Page 20 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
“Meh. I do okay.”
She’s a lot better than okay, but I won’t argue with her. “And now you’re back.”
She lifts her shoulders. Her gaze is serious, and I sense the strength of the commitment behind her words. “At least for a little while.”
A little while.It’s a better timeline than usual, but still one with a deadline. She isn’t here to stay. At some point, she’s going to leave again. Just like she always does.
Kate gives her head a tiny shake, like she’s ready to put the heaviness behind us, and rubs her hands together. “Can I quiz you? For old time’s sake?”
It’s a game I always got tired of playing with everyone else, but never with Kate. “All right. Shoot.”
She grins and purses her lips like she’s really thinking hard.
While I wait, I admire the slope of her bare shoulder, the long stretch of exposed neck next to her braid.
Just friends. Just friends. Just friends.
Kate sits up taller. “Okay. Four hundred, seventy-seven thousand, three hundred and thirty-three divided by eighty-one.”
The waitress arrives with our churros before I can reply, but I won’t forget the number. It’s floating in my mind’s eye, and it’ll stay there until I say it out loud.
I take a huge bite of churro, the cinnamon and caramel flavors bursting on my tongue. Weird mariachi band and outlandish decorations aside, this place knows how to serve good food. “Five thousand, eight-hundred ninety-three,” I say around my bite.
Kate lights up just like she did the first time she quizzed me on the school bus in the fourth grade. Like I’m the most interesting person she’s ever met. She grins and takes a bite of her churro before giving me another problem.
“Five-hundred and six divided by thirteen.”
Decimals.I wrinkle my brow. “Thirty-eight point...nine, two, three, zero, seven, six repeating.”
She starts to laugh. “It never gets old.”
Shenever gets old.
“Do you like teaching?” She sits up taller and runs a hand down her braid, just like she used to when we were kids. “I mean, I’m not surprised you’re teaching. You were always so good at it. But I’m surprised you aren’t teaching math.”
“You do a lot of math in chemistry.” I have a sudden itch to reach over and tug the elastic that’s holding her wild hair in place, see the dark waves cascading down her arms like river water rippling from a skipped stone.
“True. I bet your students love you,” she says.
My lips twitch. Theydolove me. It helps that I’m young. I still recognize the music they listen to and remember enough about what it was like to be in high school that I know when to cut them slack and when they might be lying about how muchhomework they have in their other classes. I took all those other classes. I remember what it was like.
“I do love it,” I say. “Almost as much as I love kayaking.”
“It’s amazing you’ve figured out a way to do both.”
“Yeah, I’m lucky in that regard. Or I have been anyway. We’ll see if I get to be after the meeting in a couple weeks.”
“It’ll work out,” she says, and I want to believe her. She can’t know that it will, but I appreciate her confidence in me anyway.
My eyes drift to the uneaten churro still sitting on Kate’s plate. It’s been a while since she’s taken a bite.
Kate chuckles and shifts the plate to me with a knowing grin. “Go ahead,” she says. “I think you need it more than I do.”
I eat the churro in two bites.
“I’d love to see you kayaking.” She reaches over and slides her finger across a drizzle of caramel on the plate. The gesture is innocent enough, but when she raises that finger to her mouth, my pulse immediately ticks up.
“Actually, can you teachmehow to kayak?” she asks, a new hope blossoming in her eyes.
