3:30pm

13: beep. bop. beep

                       <iRobot>  

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"Can we please take a break," I groaned, holding my hands to my head. "I've been solving for x for two hours now and it feels like my head is gonna freaking explode."

"Not until you've fully grasped the concept, Cleo," Brent replied, his tone anything but interested.

He was sitting beside me, his legs crossed on top of the kitchen table, feet pink and bare, and a magazine that had the picture of a blonde lady with smoky blue eyes, in a lacey blue bikini, as its front cover in his hands.

"Try being stuck with learning Calculus for 120 minutes instead of that," I muttered. "And besides, I've understood the concept already."

Finally, he sighed, put down the magazine and got his feet off the table.

"Two times I've given you stuff to solve," he said, fixing his green eyes on me, "two times you've failed. What does that tell you?"

"That you suck at teaching?" I raised my eyebrows, leaning back into my seat and crossing my arms.

He chuckled lightly. "Nice one."

I smirked.

"But, no. I'm not a bad teacher. You're a bad listener."

Suddenly, he reached forward and thumped my forehead.

"Ow," I howled from the sting that followed. "What gives, asshole."

"Ah ah, language, young lady. And it's Mr Lockwood for you. Remember, we are being as professional as can be here. And that was to open up your mind to the last and final explanation of this concept I'm going to give. Quit thinking of Stephen. Or whatever. Listen."

"I wasn't thinking of Stephen." I pouted, my eyebrows furrowed and my arms crossed.

He was right. My mind had been zoning in and out on Stephen and what he could be doing at the moment the entire two hours since I began lessons with Brent today.

For two weeks now, we hadn't spoken. I could tell he was avoiding me because, sometimes, he intentionally skipped coming to literature class, and other times, in the hallway, he'd walk past me like I was invisible. I was avoiding him too. It made things less complicated.

Brent went over the concept of derivatives and integrals once again for me. This time, I put my thoughts of Stephen aside and paid rapt attention. At the end, he gave me five questions to solve, out of which I made a total of four.

"You're catching on, huh," Brent smiled, handing me back my book. "I did a correction for the last one you bummed."

Quickly, I scanned his correction. His work and my work were almost similar, only that I'd made an error in my multiplication.

"Hey," I scowled at him. "I almost had it, you know."

"But you didn't," he shrugged and pushed his fake, unmedicated "Cunningham" glasses higher up his nose. "Nearly never killed a bird, dear."

The whole teacher-imitation thingy couldn't get any more ridiculous and annoying at the same time. I mean, dear? What was I, nine?

"You don't wanna know how utterly and incredibly dumb you look right now." I shook my head, closing my book. "That's it. I'm not going any further."

Brent took off the glasses then, got out his phone from his pocket and double tapped it's screen. At once, the phone came to life and I glanced at it. The time read 5:12 P.M.