“And I mean, after what I did on the first day of Health…”

She looked up at him, her expression smooth before she looked back down at his notes.

“You know why I did it?”

He watched her take a small breath as her tongue darted out to wet her lips, but her eyes remained on the paper in front of her. “No, I don’t know why you did it. But I know you’ve had some bad things happen to you.”

So she had heard the stories. She knew all about him: no father, dead brother, angry kid with a vendetta against the world. And God only knows what other embellishments. And yet she was still here with him, calm and casual.

He didn’t understand.

People either kept their distance from him or grilled him for information about his ugly past, information he had no intentions of sharing with anyone. Avoidance or scrutiny, that’s how people handled him.

But she did neither.

And he hadn’t expected to like it as much as he did.

“Anyway,” she said, her voice indicating she was changing the subject. “Wendt always adds more notes after the fact. He’s totally unorganized. I swear, I think he plans his lessons at the stoplights on the way to school,” she said with another one of those eye rolls that made him grin. Instead of looking annoyed, she looked adorable. An angry kitten.

“I just leave a few lines in between the notes as I take them,” she went on. “This way when he starts skipping around, I can go back and fill them in where they actually belong. Otherwise, your notes end up as unorganized as he is.”

She tilted her head, looking back down at Del’s notes as she absently tore the crust off her pizza.

And then she reached across the table and handed it to him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

He glanced down at the crust and then back at her; her eyes were still on his notebook as she flipped a page and began reading again, and he felt something settle in his chest. It was pathetic, but that was probably the nicest thing anyone had done for him in a long time.

“Here,” she said, reaching to pull a pen out of her bag, “let’s just rewrite these so they make sense before we start trying to figure out what you missed.” She spun his notebook so it was facing her fully before she flipped to a clean page and began to write.

He watched her with a small smile { display: block; text-indent: 0%;Sn the of appreciation. “I like how you act around me.”

She lifted her eyes, and when she looked up at him that way, he noticed her lashes were so long, they brushed just beneath her eyebrows. “How do I act around you?”

He shrugged. “Normal.”

Lauren stared at him for a second before she smiled softly. “Hand me that textbook,” she said, nodding toward the book sitting on the booth next to him.

As he placed it on the table, Lauren squinted at the page in front of her, pointing to his notes. “What’s this?”

“What?” he asked, tilting his head to see what she was pointing at.

“Pair-a-ballis?” she asked, sounding it out slowly like a child learning to read.

He pressed his lips together, fighting a smile. “Parabasilids,” he said. “I think pair-a balls is a different unit.”

She looked up at him for a second before she cupped her hand to her mouth and laughed. He brought his can of soda to his lips, trying to mask his own laughter and failing miserably.

“God,” she said, shaking her head as a slight blush lit her cheeks. “I think after we work on your note-taking skills, we might need to do something about your handwriting.”

“You’ll have your work cut out for you there,” he said, and she continued laughing as she returned her attention to his notes.

A sudden raucous laughter combined with muffled voices from outside caught his attention, and he lifted his eyes and looked over Lauren’s shoulder through the glass front of the pizzeria.

Instantly, he felt the heat build in his stomach as his teeth came together.

The guy outside was named David. He couldn’t remember his last name, but he didn’t give a shit what it was. What he did remember was what David had done to him when he had come back to school after missing a few days for his brother’s funeral. He had said the most awful things, hurtful things about his brother that had made the other kids laugh. At the time, Michael had only been eight. David was two years older, and Michael was too sad to do anything about it and too young to know how to stop him even if he had it in him to try.

But now, things were different. Now, he knew how to hurt the people who hurt him.

By the time he had figured out how to do that, David was long gone, having transferred to the local Catholic school, and Del had forgotten all about him.

Until today.

He shifted in his seat, his knee bouncing furiously under the table and his eyes on David’s profile outside.

Out of his peripheral vision, he could see Lauren was looking at him, having obviously noticed the change in his behavior. This is it, he thought. This is the moment she’s going to realize who she’s with and run out of here.

Lauren watched him, evaluating him for a second before she glanced behind her.

“Problem?” she asked, and although her face and posture were calm, her voice shook slightly, betraying her.

“That kid’s a piece of shit,” Michael answered, his jaw tight as he shifted again, bringing his hand to his mouth and chewing his thumbnail just to be doing something.

Lauren turned again, looking outside, and David held up his hand and waved to someone across the street before he began to cross.

“It doesn’t look like he’s coming to look at her, le in here,” she said softly, turning back toward Del.

He shook his head slightly, knowing if he opened his mouth, no good would come of it. He wished David had come in there. He wanted to bash his fucking head in.

Would he have done that in front of her?

It only took a second for him to come to the conclusion that he would have. He wouldn’t have been able to help it.

“Besides,” Lauren said softly, pulling his attention back to the present, “even if he did come in here, you wouldn’t have been able to turn this table over. It’s nailed to the wall.”

He stared at her, stunned, and she stared back at him, her expression completely innocent.

And then he broke, his grin quickly followed by the first genuine laughter he’d experienced in a while. He watched the corners of her mouth turn up as the slight tension left her shoulders.

Del sat back against the booth and folded his arms as he tilted his head at her. “You know, you keep your head down and your words soft, but shit, there’s some fire in there too, huh?”

She shrugged, still fighting her smile as she picked up her pen and went back to writing in his notebook.

“I like that,” he said. “In fact, I think I’m gonna bring that out of you more often. And you can help me keep my head.” He picked up his soda and took a sip, appraising her one last time before he nodded. “You know something, Red?” he said after he had swallowed. “I think we got a good thing going on here.”

She laughed softly before she glanced up at the clock, and her expression dropped.

“Shoot,” she said. “I have to go. I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” he cut her off. “I can rewrite these. Thanks for the tip.”

“Okay,” she said reluctantly, beginning to pack up her things. “If you want, we can meet to fill in the blanks before the test next week.”

“Cool,” Del said with a nod.

“Here,” she said, reaching into her pocket before offering him money, and he waved his hand and shook his head. “My treat,” he said. “Thanks for helping me.”

“You don’t have to do that—”

“Go. You’re gonna be late for practice,” he said, cutting her off.

She stood there for a second before she nodded and smiled. “Okay. See you soon. Thanks, Michael.”