How To Hate Your Best Friend

twelve

Seated in a library solving rational inequalities with a greek god hovering over my shoulder was not the place I wanted to be in.

 But currently, I was. 

It was around 5pm and daylight savings had already hit so the sun was pretty much set. The school library was still open for private tutoring sessions which I had signed up for at the beginning of the school year. 

Why would I agree to get tutored by the one guy I wanted to avoid? No idea. Except, it wasn't my idea -- it was his. 

Ever since the closet incident, he had become way more attentive. No more ignoring me, none of that. Instead, he went as far as offering to tutor me. At first I was going to say no, but when I got my most recent quiz grade back, I realized I had to make an exception. Plus, he was the smartest person I knew--the smartest person in the entire school, even.

In all honestly, I expected him to ignore me even more, especially after seeing him with his cum all over another girl's face. 

I could barely look him in the eye, and I couldn't tell if he noticed or not. 

Either way, if there were any words that needed to be exchanged after what happened at the party, we made sure to avoid the topic entirely. These tutoring sessions pretty much went like: study, cry, then study more. 

It was almost exhausting pretending like nothing happened. A part of me felt like it was all in my head, but either way, I'd have no way of truly knowing unless I asked him.

Which I was not going to do. 

"This isn't even the worst part, is it?" I grumbled, spreading the papers in front of me across the table. I was currently looking at a rational function and I needed to set the shit to zero or something? God, math was going to be what really ended it all. 

"Rational inequalities are just the beginning, Ash," he chuckled lightly. 

Scribbling some random numbers and letters onto the practice problems, I set my pencil down, ready to give up. 

"Here let me double check your work," he offered. I shoved the papers back over to Colton, who gladly set his focus to them. 

He was the one who insisted he construct the problems himself in order to cater to a curriculum personally fit for my understanding. My math teacher didn't make any sense, so he wanted to make sure he could help in the best way possible. 

I couldn't help but admire him as he zoned out into focus-mode. He chewed his lip in deep thought and his eyebrow furrowed with concern. He readjusted the glasses sitting on his face as he reexamined and marked the errors on my page. 

"No, this is incorrect," he observed. His eyes were glued to my paper as his attention was immersed into the math. "The issue here is that you keep substituting x for the value of b and forget to check for extraneous solutions. See come look at this."

With one arm, he grabbed the leg of my chair and pulled my entire body weight closer to him with no struggle. 

My thigh grazed his and I felt my breath hitch in my throat. My breathing became irregular as I tried to focus on the words coming out of his mouth, but I think I was currently just trying to focus on not having a panic attack.

Friends. Friends. Friends. We were just friends. He has a girlfriend. He has a girlfriend. He has a-

"Asha? Are you paying attention?" his voice snapped me out of my thoughts. All the sounds drowned back in as he stared at me confused. 

"Yeah-yeah! Um so you said that I need to stop confusing x and b?"

"That, and make sure you watch for x intercepts. You're not awful you just forget sometimes," he clarified.