Chapter 11: Chapter Ten

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“So, to finish completing the square, you have to flip the equation round. Don’t forget to keep in the plus-minus square root sign, and that’s your answer. Do you get it?”

Nathan looks up from the textbook, staring expectantly at me with wide blue eyes. Etched across his features is a hopeful expression, his gaze darting toward my open notebook for a split second before returning to my face. The two of us are seated at the table in my kitchen, our first study session in full swing. Not that much has been going on. If I’m honest, the previous half an hour has consisted mostly of Nathan talking complete gibberish to me, whilst I nod and act like I have the faintest clue about what’s he’s trying to explain.

“Uh…”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Nathan looks genuinely disappointed, punctuating his last sentence with a small sigh.

“I’m sorry,” I say, sending him an apologetic look. “This really isn’t my best subject. It’s not you, I swear. Um… how about we go over the problem again and you can explain it a little bit slower?”

I feel bad, I really do. It starts off fine (well, when Nathan tells me what page of the textbook we’re working from), but as soon as he starts garbling nonsense about letters and equations and whatever else the torturous subject of algebra involves, I tend to switch off.

Or just stare at his mouth and wonder if he’s still speaking English.

“Okay, we’ll start right from the beginning. Tell me as soon as you don’t understand something.”

And that’ll be… right now.

“Sounds good. Let’s go for it.”

It doesn’t really sound too great, but I’ve got to at least try. If only to avoid the humiliation of looking like an absolute retard in front of my tutor. I think I’m an unteachable student.

I should probably leave that off my college application.

Nathan continues explaining the problem, looking up at me every few seconds to check that I haven’t suddenly drifted off or something. When he does, I’ve taken to nodding enthusiastically like I’m really engaged in the equation he’s going over, even though I’m closer to booking a one-way ticket to snooze-ville. About two minutes later, when my eyelids are growing heavier and heavier with each passing moment, I’m jolted back to reality by the sound of the back door slamming open.

And someone barging right into the kitchen, as if they own the place.

“Connor?” I exclaim, frowning, as my eyes zero in on the dark-haired guy who’s randomly walked into my house. “What are you doing here?”

Nathan breaks off from his long-winded algebra speech, him too peering at Connor curiously.

However, Connor doesn’t respond. Instead, he just saunters into the kitchen as if it’s his own house, barely even sparing Nathan and I a glance. What the hell is he doing, anyway? And how did he get in? I’m pretty sure that back door’s meant to be locked – precisely to avoid situations like this.

“Connor!” I snap. “Don’t ignore me!”

At the sound of my voice, his head turns in my direction. A faint look of distaste crosses it before he answers. “Oh, great. It’s you.”

“Yeah, it is me,” I say, sounding a lot more confident than I feel inside. “Did you ever think that’s because this is my house you’ve just come strolling into?”

Across the table, Nathan looks slightly unnerved by the heated discussion taking place before his eyes. Guess he wasn’t aware of the kind of relationship between me and Connor. Ah, well. It’s not like I’m going to add any unnecessary numbers to the list of people who think me and Connor don’t want to murder each other.

The horrifying idea of Mom thinking I’m crushing on Connor is a difficult enough facade to keep up.

“Calm down, would you?” the arrogant guy comments from across the kitchen. “I was only coming in here to grab the spare key to my house. Mom said you had one.”

“Ever heard of knocking?”

“Whatever.” Suddenly, his eyes flicker to the guy next to me for the first time. There is a brief moment of silence before the sight registers in his brain, before his brows furrow into a deep frown. “What’s he doing here?”

“He is helping me with my algebra work,” I say pointedly, shooting him an irked look. “But is it really any of your business?”

In a matter of seconds, Connor’s glaring expression transforms into an amused sneer, which is only marginally less insulting. He looks at me for a couple of seconds, his eyes wandering to the notepad in front of me, open to an almost blank page with the word ‘Math’ written at the top. “You’re failing algebra?” he counters, his tone stuck somewhere between amusement and disbelief. “Are you kidding me?”

“Not failing as such...” I defend wistfully, earning myself a raised eyebrow from the opposition. “Okay, fine. I’m failing. I find it difficult, alright?”

A short bark of laughter escapes Connor’s lips. “Wow, I didn’t think you were that stupid.”

“I’m not!”

“Too busy staring at Mr. Moore in class?” he taunts.

“What? How do you know about that?”

“So it is true.”

“No, it’s not!” I yell a little too loudly. “Seriously, Connor, can you just get the keys and leave? You’re distracting us. Not to mention you’re annoying.”

The more interaction I have with Connor, the more riled up I seem to get. Just one sentence in that cocky tone of his is enough to infuriate me. I wonder if it’s his natural personality, or whether he really does it just to wind me up. A couple of days ago, I may have picked the first option, but after experiencing the way he acts around the kids at school, I’m not so sure. When he’s around them – particularly Charlotte and her infamous crowd – the bad attitude and ignorance seem to evaporate into thin air, leaving behind a flirty, chatty teenage guy that’s nothing like the guy I’m graced with the presence of.

The whole thing is way too confusing for my frazzled brain.

To be honest, this whole algebra thing isn’t really helping the frazzled-ness, either.

“Whoa, whoa, don’t get all PMS-y on me,” he says, holding up the palms of his hands in mock surrender. “I’m leaving now. Anything to get away from you.”

Instead of responding with a smart-ass comeback (that hasn’t yet sprung to mind, and I doubt ever will), I sink backwards in the chair with my arms folded. It’s better to wait patiently for him to get his irritating self out of the door, instead of flying off the handle and causing an embarrassing scene with Nathan as a one-man audience.

And when the door does finally slam – a little too forcefully – behind him, I seize the opportunity to breathe a sigh of great relief.

“Uh…”

The sound of Nathan’s voice makes me snap to reality. My eyes involuntarily shoot towards him and I let out a slightly embarrassed laugh at his overwhelmed facial expression.

“Um, sorry about that,” I manage to force out, before deciding to promptly change the subject. “Where were we?”

“Since when do you and Connor hate each other?” he asks incredulously.

“We don’t,” I say, resisting the urge to grimace at my untruth. “We just have an… interesting relationship.”

Hmm, yes. Very interesting indeed. Interesting to the point of wanting to strangle him every time we come within three feet of each other.

“That’s so weird,” he comments. “I thought you… actually, never mind.”

“What?” I ask, suddenly wary. “What were you going to say?”

“Oh, nothing,” he dismisses. He’s trying to brush it off, acting like it’s nothing, but his sheepish expression tells me otherwise. This, in turn, only sends my curiosity sky-rocketing. “Uh, anyway… let’s carry on with this question…”

“No, Nathan,” I interject, shooting him an authoritative look over the textbooks. “Tell me, what did you think about me and Connor?”

He shrugs, suddenly looking shifty. A few strands of blonde hair flop over his face and he pushes them back, fidgeting in his seat. No longer will he meet my gaze, either. “Oh, you know… just what people have been saying. Well, what Connor’s been saying…”

If I were a dog, my ears would be pricking up right now. In fact, I’m so tuned into this conversation, they’d probably be a couple of meters high by now. Now that would be a sight.

“And what exactly has Connor been saying?”

As much as I hate to think about it, the possibilities are endless. Connor knows practically all of my pre-eight-year-old secrets – some of which I’ve probably forgotten about myself. He’s got a whole load of blackmail material just waiting to be unleashed, whereas I… well, I’ll have to dig a little further into the endless depths of my brain if I want to find anything worth gossiping about. In eight years of high school, a lot of thoughts have piled on top – although I think probably less than one per cent are actually work-related.

But whatever. My primary concern is weaseling some information – anything – out of Nathan, so I can go and kill Connor about it ASAP.

“Nothing, really…”

“Nathan…”

“Okay, okay,” he says, biting his lip. “He hasn’t been saying much, I suppose. It’s just that I heard he’s been telling Charlotte and her friends how you have some weird obsessive crush on him….”

Uh, what?!

“Are you kidding me?!” I cry, my voice going up a new notches higher on the volume scale than I had intended. However, I’m unable to stop myself upon receiving this particular piece of news. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Uh…” An uncomfortable expression crosses Nathan’s features. “No…”

“I’m going to kill him! I can’t believe he’s telling people that!” A thought strikes me and my gaze flickers back to the guy in front of me, frowning slightly. “You didn’t actually believe him, did you?”

His silence serves as an unspoken response.

“Oh my God, you believed him…” I say, shaking my head. “No, I don’t have a crush on him! He hates me! He annoys the hell out of me. I can’t think of any torture worse than having to date him.”

“I thought it seemed a bit… well, unlike you,” Nathan says. “All the girls are sucking it up though. You should’ve seen them flocking round his table at lunch.”

“I am seriously going to kill him,” I mutter, intending for it to be only under my breath. “When I see him, I swear, I’ll rip his head off…”

Nathan’s face suddenly transforms into the picture of alarm. Hey, maybe my threats and menacing looks are more effective than I thought. It’s a pity they don’t work so well on Connor…

Less than a second after the words have escaped my lips, he interjects worriedly. “No!” he says, undertones of pleading audible. “You can’t! You can’t let on what you know about him spreading gossip…”

“Well, what am I going to do about it? Just sit back and let him spread rumors about me?”

There’s no way I can. How can I ever relax when I know that Connor could be telling embarrassing lies about me at any second? Charlotte and her crew would think they’d struck gold if they ever got their hands on some of the tales from my childhood. Surely Nathan didn’t expect me to just forget about it once he’d told me?

“You can’t,” he says, shooting me a wide-eyed look. “You two will end up killing each other sooner or later.”

That’s probably true. Still, I’m not saying it wouldn’t be worth it…

“Georgie…”

Is he a mind reader or what? I swear my expression doesn’t give that much away about what I’m thinking.

“Don’t go confronting him about it. You two will make amends soon enough, anyway.”

“I doubt it,” I scoff, “but okay. If you really want me to keep quiet about this whole thing, then I will. But if people start saying anything to me…”

“They’ll forget about it soon enough.”

I sigh. “Fine; I promise I’ll refrain from killing Connor. Now we should really get back to studying. You wanna talk me through the first part again?”

After all, my promise is only limited to not murdering the guy in question. I’ve said nothing that stops me from having a little fun of my own.

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I had writer's block when I wrote this... I'm not sure if you can tell. It's definitely not my best work, but whatever. Hope this was a good introduction to Nathan :) He'll be appearing a bit more later on.

Also, we reached 30,000 reads! That's so good, especially with only 10 chapters up. I love you all <3

55 comments = upload on Friday, instead of Saturday :)