My dad’s words stabbed me in the heart. The knowledge that I’d given my parents reason to worry about me so much was saddening. My mom must have recognized the agonized look on my face for what it was since she elbowed him in the side to make him shut up.
“What your dad means is that we’re just so proud of you, sweetie. It’s always been harder for us with you because you’re our baby girl. But your decision to work with your dad at the bank when you graduate means the world to both of us,” my mom said, trying to soften the blow.
I swallowed down the lump that had developed in my throat. “I’m glad,” I whispered into my mom’s ear as I hugged her close.
She sniffled in response before pulling away. “Well, that’s enough of that. We’re getting way too serious for what should be a happy occasion. How about you let your dad and I take you out to dinner as a celebratory send-off for your last year of school?”
“I could eat,” my dad piped in.
“You can always eat, dear. Thank goodness our kids got your metabolism,” she teased him.
And there you go. They’d managed to lighten the mood completely.
“Yeah, Dad. Thanks for giving me good genes so I can eat like a horse and still stay skinny,” I joked as we headed out the door.”
****
I quickly learned that my course schedule was going to kick my ass. When I had talked to my guidance counselor about switching the focus of my business administration major from sales and marketing to finance, I had been thrilled to learn that it would be pretty easy since there was enough crossover between the degrees. Unfortunately, it meant that I had a lot of math-based classes on my plate this year. I’d managed to make it through calculus my freshmen year with a B, but math was definitely not my favorite subject.
With upper-level accounting, business finance, and economics classes at the same time as statistics on my schedule, I figured I was going to lose my mind at some point. So one week into the school year, I’d had the brilliant idea to get myself a math tutor. Only I’d had no idea how hard it was going to be to find a good one. I had already gone through several of them one short month later. Were all math geeks impossible to understand?
“This is really easy to understand as long as you focus on the variables, Aubrey,” tutor number four droned on, pointing at information on my paper. “These here are discrete because there are a limited number of values. And then the others are continuous because they can take on many different values. All of these are independent, and we use them to observe and measure the dependent variable because it’s not under our control like the independent ones. Simple, right?”
If only it were that easy. The stench wafting from this girl was really bad. Exceptionally bad. Distractingly bad. I was so busy concentrating on breathing through my mouth that I’d barely heard a word she had said in the last half hour. Luckily, I had learned my lesson well and only booked our initial session for that long so I wasn’t stuck here any longer.
“Wow, time flies when you’re having math fun,” I joked as I gathered my books up and stood. “Sorry I have to run, but I have to be somewhere soon. Thanks so much for your time today.”
“Did you want to schedule your next session now?” she asked, pulling out her iPhone to access her calendar.
“I don’t think so,” I responded and felt bad at her crestfallen expression. My best guess was that she didn’t get many return clients, but there was no way I’d allow guilty feelings to sway my decision to either find another tutor or give up completely. “Sorry, but if I don’t leave now, I’ll be super late for my next appointment.”
“Oh. Okay. Bye then,” she whispered and started to shove her books into the beaten-up backpack she’d brought with.
I waved and made my escape out the door. I hadn’t really been lying. I needed to meet Lexi and Drake for dinner. We hadn’t hung out very much lately, but Lexi had invited me over for dinner and cards. It was quite a bit different from our old Saturday night routine, but I guess we’d all settled down a bit since last year.
Drake was going to have some friends over later, so I figured she was trying to play matchmaker too. She’d made it pretty clear that she thought it was time for me to get back into the dating game. I was finally at the point where I wasn’t totally ruling it out, but I wasn’t ready to hop into bed with anyone right away either. But I was ready to check out some eye candy if they were going to serve it up to me, so I was looking forward to the prospect of hanging out with some hot guys tonight.