The Game

𝟐𝟑

𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑻𝒘𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒚 𝑻𝒉𝒓𝒆𝒆 - 𝑰𝒗𝒆 𝑩𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝑾𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒔

By the time our bus rolled back into the Crestwood lot, the sky had gone that deep blue that makes parking-lot lights look like halos. Everyone stood at once, voices overlapping as bags thumped down and sneakers squeaked over rubber. I slipped off behind the managers, cut through the breezeway, and did my post-game loop in the gym — coolers drained and stacked, med kit snapped shut, towels in the laundry bin, clipboard signed.

I was shutting the storage room when I felt him at my shoulder.

"You ready?"

I turned. Chris stood there in grey sweats and a white long-sleeve, hair pushed back by his hand like he'd been thinking hard and decided to quit. His mouth tipped at one side.

I nodded.

"Keep up — I drive fast," he said, already moving.

"Okay, Vin Diesel," I muttered, but he heard me and laughed under his breath.

He peeled out first; I followed two cars back, taillights a red heartbeat I kept matching through turns I didn't know and streets where the houses got bigger the closer we got. We finally curved into a gated drive and climbed toward a stone-front house with warm lights tucked under the eaves, the kind people booked for magazines. I parked next to his car and cut my engine, palms a little damp for no good reason.

"You sure I can be here right now?" I asked when we met at the hood of my car.

"I have the house to myself," he said, simple and sure, like he'd already decided how the whole night would go. "Come on."

Inside smelled like cedar and something expensive. He led me past a living room that could have held my entire first floor, down a short hallway, and into a bedroom that looked like a boutique hotel suite — dark paneled walls, soft lighting, two low couches, a bed big enough to be illegal, and a glass-front walk-in that glowed like a gallery.

"You can set up here," he said, tapping the corner desk near the windows. "I'm gonna take a quick shower."

"Okay."

When the bathroom door clicked, I let my shoulders drop and inhaled. I unpacked my backpack like I was staging a crime scene — packet, binder, calculator, pencil case, highlighters — then slid into the desk chair and flipped to the first section he'd circled earlier. Solving right triangles with trig ratios. Easy.

The shower cut off. A minute later, he came out towel-drying his hair, skin still dewy from heat, grey sweats slung low on his hips. A clean, warm scent — vanilla folded into cedar — came with him and settled in the room like I'd paid extra for it.

He dropped into the chair beside me, knee bumping mine, eyes going straight to the packet. "All right, tutor. Fix me."

I smiled despite myself. "Let's start with the basics. SOH-CAH-TOA. Say it like a chant."

"Soak-a-toe-uh," he tried, mouth crooked.

"Close enough." I pulled a blank sheet toward us and sketched a right triangle, labeling the angle θ. "Sine is opposite over hypotenuse, cosine is adjacent over hypotenuse, tangent is opposite over adjacent."

He squinted at the diagram. "How do I know which side is which again?"

"Pick your angle first." I tapped θ. "The side across from it is the opposite. The one touching it that isn't the hypotenuse is the adjacent. Hypotenuse is always the longest — across from the right angle."