Special Tutoring

"A mutually beneficial arrangement"

I wasn't doing well in school. Mom and Dad were so pissed that I wasn't meeting up to the standards that my overachieving older sister had set, that they were threatening to make me drop out of the cheerleading squad. OMG, just writing about it now, made me cringe at how out of touch they were sometimes. They considered cheerleading as "lifting your legs and showing everyone your hooha". They didn't understand how important school spirit was, and how it made me relevant. Sure Qin took a lot of AP classes, but just ask anyone from her year, who'd remember a mousy Chinese girl with braces and thick glasses??

Unlike me. I had the right amount and kind of curves, that made guys do a double-take with the right kind of clothes. Unfortunately I also had bad grades.

But I'd rather die than ask my sister to tutor me. I could ask one of the nerds to teach me but it would be so boring and ineffectual, because (1) they wouldn't be pleasing to the eye, (2) they either stammered or went on and on the topic without checking whether I was following them at all. So the best way to go about it would be to get one of the sexy older university guys to teach me. Yup, I might as well maximize the advantage of living in a university town.

And I already knew who to ask. Tall with a lean runner's body, he was the droolsome foreign guy who rented from Mrs Schmidt next door. His thick hair, the color of ripened wheat that glinted when it caught the bright sunlight, complemented his cerulean blue eyes and healthy tan.

Even my friends agreed with me that he was dropdead gorgeous and they too found every excuse to try to do their homework or sunbathe at my place. As for me? So far I had tried dressing in my shortest shorts and bumping into him whenever he ran, washing Dad's car in a bikini (which only attracted the pervy old men neighbors *urgh*), and jumping on my trampoline. All I got was a quick wave and a "good morning" in that sexy accented bass. It was demoralizing enough to make me stand in front of the mirror, trying to squeeze a love handle out of my flat stomach.

I managed to catch his name once when Mrs S was calling out to him to collect his mail from her. Ethan. His name sounded satyric, sexy, mysterious between my lips. I have always been confident and having the upper hand when it came to guys and relationships, so I was struggling to understand why I was slowly but surely developing a crush on a guy I didn't know and who probably didn't cared about my existence.

And his not caring about my existence? That was something I fully intended to resolve...

So when my family and Mrs Schmidt were all conveniently out one day, I summoned the courage to climb the stairs to the room over the garage where he was staying and knock on his door. It took him a long time to open the door because he had loud music booming. When he finally did after turning off the music, it almost took my breath away.

He was wearing only a towel(!!). My eyes were immediately drawn downwards and I could see little blond hairs whorling on a washboard tummy, tapering down to a... massive white bulge. My eyes widened in awe and poorly concealed interest. Blushing, I immediately looked up in his bemused eyes.

"What do you want, kid?" Argh.

"I would like you to tutor me." I barely stumbled over the words. He ran a quick hand through his wet hair, and looked at me for a long time without saying a word.

"I can pay. I got..." I dug into my jean pocket for my wallet, worried he was going to reject me.

"It's ok, kid, I have a different kind of payment in mind if you're game enough...wait a sec, I'll get dressed." He closed the door on me, giving me just enough time to fan myself furiously in a vain attempt to calm down the hot flush I could feel coming over my cheeks.

Dressed in a tee with the university logo and shorts, he opened the door again and beckoned me into his apartment. Books were strewn all over the place, with plates and glasses appearing at odd places, like the floor next to the bed and on top of an open copy of Gray's Anatomy. He made no effort to neaten the place for me, and just waved me to sit on the bed, while he collapsed his long legs onto a couch.