Page 29 of Gingers Can Do Maths

With shaking fingers, I reach into my blazer pocket and pull out the taped rejection letter from Ennox. The one that’s been burning a hole in my pocket for years.

Han releases my waist to take it with one hand. But as he reads it, the other falls slack at my hip and suddenly nothing is tethering me to him.

I take it as my cue to get up.

As I swing one leg over his, and get to my feet, my knees nearly buckle from the retreating pain in my core and the growing anxiety in my stomach as I watch him read it. As I watch that cold unreadable expression cross his features.

Suddenly old feelings I’d worked so hard to get through resurface.

All the comments from the students in the advanced class.

All the coos of sympathy at my sheer naivety from my parents.

All the annoyed looks from the advanced maths teacher every time I approached him before and after class.

Fight them! They’re not true!

But I can’t, because Han’s expression lets me know that I’ve just proved him wrong. I’m not smart. I can’t doanything.

When he finishes the letter for a third time he doesn’t even look at me. Maybe he can’t.

If he did, maybe he’d finally see the stupid, chubby, airhead everyone pegged me to be. So I don’t give him a chance to.

Above his head, the minute hand on the clock drifts over a fraction.

Five minutes to eight.

I tug my shirt and skirt down, grab my purse and book it halfway out the door before he can finish calling my name.

Before he can shove his dick back into his pants and follow me.

If he does, I don’t know because I never turn around.

Not when I sprint down the library steps nor when I book the corner or propel myself into the trolley.

Neither when I zoomed out of Bradley’s gates unsure if I’d ever enter them again.

Han

If Sin thinks she’s getting away from me that easily, she’s more innocent than I thought.

By the time I got dressed and sprinted to the pickup spot, Hortace’s trolley was already at Bradley’s gates turning the corner.

She’d turned her phone off to avoid my calls and texts. To be fair, rather than avoiding me, maybe she’s just taking time to process everything before she accepts what shethinksI’m going to say.

In the past, Sin had a habit of overanalyzing theifsrather than thewhat is.

But the moment darkness creeps across campus and my dorm father knocks the fuck out from the creamer I’d spiked in his beloved antique coffee bar, I’m on my way to her. To my first sin.

The forest that stretches for an entirety between our campuses howls with the midnight wind as I crisscross through the trees on foot. All bikes on Bradley’s campus are provided by the school and include trackers. Not that those vintage, aesthetically pleasing bikes could handle the close-knit, gnarled roots of the forest anyway.

But this was my exercise, my way of clearing my head in the cool crisp air as best as I could before Sin clouds it all over again.

Sin.

My breathing is ragged by the time I make it to Sin’s dorm almost two hours later. I should catch my breath in the forest line. Wait, watch for any patrolling security guards, perhaps one that’s privy to the gate poles I’d loosened three years ago. But for once I’m not cautious as I zone in on Sin’s dorm. On her bedroom window.

Seniors at Hortace all got their own rooms and I’m sure I was happier than Sin for the upgrade. It made my weekly visits so much easier. So much more intimate because my Sinny did a lot more when she didn’t think anyone was watching.

---