Page 86 of On His Schedule
She scoffs, “You didn’twantto see it.”
“G.” I blink. “I didn’t know.”
“Mhm.”
I throw my hands. “I’m — fuck. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“But I am.”
“I don’t want your apology, Benson. I want you to find a new tutor.”
I gape at her for a moment, and then I clench my jaw. “We can’t turn back time.”
“I am mad at you. I am also mad at her. I am mad at her because she let you in and didn’t tell me.”
“G, she didn’t let me in. Listen. Lucy is not the kind of girl who knows what to do with a guy pining over her. I can just tell. I can tell that she doesn’t date. She has school. She has tutoring. She does not have the time or the experience to know what to do when a guy starts coming at her. She has been trying to push me off because she didn’t want to lose you.Thatis what she has been doing. She has been protecting you the entire time. Be mad at me. Not her.”
Gianna stares at me. “You think you know her.”
“I—”
“Benson, you have known her for a very short amount of time. Has it only been two weeks?” she scoffs, shaking her head.
I rest my head in my palms.
“You don’t know anything about her. You don’t know about her brother. Bear. Lucy has been raising him since he was born.”
I didn’t know that.
“You don’t know that Lucy drives forty minutes home every Wednesday to clean her mom’s fucking disaster of a house because her mom is too depressed to do it herself. You don’t know that Lucy has been the only adult in that house since she was a child. You don’t know that her mom got a new boyfriend, and Lucy has been holding it together because it might be the first good thing in her mom’s life. You don’t know that Lucy paid for her brother’s field trip out of her tutoring money because her mom is a real piece of shit. You don’t know that Lucy is exhausted and that she has, until very recently, kept all of thatin a box and held it together because she is a person who holds things together.”
“Jesus.”
“You don’t know any of that, Benson, because you don’t know her. Lucy doesn’t just tell anyone. She doesn’t trust anyone. Lucy tells me because I am her best friend, and I have her back. I have been the one person in her life foryearswho has stuck through the good and the bad.”
“Gianna,” I mutter.
“No, you’re drunk. I can see it in your eyes, Benson. You started a fight with Paxton Bowie! You added one more goddamn thing for her to overthink about. You did not think for one second about what tonight was going to cost her.”
“Fuck.”
“Do you know what she’s going to do when she gets home tonight? She’s going to lie awake and wonder if I’m going to care about her after this. And then she’s going to cry about her fucking mom because she went to dinner over there tonight and it was another emotional rollercoaster for her. That’s the only reason why she’s coming to these parties. It wasn’t to see you, Benson. She needed a fucking Camdenk from reality, and I forced her to come so she’d stop crying. And now, she’s probably in her bedroom crying her eyes out. But the bottom line, Benson, is that you don’t know her.”
I’m looking at my hands. I’m close to crying. I am not crying, but I’m close. Gianna sounds exactly like our mother when she argues.
I nod. “You’re right.”
“I know I am.”
“I — fuck.”
“Switch tutors,” she demands.
I look at her, knowing damn well I’m not going to switch fucking tutors.
“Switch tutors, Benson. End the sessions. Tell Coach you got a different person from the center. Lucy doesn’t need this right now. She does not need to be sitting across from you twice a week for two months while you figure out what you want.”
