Page 29 of Not Fooling Anyone

Ugh. He’s acting like me now. “Have you taken Calculus?” I ask outright.

“Yeah,” he answers warily after a moment.

“I did, too. Who’d you have?”

“Walker.”

That’s the guy that fails half his students every year. I’d purposely avoided his class and took it with another professor, and even then I got a C plus. It’s the only C on my transcript.

“So do you have to retake it?”

“No.”

“You passed?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Seriously? How? “What grade did you get?”

His gaze searches mine, lips twisting. “You really want to know?”

“Stop being cryptic.”

He smiles, the first one I’ve seen from him today, the familiarity of it easing me. He kind of freaked me out earlier being so solemn.

“I got an A minus.”

I blink, waiting for him to saygotchaor tell me he’s joking, but he doesn’t. “Why the hell am I tutoring you in Psych if you’re getting A’s in Calculus?”

He holds his hands out in front of him. “You’re the one who offered it off the bat, not me.”

I open my mouth to argue, then shut it just as quickly. He’s right. I never asked him if he needed help, only assumed. “What’s your GPA?”

“Three-point-nine.”

What the fuck? That’s higher than mine. “But you’re a boxer.”

A shadow of annoyance crosses his face. “So? That means I can’t be smart?”

“No,” I burst out, unable to help myself. “You’re not allowed to be gorgeous and athletic and charmingandsmart.”

There’s silence, my mouth gaping open as I realize what I said, his eyes wide as the two of us stare at each other.

What is wrong with me? Why would I say that? Why was I even thinking it? I don’t think that way about him.

Yes, I found his picture at the lab the other day handsome. But that was more of an observation. The word gorgeous has a different implication. As if I’m… interested.

That’s ridiculous. I’m not interested in anyone.

The tell-tale sign of his lips curving at the corners has me jumping out of my chair, grabbing my things to stuff in my backpack. I point a finger at him menacingly. “Don’t say anything. It was an objective observation.” He opens his mouth and I cut him off. “Not a word.”

He mimes zipping his lips and reaches out to circle his fingers around my wrist, tugging me back in my seat. “You don’t have to pack your things. We can still study together.”

I slump in my chair, resting my forehead in my hands, elbows braced on the table. “Were you laughing at me the whole time?”

“Not the whole time.”

I make a motion to stand and he laughs, tugging me back down again. “To be fair, your dad told you the first time we met I wasn’t like most of the other guys there.”

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