“No, actually. Even I couldn’t make that shit up if I tried.”
He and I both cracked up simultaneously, and when our laughter dissipated, I stared into his emerald eyes for a few seconds. His eyes then moved from mine to my mouth and back up to my eyes again.
“Seriously, you look like you had a tough day,” he said.
I shook my head. “You have no idea.”
Jake walked over to the fridge, popped open a beer, took a swig and handed the bottle to me. “Enlighten me.”
I took a long sip, and the fact that my mouth was now where his had just been was not lost on me. “Thanks.”
He pulled up a chair, sat on it backwards and listened as I vented.
“I am just really up shit’s creek in school. There is this finite math class I have to get at least a C in, since it’s a requirement for the nursing program, and I have never been able to understand math. It’s like a brain deficiency I have.”
He squinted his eyes in disagreement. “Bullshit. No such thing. You just need the right teacher.”
“Well, the teacher, Professor Hernandez, is not a happy person to begin with, and as far as his teaching style, he might as well be talking Chinese to me. He just reads out of the book and doesn’t explain anything.”
Jake grabbed the beer from my hand, took a sip, handed it back, and stared into my eyes. “Like I said, you need the right teacher.”
“But my teacher sucks!”
He let out a slight burp. “No, he doesn’t. He is awesome.”
“What do you mean? Have you not heard anything I have said?”
“I mean…he is awesome. Because…he…is me.”
“You?”
“Yeah. I’ll be your teacher. I’ll tutor you. Math is easy as balls for me.”
“You…tutor me…”
His eyes widened, and he gave me a menacing look. “Yes. Unless you want to fail,” he said firmly.
“No. No, I don’t.”
“Okay, then.”
I scratched my head. “When is this gonna happen?”
“We’ll do it a couple of nights a week, set up a schedule.”
“Why would you want to do this for me? What’s the catch?”
I was about to take a sip of the beer when he yanked it from my hands and downed the rest of it. My eyes fixated on his lips wrapped around the bottle before he slammed it down. “What…people can’t do things for other people without there being an ulterior motive?”
“I guess. But seriously, you don’t have to.”
“I don’t have to. You’re right. I want to. I wouldn’t have offered otherwise. I told you, math is easy for me. The hard part is gonna be getting you motivated.”
“Motivated?”
“Yeah. See, people are capable of amazing things when they’re motivated.”
“Isn’t not getting kicked out of nursing school motivation enough?”
He smirked and shook his head in disagreement. “No, it’s not. I can tell that’s not enough for you. You need something that will really make you want to pass, like your life depends on it.
I rubbed my temples. “I am not following you.”
“I’ll explain then. Okay, so…I’m gonna tutor you, right? If you get an A on every exam, fanfuckingtastic! I’m doing my job because you should be getting an A on every exam. If you get lower than an A, then there should be consequences.”
“Consequences?”
He nodded slowly with a mischievous grin. “Consequences.”
“Like?”
“Like…when I first met you, you said you were afraid of a lot of things. And from the look on your face, I could tell it was more than just a slight fear. You need to get over that, Nina.”
I shuddered at the seriousness of his tone and the fact that for the first time, he said my name.
“I am not following you,” I said.
“Let me explain. I tutor you. But for every exam grade lower than an A, you will have to face one of your fears.”
I felt a rush of panic creeping in, and my heart started to pound. Without saying anything for several seconds, I just stared at him before asking, “Can you be more specific?”
“Don’t get all freaked out on me. I’ll be there with you. We’ll do something that scares you, that you’ve been avoiding, but you won’t know what it is until we get there. It’s better that way, so that you are not building up anxiety anticipating it. We’ll expose you to it, until it doesn’t scare you anymore. See, from what I can tell from your body language, I am making you really fucking nervous right now. And that’s a good thing, because it means you are going to work your ass off to ace those tests. But either way, you win. You just might not see it that way.”