Page 5 of Her Indecent Tutor
He sighed. “I went to a friend’s birthday party.”
My brows came together. “Oh.”
He scowled at me, as if he was reading my mind. “I do have friends, you know. Did you do the homework I set you?”
I fidgeted. “I was really busy this weekend.”
He looked irritated, but not surprised. He leaned forward, close enough I could see the specks of gold in his irises. “Maria informed me your redemption mid term is in two weeks. How do you expect to pass if you don’t do the homework?”
“I’m not opposed to doing homework,” I replied, “but I was genuinely busy. And you literally set me fifty questions. How am I supposed to find the time to answer them all?”
“You can do fifty questions in two hours.”
“Maybe you can,” I said. “But I’m not a genius like you. I answered ten of them, and it took me ninety minutes. Ninetyminutes,” I repeated. “I couldn’t spend all my time on that, not when I had a history essay due.”
He didn’t reply for a moment. “I’m not a genius,” he said eventually.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, right. You’re literally doing a PhD in maths.”
He was quiet for so long, it made me nervous. I took another sip of my hot chocolate.
“What’s your major?” he asked. “History?”
I nodded.
“And what was the essay about?”
I frowned at him, unsure why he cared. “The role of Queen Anne in the War of the Spanish Succession.”
“And how long did it take you to write it?”
“Three hours,” I answered. I’d already had all my sources prepared, and had formulated my arguments in advance. I just needed to write it and fine-tune everything, as well as completing all the references.
He nodded slowly. “If I had to write that essay, it would probably take me three hours to write one paragraph.” He sighed. “I think…I think we’ve started on the wrong foot. I don’t think you’re stupid, Tessa. Everyone has different strengths. I do want to help you. We just have to work together.”
That…was not what I was expecting. I was still a bit wary, but I nodded and said, “okay.”
“How about you show me the questions you did answer?”
We spent the next half an hour going over the questions I did, and Ryan was far more gentle than usual. He’d say things like, “this was a good attempt, but…” and “I see why you tried this, however…”
It could’ve been patronizing, but I knew he was truly trying to help. And slowly, I felt myself relaxing.
Until a shadow appeared over my textbook. I looked up to see who was casting it, and my stomach dropped.
“Tessa,” said the cute boy from the party. The cute boy I’d run away from. He did not look pleased to see me, and worse, he had two friends with him.
“Hi…Harry,” I said.
“It’s Harris,” he snapped, his frown deepening.
“Right. Harris. I knew that,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “How are you?”
“This is the chick you left with?” One of Harris’s friends said, looking me up and down.
“Yeah. We were gonna fuck, until she made some lame-ass excuse about feeling sick,” he replied, sneering at me.
“Iwassick.”
