Page 13 of Choosing Her

saylor

Bourbon’s whiskers tickled my hand as she ate the small peppermint I was holding out to her.

I pet the side of her neck absentmindedly as I looked toward the stable doors, waiting for Crossy to show up.

I told him to meet me in here after he was done hockey practice, so I could show him the spot I’d picked out for our first tutoring session.

I thought this was the easiest place for us to meet, since he clearly knew where it was, based on him showing up the other day to beg me to do this.

“Oh, Bourbon,” I murmured to her. “Tell me this wasn’t a mistake.”

She snorted in response and I wasn’t sure if that meant she thought it was a good idea or not.

She started nuzzling at the bag that was hanging over my shoulder, where I was keeping the peppermints.

I didn’t want to go all the way back to the dorms after my ride before coming back here, so I’d used the showers we had here and brought an extra pair of clothes to switch into.

I normally preferred to just shower at the dorms, because there were only two tiny shower stalls at the stables and the water pressure was ridiculously inconsistent.

I pulled out another peppermint for her, just as I saw Crossy stepping through the big double doors at the end of the stable.

I gave Bourbon one last kiss, then left her to stall to meet Crossy at the front.

Like me, his hair was wet from a shower and he was dressed in a comfy shirt and sweatpants.

He also had an iced coffee being held loosely in one hand and I felt a wave of jealousy, because all I wanted was a coffee right now.

Why didn’t I think of going to Heart’s Coffee before this?

I was going to need all the caffeine I could get through an hour of working with Crossy.

“Are we studying with your horse?” Crossy asked, his eyes locked on Bourbon over my shoulder, instead of me. He waved at her, as if she knew what that meant. “Of course, the smell might be a little distracting but?—”

“We’re not studying in here,” I said. I crooked a finger and headed out the doors. “Follow me.”

Crossy followed me slowly, constantly looking back over his shoulder to smile at Bourbon again.

I’d never pegged him as a horse lover, but he seemed to be enamoured with Bourbon.

I hated that it softened my heart so much, because I didn’t want Crossy to be able to do anything that softened my heart.

I led him around the stable, to a large brown building behind it.

If I was being forced into tutoring him, I figured I deserved to do it on my terms by forcing him to work with me in the same spot I usually studied.

Through the large windows of the building, I could see some girls riding inside the indoor arena, and even though I’d just finished my own riding lesson, I wished I could be in there with them.

But I veered right, to the door at the far end of the building, that led to the stairs up to the viewing area above.

“I’m confused,” Crossy said as I held the door open to him so he could follow. “I thought you said we weren’t studying in the stable.”

“This isn’t the stable.” I waited for him to catch the door so it wouldn’t slam in his face then started up the dimly lit staircase.

There was another door at the top, because this used to be an apartment for a stablehand back in the day, before they converted it into the viewing area.

Not that many people used it as that, anyway.

The stable I rode at during the summer had one for parents to watch their kids’ lessons without being in the way, but that obviously wasn’t needed at a boarding school, so the room mostly went untouched.

Because of that, it was the perfect study spot for me.

The room resembled a rustic teacher’s lounge, with some old chairs and couches, a coffee table, and a small kitchenette area, with everything made of wood.

The one wall was all a window, so you could watch the riding lessons below, but I tended to stick to the back corner of the room, where sunlight streamed in from the high windows during the day and I was mostly out of sight of everyone.

I flopped into the comfy arm chair, letting my bag fall to the ground beside me with a loud thump.

“This is my favorite place on campus to study,” I told Crossy.

I’d been spending more time in my dorm room lately since Lilah and Poppy liked to hang out in there so much, but I always found it harder to focus in there.

On the days that they weren’t free, I was known to curl up here for hours, even falling asleep sometimes.

The caretaker knew to come check if I was up here before he closed up every night.

Even though he let the door close behind him, Crossy didn’t move into the room. He stood just inside and looked around curiously, seeming more uncomfortable in the space than I’d ever seen him.

“You okay?” I asked, sitting up properly again. My wet hair hit the back of my neck and I cringed at the sensation.

“Why’d you choose here?” He asked. “I thought you were worried about Naomi finding out.”

“I am,” I said, not understanding where he was going with it. “But Naomi never comes to this side of campus. It’s perfect.”

He frowned. “What about when she goes riding?”

I laughed at the idea of Naomi on a horse.

She’d thrown a fit one year when I was going to horseback riding camp without her so my parents signed her up along with me, and then she’d cried the whole week because she hated the mud, the stable smelled bad, and she was scared of actually sitting on a horse.

But Crossy looked so sincere in his confusion that I had to say, “Naomi doesn’t ride. She hates it.”

Crossy looked even more confused at that and he came to sit down on the couch next to me. That couch was so overstuffed and soft that he sank right into it, folding up like a lawn chair, and I laughed again.

“When we were dating,” Crossy said as he moved into a more comfortable position, “Naomi told me she liked riding. She has a horse too, doesn’t she?”

I shook my head. “Nope. She wanted one after I got Bourbon, but my mom said she would have to take riding lessons then and she changed her mind.”

“Oh,” Crossy murmured. I wondered what else Naomi had lied to him about.

Not that I could prove that she was lying about that, necessarily, but I wasn’t sure how he could have come to the wrong conclusion like that if she hadn’t.

Nothing about Naomi screamed horseback riding, so the only reason he would have jumped to that conclusion without her outright telling him would be if he was confusing her with me.

Let’s just forget it happened. I love Naomi now .

No, she must have lied for some reason. Maybe she saw his love for horses before I did and she figured she could fake liking horseback riding enough to convince him she was into it too.

“So, you’re sure she’ll never come up here? Not even if she’s looking for you?”

“Have you met my sister?” I asked. “She wouldn’t be caught within teen feet of a barn. Between the dirt and the smell… She’s been trying to convince me to stop horseback riding for years. Being up here is basically Naomi repellant.”

His brows furrowed. “She tried to convince you not to do it anymore?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, she thought I looked gross every time I came home from lessons. But she’s not really into anything that involves sweat or dirt or… well exercise in general. Not her thing.”

“Huh,” Crossy murmured. “She always seemed happy to talk hockey with me.”

She’s good at faking interest, I wanted to say.

Instead, I decided it was probably about time that I steer the conversation toward our reason for being here.

I pulled my feet up on the chair so I could sit cross-legged and tugged my bag toward me, though I didn’t get out my math textbook quite yet.

“So, what are you having trouble with in particular?”

“Math,” Crossy said immediately.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I didn’t think that would be the right tone to set off this tutoring session with.

I wanted him to feel like I was taking him seriously, not making fun of him.

I may not have been happy about doing this whole tutoring thing, but if I was going to bother with it, I was going to do it well.

“Yeah, I gathered that. But was it something in particular that was difficult? One unit or…”

He shrugged helplessly and said again, “Math.”

I tried not to be annoyed with Crossy, since I was sure he was just overwhelmed by this course, but I was a little annoyed with Mrs. Gao for giving me zero direction on how to become a good tutor.

She’d just thrown me in the deep end and expected me to figure it all out as I went—and would probably be annoyed with me if I did badly at it.

“Okay,” I said slowly. I played with the edge of my textbook’s pages as I thought about my game plan. “Do you have any of your old tests or anything? Maybe then I could see what you weren’t understanding and we can go from there, so we don’t waste time on material you already know.”

Crossy didn’t seem to be listening to me at all. “Have you ever tutored anybody before?” He asked.

I debated whether I should lie and say yes to make him happy.

Who would want their last hope of passing a required class to hinge on someone who had never tutored anyone before?

But maybe it was better if I didn’t make him happy.

Then he would realize this was a terrible idea and could go tell Mrs. Gao she needed to find him a new tutor, letting me off the hook.

Except that according to Coach Anderson, there were no other tutors available at all.

“No,” I admitted. “The guidance counsellor suggested that it could be a good idea for me and now here we are.”