Page 10 of Heat Advisory

—It’s science

Jay

Twelve Years Ago

At the start of my senior year, I was struggling. We were only three months into the school year and I was failing math and science. I wasn’t dumb. I just had my priorities all wrong. My focus was on baseball, and only baseball.

Even though the fall wasn’t high school baseball season, I still worked with my coach on conditioning. I had also been traveling with my dad most weekends to go look at colleges that had made me baseball scholarship offers.

My baseball coach was also my P.E. teacher, and he had pulled me aside after class one day, pissed. He informed me that I was failing two classes, and unless I got my grades up soon, I wouldn’t be able to play baseball in the spring.

I’d never felt that level of dread in my entire life.

I knew I’d been falling behind, but I hadn’t realized I was failing. He’d given me a note that had to be signed by my parents and returned the next day. I dreaded giving them that, and I’d thought about it the entire drive home. Even my sister had noticed my sour mood.

“What’s got your panties in a twist today?” she asked from the passenger seat.

I told her about my meeting with Coach Jensen, and after her initial shock and giving me shit for it, she was actually very helpful.

“Why don’t you just have Cora tutor you?” she said, as if this were the most obvious solution.

“What?”

“Cora…you know…my bestie! She’s really freaking good at both those subjects. She literally has a one hundred in science right now,” Morgan informed me. “And she has an A in math, too. Her foster moms won’t let her get a job right now because they want her to focus on her schoolwork, so she would love to have the extra money you would pay her for tutoring you.”

I thought about it and realized this could definitely work for both of us—I get my grades up, and she gets some spare cash. The only problem was that Cora was gorgeous.

Something had happened to her over the summer, causing her to go from cute, girl-next-door nerd to sexy cover-model nerd.

Lately, whenever she came over to visit my sister, I found myself hanging out with them, playing board games, watching whatever stupid show they wanted to watch, or listening in on whatever gossip they had about boys in our school. I told myself it was because I was a guy and wanted to know what girls were saying about my friends and me. But if I were honest with myself, I knew my level of interest went beyond that.

Hearing them talk about other guys should have been no big deal. Teenage girls did that all the time. Hell, the girls in most of my classes talked nonstop about the guys in our grade. But hearing Cora do it had me seeing red. That realization should have scared me—I was only eighteen—but it didn’t.

After my mom arranged everything—because she didn’t trust me to do it myself—I met Cora after school in the library to start our first tutoring session. She was wearing jeans and an oversized teal sweatshirt that made her eyes seem brighter.

For the next thirty minutes, I struggled to focus on anything but her, which was why I was caught off guard when she asked me a question.

“Jay?”

“Sorry, what did you say?” I asked, shaking my head to clear my thoughts.

“What were you staring at?”

Before I could think better of it, I gave her the truth. “Your hair looks really soft. I like it when you wear it down like that with your curls loose. It’s really hot.”

Did I just say hot? Shit.

I hadn’t meant to say that. It was the truth, but that probably wasn’t appropriate talk for your tutor and sister’s best friend.

“Umm, thanks,” she mumbled, her cheeks turning pink as she tucked her hair nervously behind her ear.

“Why don’t we take a break,” she suggested, which made me feel bad because I wasn’t sure I had learned much, other than she had pretty handwriting and smelled wonderful.

“Okay, brain break means answering easy questions,” she said, leaning back in her chair, clasping her hands in her lap. “Probably obvious, but what do you want to be after you graduate?”

She was right. That was definitely the easy to answer. “Professional baseball player, hands down.”

She smiled at me and then tilted her head in thought. “Not trying to be a Debbie-Downer, but let’s say that isn’t an option for whatever reason. What’s your backup plan?”