Page 86 of Tell Me I'm Enough

Simone looks up at me over her notebook. “Why do I let you Sig boys convince me to tutor you for free again?”

“Because you love us,” Tank says, batting his eyelashes at her.

She gives him an unimpressed look. “Depends on the day.”

Tank checks his phone and groans. “I need a break from studying, Drill Sergeant. My brain’s done.”

“I’m sure your brain was done when you walked in here,” I tell him.

He flips me off and stands, stretching. “I’m gonna go pretend to read in the corner, so I don’t get in trouble for ditching completely. You can have her. I need to recover.”

I move over to his now-empty seat next to Simone and pull out my notebooks.

“For the record, I’d pay a lot of money to have you tutor me.”

She rolls her eyes. “I know…you’ve offered.”

“And you keep refusing,” I say, smirking.

She sighs dramatically. “Because if I took it, I’d actually be obligated to this torture. You boys never give me a break. When amIsupposed to study?”

“We’ll trade off. You save Tank’s GPA, then you save mine, then I help you.”

She snorts. “You? Help me?”

“Don’t disrespect me like that, Simone,” I say, narrowing my eyes at her. “I’m surprisingly useful sometimes. And I have you know that I was valedictorian of my high school.”

“Then why do you need me?” she asks.

“I study better with good company.”

She pulls my notebook over, looking down at the page as she tries to hide her smile. “What chapter are you on?”

“Uh…the one with the words.”

She gives me a pointed look. “Mason.”

“Kidding, calm down.” I tap my finger to the top of the page. “Supply chain. Business operations. Whatever. It all blends together into the same shit.”

She starts quizzing me, reading off different terms, trying to get me to actually think. I answer enough of them right to prove I’m not completely hopeless, but the boredom creeps in fast. My eyes drift around the room, and my leg starts bouncing.

“This stuff is mind-numbing,” I groan, dropping my head back. “I’d rather get hit by a hundred linebackers than read another paragraph of this.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have chosen business as a major,” she says, not looking up.

“I didn’t choose it,” I mutter.

She glances at me. “Then why are you in business?”

I hesitate…then shrug. “I’m not reallyinbusiness; I’m in ‘do whatever my dad tells me to do.’”

“That’s right, the big old mean Mr. Sinclair you told me about,” she says, then her brows pull together in curiosity. “So what would you actually choose, if you could pick?”

I stare at the open book for a second, debating if it’s even worth saying. It feels stupid every time I hear it out loud now, like I’m some little kid who’s excited to tell an adult what I want to be when I grow up.

“I wanted to be a…marine biologist,” I say.

I can tell that throws her a little by the way she looks at me. “I’m sorry, you wanted to…pet dolphins for a living?”