Page 11 of Attractive Forces

Jake stiffens, and I can see he’s also clocked Aaron’s appearance.

“What happened?” he demands.

“Nothing.”

I lean over to fish around in my glovebox and find some old McDonald’s napkins. I hand them over to Aaron.

“The other guy looks worse, right?” I say, trying to joke.

But Aaron flushes at my words. He dabs at the corner of his mouth as I start the car.

“What happened?” Jake repeats.

“Fraser was being a dick.”

“Who threw the first punch?”

“He was being a dick.”

“Who threw the first punch, Aaron?” There’s a no-nonsense edge in Jake’s voice that I’ve never heard before.

“I did,” he mutters.

Jake sighs. “Mum’s going to have a fit. You can’t keep trying to solve things by getting into fights.”

Aaron doesn’t reply, sitting there in sullen silence.

The quiet on the drive home is such a contrast to the easy conversation on the way over. Jake shoots anxious looks back at his brother. He gives me a tight smile when he catches me flicking glances at him.

We’ve barely pulled into Jake’s driveway when Aaron is out of the car, slamming the door behind him.

Jake runs his hands through his hair, messing it up. “Sorry about that.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah…it’s just…we’ve had a lot of change in the last year, and Aaron’s finding it hard to adjust. He was close to my dad, and he’s…well, he’s out of the picture now.”

Jake slumps against the side door. My hands twitch. I so want to comfort him, put a friendly hand on his shoulder. But I keep my arms plastered by my side.

“That sounds rough,” I say.

He meets my eyes. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll refund your money for this session.”

I know my mum has set up an automatic payment into Jake’s account to pay for my tutoring. I like it that way. Handing over cash to Jake would seem weird. Too…transactional.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t take your money if I didn’t actually tutor you.”

“How about tomorrow lunchtime we meet in the library? You can talk me through some equations then.”

“I can do tomorrow,” Jake says.

“Great. It’s a date.” I say the words without thinking, then stammer through the follow-up. “I mean, a tutoring date. A tutoring session.”

A half-smile lights up Jake’s lips as I stumble. “Don’t worry, I know what you meant.”

He touches my arm briefly, then gets out of the car.