“Good— go on, son. Hit the road,” the officer finishes, jerking his thumb to the door.
Finn frowns, and for a moment, I think he’s going to say something stupid to the officer— namely, that he’s going to tell the officer to mind his own business, which is the sentence being broadcast across Finn’s face.
And the truth is, I don’t want him to leave yet. But I also don’t want Finn to get in anymore trouble.
“I’m fine,” I tell Finn, and the words seem to be exactly what he needs to hear— he nods a little, then throws some cash on the table to cover our bill before slinging his hands into his pockets and walking out the door.
The waitresses give the officers free to-go cups of coffee, bacon returns to sizzling on the grill, and I’m left to single-handed retrieve my notebooks and supplies from the floor.
“They’re fighting again!” shouts a red-headed girl who’s standing at the window of the diner and looking outside.
The officers bolt, abandoning their coffees; the other patrons rush to press themselves to the windows to see.
I duck out the restaurant’s back door, by the bathrooms. I don’t want to even know what’s happening right now.
Finn Thorne is trouble. A lot of trouble, and he’s obviously going to be a nightmare to tutor.
That is, if he even manages to last the week without being thrown out of Harton for good.
But even as I think this, I have to admit this much to myself: I can’t think of anyone else I know who’d have gotten into a fistfight for me. Stupid and reckless and ridiculous as that was?
It was also kind of amazing.
Chapter 3
“Anyway, so I’m pretty sure they all got arrested,” I say, recapping the story to my sister an hour later. My sister, Mandy, is also my roommate, which is both a good and bad thing. Good because there’s no one else who can possibly understand what it’s like to be our mother’s daughter, and bad because it means there’s no chance in hell of me hiding something from her.
She knew the moment I walked into our apartment, that something was going on.
“Wow. Jocks are so stupid,” Mandy says, rolling her eyes.
“Hey. Your boyfriend is a jock,” I remind her.
“My boyfriend’s on the rowing team. That’s different,” she argues, the snobbery evident in her tone of voice.
Of course, rowing is such an intellectual pursuit, I think, resisting the urge to roll my eyes.
My sister stares at her phone, where she’s got the news story on the whole ordeal pulled up. “Also, it looks like only one person got arrested. Finn Thorne, right?”
“That’s him— but seriously? No one else? There were three other guys involved,” I say, leaning across our IKEA couch to see her screen. Finn’s mug shot stares up at me. He still looks cocky, like this is more of a photo shoot than a booking.
“I think Adams’ father is a lawyer. Or something,” Mandy says, shrugging. “He’s practically untouchable in this town.”
“It’s because of me that Finn’s in trouble,” I tell her. “He got into that fight because –“
“Because he’s a big dope,” Mandy interrupts. “Fighting is so barbaric.”
“I guess,” I mutter, but the truth is that it wasn’t like that. The way Finn snapped into action when that asshole harassed me wasn’t just the behavior of a dumb caveman.
He was protecting me.
And it felt good to know that he cared enough to do it, no matter what my sister says.
What doesn’t feel good is that if this is making news around campus, my mom is definitely going to hear about it. I curse myself – not for the first time -- for deciding to go to go to the same college my mom works at.
“Well, at least you’ve got a good reason to stop tutoring him. No way will Reams make you work with him after this stunt. That’s assuming he’s able to even stay on the team.”
“I dunno,” I say, shaking my head and taking another bite of cereal (which is a food group no matter what the people at the health center say). “You know how obsessed Reams is with the team. And you know I’m the best math tutor here.”
“It’s not your job to create a winning football team, Kenley,” Mandy reminds me, dropping her phone onto the couch. She sounds an awful lot like our mother, at the moment, which isn’t shocking.
Mandy looks like our mother, has the same interests as our mother, talks like our mother, even dresses like our mother. It doesn’t bother me usually, but when she does stuff like this it makes me feel like I’m living with my mom’s mini-me.
I exhale. “I don’t want this to be on Reams’ mind when I need his recommendation some day.”
Mandy scowls. “You don’t need his approval to be successful,” Mandy says grumpily.