Unpredictability of Love

A Talented Chimpanzee

When Ethan had said he was good at Math, I never expected him to be this good. He wasn't just good at math, he was a freaking genius. The way he just glanced at a problem and then solved it within moments was making me consider taking drugs just to see if it would make me better at math - because there should be no other way a person could be so quick with it.

Of course, his math skills didn't help improve mine- mostly because his math skills were directly proportional to his impatience.

"Look, it's simple. There is an equation - 3x+8y-9=0. Now, you have to reduce it to normal form. All you have to do for that is divide the whole equation by the square root of the sum of the squares of the cofactors x and y, send the constant to the other side to make it positive, and convert the new cofactors of x and y into cosx and sinx. How hard is that?" He said.

"What?" I felt dumb saying that, as I'd felt dumb saying the very same word past two hours. 'What' became the only word in my dictionary. I had a feeling I would be able to understand Chinese better than the math language he'd been talking the whole time - which is a shame because I didn't even know what Chinese sounded like, and I'd been doing math since first grade.

Ethan characteristically ran a hand through his spiky hair, slammed his pen-rather my pen onto the table, huffed and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like 'thick headed blondes' and glared at me through his stormy eyes. Then he leaned back on his chair and continued glaring at me. "That was so clear, a ten tear old would have understood that! How the fuck are you so confused even after I've been telling you the same thing for the past two hours?"

I wasn't miffed about this in the least bit - this wasn't the first time he'd burst at me like that, this was actually the fifteenth time and I had a feeling it wouldn't stop. It was amusing how he felt he had to take personal responsibility for MY finals.

"Are you even listening to me?!" He snapped.

I had the sudden urge to giggle like I did on daily basis whenever Horry shouted at me, but controlled it because I'd been able to practice my controlling skills for the past three years with Horry. "Yeah. I'm sorry. It's just, can you not use x and y to explain math? Math is supposed to be numbers, right? Why are we using English to learn math?"

"SERIOUSLY? Is that what you've been thinking about the whole time? How the fuck does it matter whether we use English or French or German? I'm trying to teach you the simplest and most basic math, and you're not able to understand it!" His pale face turned a dark shade of red, his black hair fell on his face wildly and his sharp jaw started ticking uncontrollably.

I had a feeling this anger and frustration didn't have much to do with my lack of math skills, but with the effect of being away from his drugs for so long - something I didn't want to mention in case it him mad; but there was no way we would be able to continue our work if he couldn't stop freaking out every time I didn't understand something, so I decided to handle this in the most delicate way I could - which meant that I handled it about as delicately as Kanye West did when he interrupted Taylor Swift."You've been away from your drugs a little too long, maybe you should take a break?" Actually, I handled it much much worse than that.

He looked at me like he was readying himself to either slap me or punch me or walk out on me - all of which I probably deserved, but shockingly enough, he did neither. After glaring at me for what seemed like an eternity and making me consider running away from the cafe to never come back, he rubbed his face and sighed. "I hate it that you're right. But I'm not leaving until you learn the normal form."

"What if they shut this cafe down?" I loved pushing his limits to see how much he'd react.

"If they do," he considered it for a moment, "if they do, we'll just do it in the park. There's no way I'm letting you walk away without at least knowing basic Geometry."