Page 11 of Gingers Can Do Maths

We like our style.

We're not trying to appease other people anymore.

I'd gone through a fashion crisis my first year at Hortace, trying to tone down my aesthetic and the things that made me happy in hopes of making myself more digestible, so everyone else was happy. But that didn't happen. People still loved or hated me regardless if I wore pink tweed and impractical heels.

It was actually the goth-inspired headmistress at Hortace who pointed this out to me.

Still, I tug on my plaid periwinkle miniskirt self-consciously.

“You're late,” he says, pulling out his chair and taking a seat. “Let's begin. I want to see your current maths level, so I have a few practice quizzes.”

I remember when he'd always pull out my seat too. Of course, I don't expect that kind of treatment anymore, but it's just another difference I note.

The snippiness of his tone as if I'd arrived ten minutes late, however, irritates me enough that I say, “It's only two minutes after. And I’ve been standing here for at least 30 seconds.”

“That's stillafter. But I guess you still couldn't work that out on your own. That's why you're here for maths tutoring.”

Ohhh okay!So the petty prince has come out to play.

He’s forgetting I’m a petty princess too.

“Don't bother to get me anything next time,” he says, eyeing the two coffees and the dangling bakery bag on my wrist. “It’s a waste.”

“Who says I did?” I lie and he arches a brow.

Reaching for a cup, I squeeze it too hard in my irritation and the top pops off at the same time I take a step... and stumble.

Hot chai splashes across my front, drenching me.

Han freezes as the rich aroma fills the small space.

“Is that caramel?”

Han loved everything caramel, including those old lady hard candies he’d always sucked on. Eventually, I’d begun making them for him at Christmas, then his birthday, then every month in between.

I don’t look at him. Of course, I didn’t know what my tutor would’ve liked so I brought Han and I’s regular coffee drinks out of habit. A habit I hadn’t broken in nearly three years. Mine was always plain vanilla chai so I figured if worse came to worst, the vanilla would be neutral enough for the other person.

I didn’t like the caramel half as much, but I liked the way it made me feel. Pure nostalgia for my Han.

Rohan.

“It’s a common favourite. My tits are obviously big fans,” I grumble under my breath as I stumble the rest of the way to the table to rest the tray down.

Fuck, It’shot.

Scalding hot.

I pull at my periwinkle blazer, now dotted, no,soakedin tan and throw it onto the back of my chair. Still, it isn’t enough to relieve the burning as the liquid seeps through my long sleeve undershirt, and into my bra where the thin padding traps the heat, making the burning worse.

Without thinking, I pull off my shirt, only pausing when I reach my steaming bra.

Seconds tick by as I look from my drenched blazer to my dripping shirt, to my smoking bra. I gaze around the room hopelessly, for something, anything, and that's when my eyes fall on Han.

“Can I borrow your blazer?” I ask, eyeing the hunter-green, perfectly pressed fabric covering his broad shoulders.

Surprisingly he isn't squawking with laughter. Not that Han had ever laughed at me. But that was the past. The old Han who cared.

He doesn’t blink when he says, “Why should I suffer the chill because you're a klutz?”

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