The New KISS High School

Ch 7: Let's Prepare (Paul)

"How much time do I have left?" I asked, frowning at the page of math problems. "Five minutes. Now stop talking," Gene said, not bothering to look up from his phone. "Alright fine," I muttered, scratching my temple with the end of my pencil. I could do this, I knew what I was doing, it was just math, math that never went beyond pre-calculus, I was in pre-calculus this year so I could definitely do this. "That's time," he said, and I jumped. "Time? But I've still got--" "That's tough. Here, lemme look them over," he said, taking the notebook from me. I let out a sigh, leaning back in my chair. "Fine," I muttered. 

We fell into silence as he looked over my answers, lips pursed into a frown. "So wanna spend the night tonight or something?" I asked casually, looking at the prep book without actually reading it. "Mm I can't tonight," Gene said, still looking over the math I had done. My heart sank and I gave him a curious look. "Aw why not?" "Because my girlfriend is spending the night tonight," he said with an apologetic shrug. "Girlfriend? You said you broke up with Cher," I protested. "I did. Five months ago. And I've been dating Leeta for the past four months," he said, giving me a pointed look. 

My face went red as I ran a hand through my hair. "Oh. I didn't know that," I mumbled. He laughed, shaking his head. "You gotta pay attention to things other than yourself sometimes," he teased, nudging me playfully in the ribs. "Sorry, damn. Definitely don't remember you talking about Leeta before, maybe you need to share things with me more often," I grumbled. "Come on Stan, I've definitely talked about Leeta before. You were just probably too busy looking at your reflection." I grew redder at the light jab while absolutely melting at the nickname at the same time before I just gave up and shoved him. "Aw shut up, you know damn well you never tell me anything." 

"Uh huh. More like you just don't pay attention, judging by how well you did on math," he said, sliding the notebook back to me. My face somehow grew even redder as I looked at the page full of red marks. "How many did I get right?" I asked quietly, and he frowned. "Mm, 7. So that's not terrible!" he said, trying to be cheerful, but I felt my heart sink. "That's not even 50%! That's fucking awful!" I cried. "Well that's what I'm here for. You wanna go over them?" he asked gently. I shook my head with a grimace, slamming the prep book shut. "Nah, I'm done for today. You wanna just like hang out?" I asked, hoping at least he could stay a bit longer. 

He looked at his phone before giving me a smile. "Yeah it's only 5, Leeta's not gonna come over until like 8 or so. You sure you don't want to just review the ones you got wrong?" he asked, and I nodded, mouth pressing into a thin line. "Absolutely positive." "Come on, we're just gonna go over them," he said, ignoring me and opening the prep book again. "Alright so with this one you did one third base times height, but it's supposed to be one half since it's the area of a triangle. Also you didn't actually find the height, you just used this side, you need to use the Pythagorean theorem to find the height, since you use half the base as the second leg and then this side as the hypotenuse," he said, pointing at the triangle on the page. 

I just totally spaced out, looking at him blankly as he explained things to me, not paying attention in the slightest. "Stan. You're spacing out on me," he said, and I jumped. "Oh. Sorry, just tired." "Tired or just tired of math?" he asked with a grin, and I smiled back. "Tired of math. You come over three times a week to teach me, can't we just work on it next week?" I begged. "Alright fine. But we'll do twice as much on Monday," he countered. "Yeah, yeah, that's fine," I said, rising to my feet and walking upstairs to my room, Gene close behind.

He sat on my bed as I put on a movie, flopping onto the mattress next to him. I had barely hit play before he looked at his phone. "Oh wait hold on Eric's calling, let me just grab this," he said, answering his phone and walking a few feet away. I tried to catch snatches of his conversation but couldn't do much since he was off to the right, so instead I focused on pushing away the ugly feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was Eric, just Eric. Gene wasn't going to stop being my friend just because he was friends with Eric. He was still gonna be my friend, I was still gonna have friends and be popular. It was going to be fine, I wasn't going to lose him. 

A minute later, he flopped back onto the couch, giving me a smile and picking up the remote. "Sorry about that." "Why was he calling?" I asked, casually shifting a bit closer to him. "Ah, he's just got a guy he's got a crush on coming to his house for dinner tomorrow and he didn't find out until tonight," he said, all of a sudden slipping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me against his side, turning the movie back on. I froze, heart in my throat, before relaxing a bit and leaning more against him. "How did he not know until tonight if the guy's coming to his house?" I asked. "His older sister is dating the guy's older brother, she's the one who invited his family over." "Ah fun," I muttered. "Mhm. Must be awkward having your crush over at your house without them knowing," he said with a faint grin, and I nearly died inside.

"Yeah. Wonder how that feels," I said under my breath, wishing he felt the same as I did. But he was pretty much aggressively straight, and I had given up hope long ago.