off the ice, into his bed

Tessie's pov

I have been in love with Luke Reed for one hundred and twelve days.

I know because I counted. I also know that he takes off his left glove first, one finger at a time, like he's apologizing to it. That he drinks cinnamon hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and pretends it's coffee. That he sits three rows ahead of me in Microbiology 201 every Tuesday and Thursday, which I choose to see as fate and not a registrar's error. That he holds the door for whoever is behind him, even a freshman with a granola bar who isn't looking.

What I don't know is anything about hockey.

I don't understand icing. I don't understand offside. I once cheered when the other team scored because someone fell near the net and I assumed that was the point. Nineteen home games this season, and the only rule I'm sure of is that when Luke is on the ice, I don't blink. I am his biggest fan.

Today is Tuesday, and the Knights practice at noon, which means Luke's whole day runs on a schedule I could recite in my sleep. Dr Crane's class ends at 11:50. He fills his water bottle at the fountain by the east stairs, collects his friends Nate and Eric, and walks across the quad to the rink. He's in the dressing room by 12:05. Every Tuesday. Never early, never late.

That is why I'm in the back row of Microbiology 201, my heart doing laps, a granola bar going stale in my hand, and my midterm about to come back.

Dr. Victor Crane took over two weeks ago, when Dr. Adams, who used to draw smiling microbes on the whiteboard, left to have her baby. He is the opposite of smiling microbes.

He has the shoulders of a linebacker and the patience of a tax auditor. His lab coat hangs open like a cape, and he clicks his pen when he's disappointed, which is all the time.

Today he doesn't fling the booklets. He walks the aisles and lays them face-down on each desk with a soft, ominous slap, like he's dealing a card game nobody can win.

He delivered a disappointing speech," he tells the room. "90% of the class failed."

Mine lands. I turn it over with one eye shut. 98.

Slashed across the cover in red ink. And beneath it, in handwriting that looks furious at the paper, two words I've never seen him write: Excellent. Rare.

Me? I aced it. Wow. I'd be lying if I told you that it wasn't a shock to me.

All I did was answer a couple of bullshit questions to fill my booklet, and I got an A. Okayyy, girl, I am so proud of myself.

I stare at them. Around me, the room is a chorus of groans. A girl whispers, "The average was a forty-one." Somebody asks, out loud, whether Northgate gives refunds. Three rows ahead, Luke folds his booklet in half without looking at it, calm as a lake. Down the aisle, a billionaire, hockey captain, loudest man on campus, who sees himself as chris brown of Northgate, is holding his booklet away from his body as if it owes him money.

I slide mine under my notebook like contraband.

I'm the only scholarship student in my year. My scholarship comes with exactly one rule: keep a 3.9 GPA. I'm at a 3.8, I work two jobs, and I have a plan to become an orthopedic surgeon, so my mom never has to scrub hotel bathtubs on a ruined back again. I do not have time for a boy, well, unless it's Luke.

But it's a ninety-eight. In the class that's eating this campus alive. If I can survive Dr. Crane, I can survive anything, even telling Luke Reed how I feel.

And Today is the day, so wish me luck.

At 11:50, Dr. Crane clicks his pen once, a sound like a gavel. I'm out the door before it stops echoing, booklet in my fist.

*****

Okay, let me tell you how it started. On the first day of the semester, a boy in a gray hoodie stopped me outside the science building and asked where Lab 214 was. Dark hair, kind eyes, and the posture of someone who wished he were invisible. I walked him there. He said "thank you" and smiled at me, small and a little shy, like I'd handed him something much bigger than directions.

That was it. That was the whole thing. I have been a goner ever since I even started planning our wedding in my head.

Because here's the thing about Northgate: everybody is rich. Everybody. Not some, " Well, you can exclude me; I am just a scholarship student.

The parking lot looks like a car show, and the loudest boys here, the ones with penthouses and trust funds, walk around like the campus is a stage built for them. They flash their parents' money, hook up with a different girl every weekend, and treat anyone who isn't them like background noise. Most of them have noticed me the way you notice a stain on a rug.

Luke Reed is nothing like that. He doesn't brag. He doesn't flirt with every girl who looks at him. He stays in his lane, shows up early, and thanks the person who refills his water cup. The first time I offered him a bottle of water after a late lab, he smiled, said, "Thanks, Tessie," and held on to it as if it mattered.

He is nice to me. He is nice to me specifically, in a way I've decided is not an accident. He lingers by the snack bar window. He goes quiet when I talk to him. Obviously, he likes me too. He's just too shy to ask me out; that is why I want to relieve him of that.

Aside from being kind to me and not flaunting his parents' wealth, he is beautiful. Yeah, I know it is wrong to use "beautiful" to describe a guy, but y'all should trust me when I say he is beautifully cute, OMG. I could cum ten times just staring at him.

Two weeks into the semester, I found out he played for the Northgate Knights, and I applied for a job at the rink snack bar the same afternoon so I could be close to my crush. I know y'all will judge me for being a lover girl, but whatever, who cares, not like it is affecting my grades anyway.

Now I work the counter on game nights and cheer at every home game, in a sport I don't understand, for a boy who has never once looked at me for longer than a second.

So after I left Dr Crane's class

I hit the Beanery in the science atrium first. Cinnamon hot chocolate, extra whipped cream, a dusting of cinnamon, five twenty-five, which is a rounding error for everyone else here and a small sacrifice for me.

Then I power-walk across the quad, which takes nine minutes when you're five feet tall and carrying a cup like it's a bomb.

The Knights' dressing room is at the end of the east corridor of the rink, past the championship banners and a trophy case with more silver than my family has seen in three generations. I plant myself outside the door and rehearse.

Hi. Luke. I have something to tell you.

Hi. Luke. Don't freak out.

Hi. Luke. I got a ninety-eight, and I think it's a sign.

Hi luke. I know you like me, and you are too shy to ask me out, so will you marry me? Sorry, date me. I mean, will you date me, like be my boyfriend?

Ouch, I hit my hand on my head... seems like I am not ready.

At 12:05 on the dot, they turn the corner.

Luke walks in the middle with his gym bag over one shoulder, hair still messy from class, wearing the black hoodie that makes my knees feel like they belong to someone else. On either side are his two new friends from the team. Nate Cooper, tall and cheerful, with a grin as if he has never had a bad day. And Eric Blake, stocky and quiet, already looking at his phone.

They're close. Close enough to hear.

I should wait.

I should abort this mission.

I don't wait.

"Luke," I called his name.

He stops. His face softens, the way it always does when he sees me, and my heart does something dangerous.

"Hey, Tessie."

"Hi." I hold out the cup. "I brought you this. Cinnamon. Extra whipped cream."

He takes it. His fingers brush mine. I almost die right there, which would honestly be the best outcome.

"You didn't have to," he says.

"I wanted to." The words come out in a rush. "Can I tell you something? I've been trying to say it since September."

Nate looks up. Eric stops scrolling.

Abort. Abort. My heart raced.

"I- I-hmmm. I think I am, um.

He walked closer and held my hand. Are you okay, Tessie?

I like you," I said. "Like, a lot. More than a friend. I have since the day you asked me where Lab 214 was."

Silence. He gently let go of my hands.

It's a very long silence. I can hear the Zamboni humming somewhere behind the wall. I can hear Nate breathing through his nose.

Luke's face goes still. Not cruel, not angry, just blank, like someone has switched off a light in a room I thought I knew.

"Is that why you've been so nice to me?" he says.

I blink. "Hmmm?"

"All these weeks." He glances at the cup, then at his friends, then at me, and something in his expression slams shut.

"Sorry. You're not my type. You're too tiny for me."

Nate winces. "Dude."

Eric, I notice, has raised his phone.

Everything became a blur. My vision blurred immediately. Where is this dizziness coming from? Why does it look like the hallway is moving? Somebody, hold me; I don't want to fall.

I stand there with my hands still half lifted, like I'm waiting for someone to hand me back the last ten seconds.

Too tiny.

I'm tiny. I've been tiny my whole life. I have been called short, small, cute, pocket-sized, and "aww." I have never once been called too tiny to be liked. I mean, I am petite, not too tiny.

"Right," I hear myself say. "Okay. Cool."

Luke doesn't say anything else. He just stands there holding the hot chocolate I made him, like it's a bomb.

Nobody laughs, which is somehow worse. Nate rubs the back of his neck and says nothing. Eric lowers his phone an inch, then raises it again. Luke stares at the floor, at the cup, at anything but me.

I do the only thing left to do. I reach over, take the cup of cinnamon hot chocolate back out of Luke's hands, and take a long, scalding sip.

I mean, if I am too tiny, my coffee is definitely too tiny for you as well.

It burns the entire way down.

"Thanks for the feedback," I say, and turn on my heel.

I make it down the corridor, past the banners, past the trophy case, and into the empty stairwell before my hands start to shake.

I don't cry. I'd like that on the record. I sit on the concrete step with a burned tongue and a cup that is rapidly going cold, and I stare at the wall and tell myself:

It's fine. That is how love works. It's a thing that happened. Nobody saw us. Don't be embarrassed. I am proud of you.

My phone buzzes.

It buzzes again.

Then it starts ringing, over and over, and I see Zoey flash across the screen with a string of skull emojis.

I answer. "Hi."

"TESSIE." My roommate's voice is a shriek. "Where ARE you? Do NOT look at your phone. Actually, look at your phone. Actually, don't."

"Zoe, what's happening?"

"Okay, so. Don't freak out."

I am already freaking out.

I pull the phone away from my ear and open the first notification that came, which is the Northgate gossip page, @NUTea, which is how most of this campus gets its news. The top post was uploaded forty seconds ago. It's a video, grainy, shot from a low angle, and I recognize the corridor, Luke's black hoodie, and a small girl with her hands half raised.

It's thirty-one seconds long. I watch it with my stomach dropping through the floor.

"Sorry. You're not my type. You're too tiny for me."

Then, off camera, someone whispers, "Oh, he did not."

The caption reads: snack bar girl just got benched by Luke Reed. "too tiny." RIP SCHOLARSHIP GIRL.

Four thousand views.

Five thousand.

I scroll to the comments, and the top one, with eleven hundred likes, says: not him rejecting the only girl who brings him hot chocolate.

The second says: Tessie from the snack bar?? She's literally the tiniest 😭

And just like that, my humiliation has a fan base.

It takes me ten full minutes to stand up. Then I do what any self-respecting person does after a public humiliation. I pull my hood up, buy the biggest coffee the Beanery sells, and head back to the science building for my one o'clock lab, eyes on the floor. If I never look up, nobody can recognize me.

I got a 98 today. I also got a nickname.

Guess which one is trending?.

Max's pov

Let me be very clear before we start: I am not stupid.

I'm a business major. I can read a balance sheet, close a sponsorship deal, and tell you within four seconds whether a restaurant will be out of business by spring. What I cannot do is Microbiology 201, because Microbiology 201 is a trash course.

I only took it because Northgate makes every business major complete one science credit, and some advisor with a lanyard told me biology "wasn't that bad." For six weeks, it wasn't. Because Dr. Adams was a saint. She drew cartoon bacteria on the whiteboard, spoke slowly, and once told me, "Max, you're doing wonderfully. I mean, I wasn't understanding a lot there, but at least I was making efforts; I even answered 'bacteria' to a question about viruses.

Then she went on maternity leave, which is wonderful for her and a tragedy for me, and Northgate replaced her with Dr. Victor Crane.

Dr. Crane is six-five, bald, built like a vending machine, and wears a gold chain over his lab coat. He walks into the lecture hall like a man entering a prison yard. On day one, he said, "I'm not here to be your professor. I'm here to humble you," and then waited, very still, for applause. Nobody clapped. He wrote it on the board anyway. He calls us "recruits." He raises one eyebrow before every sentence. I'm convinced he practices in the mirror and thinks he's The Rock.

Today is midterm return day.

"90% of you failed," Dr. Crane announces, flinging the booklets across the room like frisbees. "That's not a me problem. That's a you problem."

Mine lands on my desk face down. I flip it.

38.

There's a frowny face next to it. He drew a frowny face on my booklet.

I stare at the number. I've survived worse. I once survived a broken wrist, bad food, and a three-day flu in the same week. But I have never survived Dean Hollis, who is the reason this 38 matters.

Hollis has hated me since I parked a Zamboni on the quad freshman year, which I stand behind as art. Last month he announced a "new academic standard" for varsity athletes: anything below a C in any course, and you sit out the season. Totally unrelated to me. Just a coincidence that it was announced two days after I got named captain of the Northgate Knights.

Captain. Of the Knights. At 21. I cried in my truck, a little.

Which means: a C in Microbiology, or no hockey. No hockey, no captaincy. No captaincy, and the new transfer kid, Luke or whatever his name is, with his quiet hoodie and his stupid polite smile, gets my "CAPTAIN" title on his jersey, and I have to watch him score my goals with his stupid good manners. NEVER.

Honestly? I'd rather eat the textbook.

I hope he failed this course too, cause i am not letting anyone take my title from me. He is already doing too much on the ice.

I open the class group chat, Micro 201 Survivors, two hundred and twelve members. The top message says Does ANYONE understand anything with forty-seven crying emojis. Someone posted a meme of a man sobbing into a pillow. Someone else wrote: I failed too. We're all gonna die.

So that's my pool of tutors: two hundred and eleven people exactly as dumb as I am. Great. Fantastic. Excellent.

Dr. Crane dismisses us with a flourish of his gold chain. I spend the next twenty-five minutes at his podium begging for extra credit, a curve, a retake, an interpretive dance. He gives me one raised eyebrow and a pamphlet about "personal accountability." I leave with nothing but the pamphlet.

There will be no hockey if I don't bring up these grades.

I'm thumbing through the chat for any sign of human intelligence when something collides with my stomach.

Not hard. More like a bird hitting a window.

I look up. Nothing.

I look down.

At first, all I see is the top of a head. Dark hair parted down the middle, tiny at the end of a cheap hoodie. Under it, a hand holding a coffee cup, attached to an arm, attached to nothing else I can see. The rest of the person is hidden by sleeves.

My first thought: Do they let high schoolers in now? Is this a campus tour?

"Watch where you're going," a voice mutters, and the head tips up.

Oh. She's real. A full-grown human, with a pissed-off face and a blotchy nose, glaring at me as if I personally ran over her cat. I know her from somewhere. Back row of Crane's class, always eating a granola bar, always writing like her pen is on fire. T-something. Tania? Tasha? Tomato?

I'm sure it starts with a T.

I let her pass the aisle before I stepped behind her to check out her ass and if she was worth chasing.

Only then did I realise how small she is. Pretty face. Skinny jeans. Shit, I have never noticed anyone as small as her before.

I followed her up to the exit, admiring her little ass and damm this shawty is tiny but cute tho, bruh. I am two steps behind her, and yet I can see the top of her head.

Just as I was about to overtake her, she turned around, then we stumbled into each other, and the books in her hands clattered on the floor

"Sorry," I said. "I didn't see you."

"Obviously." She dropped to her knees to pick up her books.

Well, I can be a gentleman some days, and today is one of those days. I went on my knees also to help her gather her books.

Watch where you are going next time she said angrily.

"Okay, I mean, I literally didn't see you. You're, like, four inches tall. She didn't respond to me.

My hands were already connected with her midterm booklet, and my jaw dropped when I saw it

The number on the cover is circled in red, so big it takes up half the page. Next to it, in Dr. Crane's slashy handwriting: Excellent. Rare.

98.

Dr. Crane gave someone a 98.

Dr. Crane gave someone the word excellent.

"Holy fuuuuuck," I say.

"Hello?" The girl snatches her booklet off the floor and shakes coffee off it. "Language, please? We're in a hallway."

"You got a ninety-eight?"

"Is that surprising?"

"It's a miracle." I point at the booklet like it's a UFO. "Is that yours? That's yours? You aced Crane's midterm?"

She straightens, crosses her arms, and lifts her chin like she's running for office. "Hell yeah."

Okay. There is a person in this world who can read Dr. Crane's evil handwriting, and she is standing at my knee level.

I soften my voice. Warm, persuasive. The one I use on sponsors.

Please, can I read your answers? Her brows quirk up. I am not in the mood. She replied in an angry tone.

Ooh, baby girl, I am not asking you to have sex with me or allow me to suck your titties just to read your answers, baby

She looked up at me; I could tell her neck was about to break because of the height difference. That is way too forward and brave of you, baby? Really?

Would you rather I call you ma'am or Ms., maybe?

She sighs.

"Wow. Nice to meet you. My name is Max, and you just got yourself a student, baby."

"Excuse you?"

"Tutor me. I'll make it worth it."

"Hell no." She steps around me. "And for the record, I have a name."

"I would have used it if I knew it, my love."

She stops mid-step. I swear her eye twitches. She's already furious about something. I can tell, because she isn't looking at me like I'm a person. She's looking at me like a traffic cone that said something rude. Whatever happened to her today, it's been a day.

"Max Dalton," she says, flat. "I know exactly who you are."

"Everyone does. Of course I am popular. Northgate chris brown.

"That's not the compliment you think it is."

Tiny and harsh. I like her already.

"Look," she says, hitching her bag onto her shoulder, "if you really want to improve your grade, the class group chat runs study sessions every night. Join it."

"I'm in it. Everyone in it failed. I'm not getting tutored by people as dumb as I am."

"Wow. What a touching story." She turns her whole body away. "I'm so sorry for your loss, but I have to get home. I have a 3.9 GPA to protect, and I'm not about to babysit a loud, rich kid who thinks he can charm his way through a semester."

"I'll pay you."

"No."

"Whatever you want."

"Still no."

"And not just that," I add, lowering my voice a notch and flashing the dimple, the one that has ended wars, "I'll fuck your brains out. I will make you scream my name for three hours. I'm very good in bed. It's a known fact. Ask around."

For a moment she just looks at me. She looks at me the way you would look at a dog that has just recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

"You," she says, "does that really work? The whole sex little horny groans talk...does it help you get your way.....

Always, I answered without hesitation.

I could see the disgust in her face. Look, I'm sorry, but I really do not have time. I am already juggling school, work, and a heartbreak. I do not have time for this.

I held up my hand and did puppy-dog eyes. Maybe it will change her mind.

I am a business major who chose a science course to complete requirements. If I don't pass that course, I won't play hockey. Hockey is more important to me than this business course. I have to pass; I have always wanted to be on the ice since I was six. I can't let go of that dream just because of a course. Please, baby, help me make my childhood dream come to pass.

First of all, it's Tessie. My name is Tessie. And secondly, I am so sorry that you are about to fail your course, but there is nothing I can do to help. And besides, I don't even know how I got an A. All I did was fill up my booklet with some bullshit answers. It's a miracle that--

Then I need your miracle. Please, master, teach me how to write bullshit and pass Dr Crane course. I was two seconds from dropping to my knees.

She moves to the edge of the door. Sorry, there is nothing I can do for you. Good luck on your make-up test, Mr hockey player.

Then she walks away, five feet of fury in a hoodie, her notebook dripping coffee onto Northgate's pristine marble. I watch her all the way down the hall, around the corner, and out of sight.

Leaving me staring in frustration and confusion, my phone buzzes.

It's the college gossip page, @NUTea, which I follow purely to know who's talking about me. I'm about to swipe it away when I see the caption.

Snack bar girl just got benched by Luke Reed. "Too tiny." RIP SCHOLARSHIP GIRL.

I tap the video.

Thirty-one seconds. A small girl in an oversized hoodie, holding out a cup to a guy in a gray hoodie I'd recognize anywhere. I can hear him say it. You're too tiny for me.

Same girl. Same dark hair. Same coffee-spill glare.

The top comment reads: not Tessie from the snack bar getting rejected like that 😭

T.

Tess. I lower the phone very slowly.

Luke Reed. The quiet, polite, perfect transfer student trying to steal my captaincy just humiliated the one person on this campus who aced Dr. Crane's midterm.

For the first time all day, I smile. "Oh," I say to the empty hallway. "Tiny Tess. We are not done."

Let's get started.

Tessie's pov

By the time I get home, it's six o'clock; I have been recognized by eleven strangers and two professors, and a girl in the elevator has whispered "too tiny" to her friend and then looked at me like I was a haunted house.

I let myself into room 4B with my head down, my hood up, and my coffee long gone cold. And relieved of the loud, annoying boy who stopped me in the hallway asking for a tutor. The audacity of me.

Here is what you need to know about my dorm: it is not just a normal dorm.

Northgate puts its scholarship students in the cheap rooms, the ones with the buzzing radiators and the view of the dumpsters. I was supposed to live there. Instead, I live in a two-bedroom suite with real doors, a private bathroom, and a kitchenette with a marble counter, because my roommate's mother looked at the housing office's floor plan and said, "Just a few touches."

The touches included new hardwood. A rain shower. A velvet couch the color of champagne. A rug so soft I once lay on it for twenty minutes just to feel something good. The management never asked a single question once the check cleared. The whole suite smells like fig and vanilla, because there is a candle burning on every flat surface, and every candle costs more than my weekly groceries.

It's the most beautiful place I have ever lived, and I have no right to be in it. I tried to pay half the cleaning bill once. Zoe cried. Real tears.

"TESS."

There she is.

Zoe Williams is my roommate. She's twenty, five-foot-six, and currently lying across the velvet couch in a pink satin robe with a green face mask and a spoon in a pint of ice cream, like she's filming a soft launch for a perfume ad. Her family owns resorts in six countries. She has never once heard the word no and recognized it. She also cries at dog food commercials. She is the first friend I've ever had who didn't want anything from me, which is hilarious, because she has everything.

She sits up. Her face mask cracks.

"Tess. Why are you trending?"

I freeze with one shoe off.

"I know I advised you to confess your feelings to that transfer kid." She points the spoon at me. "I did not tell you to humiliate yourself on the internet."

"It's not-"

"It has forty-three thousand views."

"Forty-three-"

"Forty-four. Sorry. Forty-five."

I sit down on the floor, right there in the entryway, on the soft rug. I'd like to say I handle it with grace. What I do is put my face in my hands and make a noise like a deflating bagpipe.

The spoon hits the floor. A second later, Zoey is on her knees beside me with her arms wrapped around my shoulders, smelling like cucumber and gardenias.

"Oh my God," she says. "Oh, babe. Oh, no. I'm so sorry. I was joking. I'm an idiot. I'm the worst."

"I really thought he liked me," I choke out. "He was so nice to me, Zoe. He smiled when I gave him that water. He said my name like it meant something."

"He's nice to everyone. That's what nice boys do. It's a personality, not a promise."

"He said I wasn't his type. In front of his friends. He said I was too-" I can't finish it.

"I know. I watched it nine times." She pulls back, and the mask finally slides off her face and lands on my knee. Her eyes are shiny. "I'm going to kill him."

"He's six-two."

"I'm five-six, and I'm wearing a robe. Physics is a social construct."

I laugh. It comes out wet and ugly, but it's a laugh. Zoe grins like she's won the lottery.

"I offered to talk to him for you, you know," she says, grabbing a box of tissues from the coffee table. "I had a speech. It had bullet points. And you said, 'No, Zoe, I'm brave, I'm going to do it myself.' And I said, fine, and look at me, being supportive, and this is what I get."

"This is what you get."

"I should have trusted my bullet points."

Then she asked the question that I hadn't even thought about. So he leaked the video?

I wiped my tears with my hand and stared at her. I don't know. It was just Luke, his friends, and I in their dressing room. No one else. So who did?.

She lets me cry for exactly twenty minutes. She sets a timer. She says she read somewhere that it's the optimal length. She brings me a blanket, a bottle of water, and a spoon, and sits against the couch with her shoulder pressed against mine, saying nothing, which for Zoe is a minor miracle.

The timer goes off.

"Okay." She claps her hands. "Time's up."

"I just got here."

"Time's up. Do you know what we're doing tonight?"

"Studying." Hell no.

"Clubbing." We are clubbing tonight.

I stare at her. "No."

"Yes."

"Zoe, I have a lab report. I have a shift at six tomorrow. I'm not even-"

"We are sneaking out of this shit hole of a school," she says, standing up and spreading her arms like a person announcing a coup, "we are going to a place with excellent lighting, and we are drinking some alcohol, because alcohol makes you feel good and nobody has ever cried in a rooftop lounge."

"People cry in rooftop lounges constantly."

"Not in mine."

"I don't want to go out. I want to lie on the rug and die."

"You can die tomorrow. Tonight, you live and party with me."

"No."

"Please."

"No."

She drops to her knees and presses her palms together. Her bottom lip trembles. She actually tilts her head.

"Zoey."

"Pleeeeease."

I look at her, this ridiculous, loving, spoiled person who cried when I got a cold, and something in my chest gives up.

"One hour," I say.

"Four."

"Three."

"Deal." She springs to her feet. "Now. Stand up. Turn around."

I stand. I turn. She circles me like a hawk circling a very small field mouse.

"You dress like a nerd," she announces.

"I am a nerd."

"You dress like a nerd in hiding. Every day. A hoodie, skinny or baggy jeans, the same ponytail. I love you, but it's like you've been hiding inside your own clothes." She lifts my sleeve between two fingers and drops it. "Tonight you are wearing my clothes. My shoes. My bag. And you're not taking no for an answer. I'm going to dress you like a queen so you can see how beautiful you are, and so Luke Reed can see exactly what he just turned down."

My throat tightens. "Zoey."

"I'm going to make you feel like a princess. Just let me. By midnight, half the boys in this school will be on their knees, begging at your mercy."

"That's a lot of knees."

"That's the plan."

Zoe's closet has a name. It's called the Vault. It has its own lighting, a rotating shoe carousel, and a velvet bench for "deliberating." I stand in the doorway while she tears through it like a tornado with a manicure, flinging things onto the bench: a black satin slip dress, a cropped blazer, a tiny gold clutch, a pair of silver heels with a platform so high I could use them as a stepladder.

"These won't fit," I say, holding up the dress. It is roughly the size of a handkerchief.

"Everything fits if you believe."

"I'm five-foot-nothing, Zoe. I'm four-eleven and a half."

"And I have a seamstress on speed dial. Go. Shower. I'll lay out the plan."

I was about to enter the bathroom when my phone buzzed. I went out naked to get my phone.

It was a message, and it read.

MAX: Hi baby, it's your latest student, Max. Still on my way home, but I just wanted to find out if my master got home safe.

Me: WTF... do you ever give up? And how the fuck did you get my number?

MAX: The class group chat that you advised me to join.

Ooh, that's true. I remember joining that group, but I attended just once because it was clashing with my work shift, so I had to stop going and study on my own.

Another message popped up before I replied to the previous.

MAX: Are you there, master?

ME: Well, that doesn't mean you should go around texting random people because you are in the same group chat with them.

MAX: Ooh, my bad. So have you changed your mind? When do we begin our private class session?

ME: NOPE, never. See, I have a highly contagious strain of influenza. Very dangerous. Causes fever, headaches, and, in severe cases, a tragic inability to win hockey games." So stay away from me if your dream is to remain on the ice and play hockey.

MAX: Wow, thanks. Thanks for the warning. Fortunately, I've been vaccinated."

ME: "Against my flu?"

MAX: Against losing." He sent a sticker. "Next excuse?"

ME: "I told you, I'm not tutoring you." "I'm serious. My condition is incurable." "I could infect your entire team."

MAX: Good thing I'm not asking you to cure me. Just teach me microbiology."

ME: Do you ever give up?

MAX: Not when I'm this close to passing microbiology. Okay, how about I send you something to light up your mood and make you change your mind?

ME: You wish 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 Nice chatting with you, and good luck to your failed career and exam.

I was about to drop the phone when it buzzed again, and this time it was an image. I clicked on it, and it was a picture of his dick and a text.

MAX: Something to lighten up your mood

ME: Did you just send me a picture of your ugly dick?

MAX: In changing your mind. Did it work? And besides, you looked like you haven't fucked in a decade. So I sent you something you can wank with.

ME: In ruining my day? Hell yes. You've succeeded in icing me out. For the record, I am posting that picture on @NUTea.

MAX: Nah, baby, most of the chicks on this campus have the pics already, but you could still go for it if that will make you tutor me. That will be more babes for me.

ME: Goshhhhhh. You are so irritating, boy fuck off my phone and lose my number.

I dropped my phone and didn't pick it up again after it buzzed, and I went ahead to take a shower.

****

Hours later, I'm sitting on the edge of her bed with my hair in hot rollers, my eyelids glittering, and my toes in heels so tall that I have to hold onto the nightstand. Zoe has pinned the dress at the back and hidden it under the blazer. She dabs a little gloss on my lip, steps back, and presses both hands to her heart.

"Oh," she says. "Oh, wow."

"Is it bad?"

"Look."

She turns me toward the full-length mirror.

I don't recognize her at first. The girl in the glass has a bare collarbone, a glossy mouth, soft waves that fall past her shoulders, and legs that look a whole lot longer than they have any right to. She's holding herself like someone who has never in her life been told she was too small for anything.

"There she is," Zoe whispers.

"Where?"

"Right there, genius."

I swallow. "Where are we going?"

"Frost. The rooftop lounge downtown. Everybody goes on Tuesdays."

"Everybody."

"The whole hockey team."

My stomach drops somewhere below the platform heels. "Zoe."

"Including Luke." She smiles at me in the mirror, small and fierce. "And he is not going to be able to look away."

I look at the girl in the glass for a long time.

For the first time all day, she doesn't look like a joke.