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As the others packed up, still discussing the next module and something about a pre-class video she’d apparently missed, Marlowe grabbed her worksheet and slipped out without making eye contact. She got into her car, holding back tears, and gave the door an angry slam.

What was she doing?

She didn’t talk like the people in the class. She didn’t know the stuff they did. She couldn’t even make it through one worksheet without spiraling into self-doubt. There was no way she could make it through eleven more classes.

Marlowe was good at doing hair, sure. And customers loved her. But that didn’t mean she could own a salon. Not everyone was cut out for the business side of things.

She looked down at her flamingo sweater. It felt like a neon sign. So bright. So cheerful. So completely, embarrassingly out of place.

Next week, she’d wear black.

If she came back at all.

When she reached her house, she sat in the car for a while, breathing deeply to compose herself. She didn’t want Jace to see her face and know the class had gone horribly wrong. Or rather, the class had been fine. She’d been the one who had been horribly wrong.

Finally, when she thought she could fake a smile, she hauled herself out of the car and went inside. She’d expected her grandmother to be asleep and Jace to be sitting on the couch scrolling through his phone or watching TV. Instead, Jace and Grandma sat at the kitchen table, and her grandmother was laughing about something while she tossed cards down on the table.

“Grandma, you didn’t.” Marlowe turned to Jace. “How much did you lose?”

Jace, lips set in a grim line, slapped his hand of cards on the table. “I’ve rung up IOUs for weeding and cleaning the gutters. Meanwhile, your grandmother may never go to bed again.”

Grandma slowly got to her feet, still smiling in triumph. “Actually, I’m going to bed right now.” She made a show of stretching. “See you next week. I’ve got some windows that need to be washed.” She shuffled off toward the hallway to the bedrooms, chuckling.

Marlowe put her things on the counter, shaking her head. “I warned you that she was a card shark.”

“You didn’t warn me enough. I’ve treated victims of bar fights who were less cutthroat than that woman’s game of gin rummy.” Jace gathered up the cards and examined them more closely. “I think she cheats. I’m just not sure how. No one is that lucky. How do you tell if a deck is marked?”

Marlowe went to the couch in the family room and sank into it. At least no one had asked her how class went. “But besides that, everything went well?”

“She threatened to shoot me if I hurt you. Also, she offered to teach me how to parallel park using the neighbor’s dog as a marker.”

“Yeah.” Marlowe sighed. “That tracks.”

“I’m not certain whether she’s serious when she says those sorts of things.”

“Me neither. I figure it’s best not to find out.”

Jace put the cards into the drawer and joined Marlowe on the couch. “So how did your class go?”

And there was the question she was avoiding. Marlowe tilted her head backward, resting it on the couch, and shut her eyes. She should lie. She should say everything went fine and find something else to do every Wednesday night. Jace didn’t have to know how bad she was at being a student. He didn’t have to know she was nowhere near as smart as Jennifer.

She glanced at him. He was waiting for an answer, his blue eyes staring earnestly at her, as though he really cared about how her class had gone, and this wasn’t just polite conversation. Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to lie. “I didn’t understand half of what the teacher said.”

She shut her eyes again. She didn’t want to see Jace’s reaction to that statement. If he’d expected as much all along, she didn’t want to know. “The teacher just threw out acronyms like he was a bowl of alphabet soup.”

“It was only the first class.” Jace’s voice sounded unworried. “I’m sure the jargon will make more sense as you go. Next week will be better.”

The thought of next week filled her with dread. The only reason she hadn’t full-on cried on the way home was that she kept reassuring herself that she could drop the class.

She turned to him, then averted her gaze and ran her hand across one of the couch’s stripes. “I don’t know if there will be a next class. Maybe this was a bad idea to begin with.”

He coughed in disbelief. “You can’t give up after one night.”

“Yes, I can. I mean, I gave up on algebra in college after the teacher introduced imaginary numbers. I don’t care what anyone says, numbers can’t be imaginary. That’s like having a math equation and just plunking down a unicorn in the middle of it. That doesn’t make any sense. X plus seven divided by a unicorn.”

Jace put his hand over hers, perhaps to stop her from going on about unicorns in math. “You can find some videos online that go over the concepts you’re struggling with. Or you could see if the professor offers tutoring.”

“I’m too far behind everyone else.” Marlowe’s voice sounded small and defeated even to her own ears. “It’s just like college. I spent so much time in high school doing everything but my homework, and I just kept falling behind. The only reason I even passed chemistry junior year was that the TA had a crush on me and helped me study. And when I say he helped me study, I mean he walked me through the entire test, question by question. So when I got to college…” She shrugged helplessly. “Everything was overwhelming. I couldn’t keep up and I was just making myself miserable.”