When I was in elementary school, he got really into the stock market. He would dumb it down for me and my brother because he wanted us to feel included in his interests. My brother was only playing along, but I got really, really into it.”
“You got really into the stock market when you were a kid?”
She shrugs. “He didn’t make it feel so intense. He described it as people using math to tell the future and then using it to get rich. I was like, ‘Math can make me psychic?!’ I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.”
A long chuckle escapes me. The more I learn Rosie, the less surprised I am by the freeing way she sees things. I’m both jealous and inspired by how she lives her life.
“It was the future-telling that sold you? Not the money?”
“Psh. I’d become rich no matter what I did. I’m just lucky I can become rich from what I love, and what I’m good at.”
She laughs again, but mine dies in my throat.
Rosie is right. About me being—on some levels—good at math. I’m probably better than the average person, but nowhere near the skill set of my peers. Nowhere close to as competent as she is.
And my roommate is lucky to have found something she’s good at, that she loves, and can set her up for a lifetime.
There’s a sinking feeling in my chest. All things considered, our situations are entirely unfair. We both ended up in the same program, both chasing a master’s degree, and it’s her who cares more. She’ll dedicate a lifetime of passion and training to hercraft, but it’ll be me who advances faster, solely because of my last name. I’ll get the opportunities she earns, and I don’t even want them.
Our classmates criticize her but praise me. She’s the one sitting here, brilliantly explaining things while I struggle to comprehend numbers on a page. Everything is so unfair.
If I could give up the opportunities I know will come to me, so she gets what she deserves, I would.
Thinking about that, the small regrets I have from our first movie night, and how much I’m dreading seeing my father this weekend, it only feels right to tell her all my truths.
I clear my throat. “Honestly, I’m half-decent at math. My dad gets me where I am now.” It’s quick, but her face falls for a millisecond before she recovers. My chest burns. “I’m not sure how much Liliana has told you about him-”
“Nothing. I mean, she’s told me Grant doesn’t like him. And she implied you have some… issues with him.” Her hand traces her arm before pushing the strap back up her shoulder. I should look away while she painstakingly fixes it, but I hang onto the movement like I do to her words. “She didn’t tell me any personal stuff, though. She would never.”
I wring my hands under the table and tell myself to focus on the topic, and not the piece of fabric already creeping down her skin again.
“Sounds like her. There’s a lot to tell. Don’t want to get too much into it.”
Without thinking, I reach up to lift and pull and push on the frame of my glasses.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I do want to tell you.”
Her deep brown eyes are inviting, like the day we met. “Are you sure? You’re nervous.”
I open my mouth to say something—an explanation for Saturday, ideally—but it never comes. Rosalie’s lips lift into a small, comforting smile, and whatever I would’ve said gets lost.
“Your glasses. When you’re nervous, you fidget with them.”
She’s so sure when she says it, a thick accent of confidence in her. I fixate on the pair of glasses she’s wearing—how it’s tilted just a tad, and she doesn’t seem to twitch.
In the seconds I ponder how and why she’s so certain about this, I lift my hand to my glasses again, and she smirks.
