“Oh,” he said.
“Oh?”
“No, I mean…hello.” He took off his reading glasses. His eyes were sharp and brown, narrower than mine, slightly slanted. “You must be…”
“Jason,” I said. “And you look like you swallowed something inedible.”
He waved at the chair across from him, not commenting on the joke. Oops. “You’re late.”
“I didn’t know what to wear,” I said.
Crickets. He only glanced at me like I was serious. Then, so quietly that I might have imagined it, he said, “I suppose anything’s an improvement.”
I pulled the chair and sat down, putting my backpack by the leg of the table. “You from the Thinkers’ House?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’ve seen you around,” I said.
“I pass by the Bel House every morning,” he said. I wondered why it sounded defensive. It wasn’t like I was going to charge him a toll for using the public street.
“What’s your name?” I asked. Professor Colby never said. He only promised someone brilliant.
“Bennet,” my uninterested tutor said. “Bennet Marlowe.”
“Nice to meet you, Bennet Bennet Marlowe.”
“It’s…only one Bennet.”
Why was I still trying? I laughed it off. “Right, I imagined it might be.”
Bennet swallowed and hid his hands on his legsunder the table. “You need help with Intro to Statistics.” It wasn’t a question, so I nodded without saying anything else. “Um, why Statistics?”
“Oh, classic. Cute professor, you know?”
He looked at me blankly. There was a tremor in his flat, dark eyebrows. “I think you’re mixing up the professors and the assistant.”
I laughed. “I think I know the difference between a nice woman and a hot guy who packs a million-dollar butt in a pair of chinos.”
Bennet’s eyes widened a little. “Oh.” He closed his mouth and looked down.
I embarrassed him. Great. Why couldn’t I just be a normal goddamn person? I could have just said the truth, that I wanted to get into sports management, and statistics was an important course to pass.
“Did I shock you?” I asked, folding my arms on the table and leaning in. There was still plenty of room between us. This table was fit for banquets. Bennet still pulled back a little as he looked at me. “No. It’s just…” He shook his head. “You’re very blunt.”
“Some call it a sense of humor,” I said.
“Do they?” he asked casually, opening a textbook.
A laugh broke out of me. “Is that a joke?”
“You tell me. You know about the sense of humor,” he said.
I still laughed. “Yeah, you made a joke. Funny, too.” And I swore his cheeks turned the palest shade of pink after that. “Professor Chinos said you’re really good at statistics.”
Bennet gave a noncommittal shrug. “Child’s play.”
“It’s a matter of life and death over here,” I muttered.