The Boiling Point | ✔️

25 | patterns

SUMMER

Life is good. The weeks have rolled well into October and brought a sense of new beginnings, and I know spring is usually reserved for the whole 'regrowth' thing, but autumn is better. Leaves transform and change color, and then everything sheds. Ridding itself of dead weight, readying for a tough winter ahead.

I felt like I needed that more than regrowth. I needed to shed everything away.

I now have tutoring sessions twice a week in the library with Grant, and he's such a good teacher that sometimes I forget he's a student too. Some people are born with that spark. That ability to make information flow like music. I've always hated math, but maybe I never had the right teacher until now. Who am I kidding? I still hate math - Grant just makes it bearable for the first time in my life.

As for Ashton, we're... nothing. Basically back to strangers at this point. We don't argue, we don't seethe or steal glances or do anything outside of short and civil workstation interactions. When the dust settled and I vented it all to Lola and Fawn, they offered their anger towards him, but I told them I was putting it behind me. And I have.

Pretending Charlie's party didn't happen gets easier every day. Ashton is nothing more than an annoying stain on my first month of culinary school, and I'm thankful the rest of it won't be contaminated by him.

❖❖❖

I rush up to Grant after we've filed out of class, bursting at the seams to tell him how I did on the test we just took. "I don't wanna get too cocky, but I crushed the accounting section. Murdered it."

"Very un-cocky." He laughs quietly, motioning for me to join him on the couches.

"Seriously, it felt like I didn't even have to think," I say, dropping to a cushion. "I've never had that with anything math related. Normally it feels like all my wires are burned out, but that was like, good. Is this what it feels like to be good at math? It's like having freaking superpowers or something."

He lets me ramble away, his dark eyes flickering with humor.

"Crap, just watch this overconfidence bite me in the ass." I groan. "Okay, if the result is bad then I'm going to bury my head in the sand and never come out again. Can you dig the hole and bury me?"

"But then who's going to bury me?" He slumps back. "If you do bad then that's only a bad reflection on my tutoring, isn't it?"

"Right. We'll need a third-party digger," I say matter-of-factly. "Someone who doesn't mind burying two people alive."

"Steven. I think he's a secret psycho," Grant whispers, beckoning me closer. "Silent and deadly. Way too good with a knife."

We eye him and Lola in close conversation, hanging on each other's every word.

"Poor Lola," I sigh out. "Maybe we should save her and just bury Steven instead."

"Good call."

"Did we just become partners in crime?"

"Is it a crime if we're saving the world from a raging menace like Steven?"

"Nope. So, vigilante partners?"

"Vigilante partners." Grant kisses his fingers to the sky. "RIP Steve. Sorry my bad tutoring led to this."

We look at each other and burst out laughing, ending our fictional vendetta.

"For real though," Grant says, smiling, "if your result is bad, which it won't be, then we'll up the library sessions."

"And I'll be there with bells on."