Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

COLE

I'd never been good at waiting.

Football had taught me patience in the specific way sports do — you learn to hold your position, read the play, not move until you know where the gap is. But that was on a field with rules I understood. This was different. Mara was different. Every time I thought I had the shape of her figured out she said something that shifted it, and I'd stopped minding that about a week ago.

Wednesday came and I knocked at six and her mother let me in before Mara made it downstairs, which had become a pattern I secretly liked. Mrs. Delgado had this way of making you feel welcome without making a production of it. She just handed you tea and asked one question and listened to the answer like it mattered.

"How was practice?" she said, setting my mug on the counter.

"Good. Coach is happy with the line this week."

"Your shoulder okay? You were rolling it last time."

I looked at her. "You noticed that?"

She gave me a look that said obviously. "Mara doesn't get that from nowhere."

Mara appeared in the doorway in time to catch the end of that and looked between us with narrowed eyes. "What are you two talking about."

"Your shoulder," her mother said.

"His shoulder," I corrected.

"Both of you are impossible," Mara said, and sat down.

Her mother disappeared. I sat across from Mara and she already had the textbook open and her notebook out and her pen uncapped, which meant she'd been thinking about the session before I arrived, which meant she'd been thinking about me before I arrived, and I decided not to say that out loud.

"Enzyme kinetics," she said. "This is the last hard unit before the semester exam. If you understand this one the rest is review."

"Okay. Hit me."

"Substrate. Define it."

"The molecule the enzyme acts on."

"Active site."

"Where the substrate binds."

"Good. Induced fit model, explain it like I'm not a bio student."

I leaned back. "The enzyme isn't rigid. When the substrate shows up it adjusts its shape to fit. Like—" I thought about it. "Like a handshake. Your hand changes shape slightly depending on who you're shaking with."

She looked at me for a second. "That's actually a good analogy."

"Don't sound so surprised."

"I'm not surprised."

"You have a surprised face on."

"This is my normal face."

"Mara. I've been looking at your face for two months. That's the surprised one."

She looked down at her notebook, but not before I caught the edge of something she was trying not to show. She wrote something that I was fairly sure was not bio related.

"Inhibitors," she said. "Competitive versus noncompetitive."

"Competitive blocks the active site. Noncompetitive binds somewhere else and changes the shape so the substrate can't fit right."

"And if you increase substrate concentration?"

"Overcomes competitive. Doesn't fix noncompetitive."

She tapped her pen on the notebook. "You've been studying."

"You told me to."

"I tell you a lot of things."

"I know." I looked at her across the table. "I listen to most of them."

"Most."

"The ones that make sense."

She tilted her head. "Which ones don't make sense?"

"The ones where you pretend this is just tutoring."

The kitchen went quiet. Not awkward quiet. The kind where something true has been said and both people are deciding what to do with it.

"Cole," she said.

"I'm not starting anything. I'm just saying."

"We're in the middle of a session."

"We're always in the middle of something." I leaned forward. "When does it stop being in the middle?"

She looked at me steadily. "When you pass the semester exam."

"And then?"

"And then we figure out what it is without the textbook between us."

"I like that plan," I said.

"I know you do." She uncapped her pen again. "Allosteric regulation. Go."

I went. We worked through the chapter with the focused rhythm we'd built over weeks, her pushing, me following the logic further than she pushed each time because I'd figured out early that she responded to that, to not needing to drag someone toward understanding but having them run alongside it.

At seven-thirty she closed the notebook and stretched her arms above her head and I looked at the ceiling because that was the responsible thing to do.

"You're ready for the exam," she said.

"When is it."

"Two weeks. Kamali announced it today."

"Two weeks," I said. "That's still two more Wednesdays."

She looked at me. "Yes."

"Just making sure."

"Cole." Her voice was softer now, the after-session version of her, the one that appeared when the textbooks were closed and she stopped performing competence and just was it. "I know what you're doing."

"What am I doing."

"You're counting the sessions."

"Maybe."

"Because you're worried about what happens after."

I met her eyes. "Aren't you?"

She was quiet for a moment. Honest quiet, the kind she had when she was actually considering something rather than building a case. "Yes," she said. "A little."

"What are you worried about specifically."

"That this is easier in a kitchen with a textbook. That the school hallways are a different thing."

"I sat at your table for three weeks before I ever kissed you."

"That's different."

"How."

She opened her mouth and closed it again. "I don't know," she admitted.

I stood up and came around the table and she turned in her chair to look up at me, not moving back, just watching. I took her hand and pulled her gently to her feet and she came without arguing which was how I knew she wanted to.

"Hey," I said quietly.

"Hey."

"The hallways are fine. I promise."

"You can't promise that."

"Watch me." I tucked a strand of hair back. "Two more Wednesdays. Then no more textbook between us."

She looked at me for a long moment. "And if it gets complicated?"

I leaned down and kissed her softly. "Then it gets complicated," I said against her mouth. "Still worth it."

She grabbed my jacket and kissed me back and didn't argue.