13. Josie

13

Josie

I t's the start of our second week of tutoring, and Van's right on time tonight. He's at our usual table, his laptop open and ready to go. He's got another BU Hockey hoodie on, and his hair is down and still damp from the shower. I will not think about how good he looks or how good he smells. Nope. I will simply sit down and state my intention.

"I need you." The words fall from my lips before I can stop them or censor them or think about the way they sound. My cheeks flush as Van's lips part. Dear god. Did I really say that out loud?

I close my eyes, take a breath, and start again. "I mean, I need to tutor you. I know it's not ideal. I know you'd probably rather work with just about anyone on campus, but I need these hours. I never talked about my family back when we knew each other, and I don't want to get into messy details now, but my brother and I made a deal, and I owe him so much. Anyway, part of that deal is finishing school as quickly as I can so that Levi can go pursue his dream—the one he put on hold for me. So," I take a breath, fully aware that I'm rambling. "I want us to make this work. The tutoring. If you still need a tutor, that is."

He slides a paper across the table. It's a little wrinkled, but still legible.

"As of today, those are my grades," he tells me as I scan the printout. "The only passing scores I made last week were the ones you helped me with. So, not to point out the obvious or anything, but yes, Josie, I still need a tutor. Coach expects me to figure my shit out, but I can't do it alone. It doesn't matter how many hours I spend studying. Nothing gets through my thick skull. Except when you explain it. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I need you, too."

He smiles and I immediately look away, thanks to years of practice in the fine art of avoiding Van's gaze.

"Josie," he says softly, prompting me to look him in the eye. "First, thanks. I mean, I know you need these hours or whatever, but you're smart as hell and I have no doubt you'd figure something out if this fell through. So, thanks. Also, um, I really want to talk…about before. So, tonight, do you think we could?—"

"No," I cut him off, shaking my head. "That's my one condition: no talking about the past. This is purely business. You're a student, and I'm a tutor. That's all this is."

He winces at my bluntness. "And the fact that we..." Unspoken words hang in the air, but I hear them all the same.

"We're here to study, Van," I say, picking up his Medieval History book.

He looks like he's going to say something, but he bites his lip and thinks better of it. He threads his hands through his hair, leans back in the chair and lets out a breath. It's a little awkward, sure, but getting right down to business is best for both of us.

I'm fairly certain Van agrees, until he shakes his head and opens his mouth.

"Is that really how we're gonna play this, Jos? Catch me up here. Do we not know each other at all? Am I just a guy you slept with? Just some dumb jock you have to tutor? You tell me."

My eyes go wide. He's caught me off-guard. It's certainly not the first time.

Van weaves his hands through his hair before looking straight at me. "Maybe I should keep my damn mouth shut, but I just can't. I'm grateful as hell that you're here and you're helping me. But spending the next several weeks pretending we've never met? That's a hell no from me."

My fingers find the amethyst necklace I've worn for five years. It was a birthday gift from my dad to my mom. I'd borrowed it a week before the accident so I could wear it for my senior pictures, and I haven't taken it off since. My cheeks are flushed and I'm sure my neck is, too. "I…of course we know each other, but any previous involvement isn't really relevant right now. You?—"

" Previous involvement? Jesus. Is that what you're calling it?"

"What would you call it?" I ask.

"We dated, Jos. I was your boyfriend. You were my girlfriend. And now it's like you don't even know my name."

"We went on, like, three dates, Van. We hardly have some long history," I answer, my words more flippant than my feelings.

"Four," he corrects. "It was four dates."

"No, it was three. I remember."

Van's toying with his hair tie, letting the curly blond strands frame his face. "You're the smart one, I know, but you're wrong about this. We had four dates."

That can't be right. "We went to the movies…"

"Yeah," he agrees. "We went to the movies and you stole all the popcorn."

"We shared," I insist, accidentally letting a smile peek through. "We, um, studied in my room that one time, but…"

"We didn't study," he says, smiling at the memory.

I can feel the tips of my ears heat as memories tumble out of their corner in my brain.

"But it doesn't count. We didn't leave the room or see other human beings, or say more than ten words that weren't dirty, so as much fun as that study session was, it doesn't count as a date," Van announces, like he's the line judge or something. I guess he would be, considering he has much more experience than I do.

"Agreed." My attention has moved to my notebook and I'm devoting all my focus to unwinding the metal coil.

"Then you came to one of my games and we got wings after. And don't tell me that doesn't count. We didn't even sit with the team."

"I remember," I say, trying hard to keep the wistfulness from voice, and failing miserably. "You set up a table off to the side, away from everybody else."

"I wanted it to be nice. I wanted to take you somewhere special, somewhere it could just be the two of us, not a bar with all my buddies. But they helped, remember? Santos brought a candle. Granted, it was one of those big ones in a glass jar. It was, like, vanilla sugar cookie, instead of, like, a skinny candle in a brass holder like at some fancy restaurant, but it was all we had." He shrugs, like he's afraid his efforts fell short, and that's not true at all.

"It smelled good," I tell him. "And Newman brought flowers, which was sweet."

"Yeah," he laughs. "Would have been a lot sweeter if I'd known you were allergic and had him get fake ones. But once we tossed them, it was good."

"Good? I looked a mess. My eyes were watery and bloodshot, and my nose was red and runny. Ugh."

His eyes find mine again. "You were beautiful."

The words are too much, so I duck my head and get lost in the metal coil of my notebook again. "That's only two official dates. The last one was the party at the hockey house."

"Right," he says, packing so much emotion in that word that it takes all my willpower to stave off the memories.

"That's only three dates, Van," I say with finality, eager to get back to tutoring because it's what I know. This walk down Memory Lane with Van is something I've wanted to avoid.

But he's not done. "Nah, you're forgetting the first one. Before the movies. We sat on the floor of your dorm for an hour while Newman got it on with the girl who lived down the hall. I was still half-drunk from the party I'd been at."

He's counting that as a date? "You knocked on my door at one in the morning. You woke me up. I opened the door and there you were, a total stranger smiling like we were old friends and asking to use my microwave."

"Hey, I had to heat up my Toasty Pocket somewhere." His smile holds no apology.

"Where did you even get a Toasty Pocket at one in the morning? We didn't live in the same dorm."

"I honestly have no clue. But I was hungry as fuck and needed to heat it up."

We could not be more different. "So, you just started knocking on random doors?"

"Nope," he says easily. "I picked yours specifically. First, it was close to the room Newman was in. But what really drew me in was your white board."

"My white board?"

"Yeah, that little sign thing you hang on your door. Yours was all neat and cute. You drew flowers at the bottom and you had different colored markers. That's attention to detail. I figured if you had your shit that together, you'd surely have a microwave or toaster oven or whatever. Anyway, it worked out for me. Best damn Toasty Pocket I ever ate. And I got to hang out with you for an hour."

I won't admit this out loud, but that was the best night I'd had at school up to that point. I was homesick and lonely and still grieving. My roommate was awful. Earlier that day, I'd thought about ways to convince Levi to let me move back home. I couldn't sleep that night, so when there was a knock on the door, I answered it, figuring it was a drunken neighbor who'd lost her way. Instead, I got six feet, two inches of hockey hotness. This gorgeous guy wanted to use my toaster oven and since I had nothing else to do but stare at the wall and hope for sleep, I let him in. It wasn't wise or prudent, but it was fun. And though I should steer us back to his studies, I can't help but go back to that night for just a minute. "God, they were so loud, remember? I don't even know that girl's name anymore. I haven't seen her in years, but I can still hear her shouting, Fuck me like you mean it, Newman! It was weird on so many levels."

Van laughs right along with me. "I remember that, too. But mostly, I remember talking to you. I had a really good time that night. Like, so good. Like, I-wanna-keep-doing-this-forever good, you know?"

His words are the dose of reality I need. "But we didn't do it forever, Van. We stopped. Three years ago. And we're not the same people anymore."

"We're not," he concedes. "I'm not. God, Jos, there's so much I've wanted to say, so much to explain, to apologize?—"

I shake my head, cutting off his words. "No. We can't. We're not here to rehash the past. We're here to make sure you pass your classes."

I'm forcing us back to work before all my inhibitions come tumbling down. It would be too easy to fall back into patterns from the past, so I need to remember that my only priority is helping Van pass.