Page 37

“Don’t get used to it.”

She isn’t checking a textbook or an answer key. She just knows all of it. Every pathway, every term, every tiny part of the body with an unnecessarily complicated name.

It shouldn’t be hot.

Unfortunately, my dick doesn’t appear interested in what should or shouldn’t be hot.

When she turns the final page, I notice two hardened spots on the fingertips of her left hand.

Old calluses.

I’ve seen those exact marks on my own hand and every guitarist I’ve played beside since I was sixteen.

Bea Walker plays something. A guitar maybe?

Interesting.

I don’t ask. Not yet. There’s no casual way to admit I’ve been examining her fingertips closely enough to identify the precise cause of the damage.

“Number three is still wrong,” she says.

“Impossible. I put a lot of confidence into that answer.”

“The heart remains strangely unaffected by your confidence.”

“First woman I’ve met with that problem.”

Her mouth twitches.

We spend the next forty minutes going through the packet. I learn that the Bundle of His is a real thing named after a Swiss man with the deeply unfortunate name Wilhelm His Junior. Bea learns that telling me to send blood through His bundle will never receive a mature response.

By the time we reach the conduction pathway, I can recite the order without looking.

Progress. I think with Bea’s help, I can pass this thing.

My phone lights up on the desk.

DANNY.

Danny doesn’t call. Danny texts in lowercase like a child. He hasn’t called since the Friday before I came home, when he rang to tell me the Bingo drop was final, and we were in what he called a transition phase—meaning the phase where I owe the label money instead of the other way around.

Danny calling on a Tuesday afternoon isn’t something I can miss right now. But I know for a fact this is going to piss off my tutor. I look at the phone. I look at Bea. She’s looking at the page.

“Sorry,” I say. “Give me a second.”

“Mm.”

“It’s work. I promise it’s actually important.”

“Mm.”

“I really do have to take this.”

“Cal, just take it.”

I grab the phone, cross the room, step into the hallway, pull the door shut, and answer with the voice I keep for industry calls. The one that says nothing has ever rattled me in my life.

“Danny.”