“Oh, congrats.”
“Thanks,” I say, snorting. “I can’t wait to agonize through hours of small talk. How about you?”
She reaches past me for her phone. “Let me see…”
Fifteen minutes later and we have coordinated schedules for the coming three weeks. Satisfaction spreads through my chest, along with the knowledge that I will be able to see her several times a week for the foreseeable future.
Sophia’s a wonderful thing to have in your calendar.
I put my phone away. “I should have dated a planner a long time ago,” I say.
“Oh?” she says, propping her head up on her hand. “Is that what we’re doing now?”
“No,” I say, raising an eyebrow, “of course not, because you’ll only date math teachers.”
She purses her lips. “That’s right. But let me try something…” Twisting around, she reaches toward her nightstand and rummages around for a bit, before returning with a notepad and pen.
“What are you doing?”
“Wait a minute,” she says, and turns onto her stomach. I watch as she scribbles.
Finally, I’m handed the notepad with a number of mathematical equations on it. “Try to solve those,” she says.
“Two plus two. Really?”
“There are harder ones. Keep going.”
I work my way down the list of equations. Eighty-five divided by five, and the square root of four. The last equation takes me almost a minute. She’s used non-divisible numbers and when I write the answer it includes a decimal point.
“There,” I say, and hand it back to her.
She eyes it over. “A-plus. Congratulations, you could probably work as a math teacher!”
“That counts?”
“It counts,” she says, and gives me a brilliant smile. “They’re my rules, so I’m allowed to bend them.”
“Well,” I say, and don’t know what to say after that. So she’s okay with dating me. Victory pulses through me, the feeling heady. I have to remind myself that she’d specified we take it day by day. Her tears in the bathroom after Percy’s announcement are hard to forget. They’d been gut-wrenching sobs, the sound of a woman heartbroken.
Day by day.
Sophia rolls closer and rests her head next to mine on the pillow. “We should get take-out again. I have nothing in the fridge.”
“That’s probably just as well.” I brush away a tendril of hair that’s fallen over her cheek. It’s silky smooth from her frequent blowdries. I’d seen her hair air dry last weekend, the sleek curls turning into a beautiful wavy mess. It had been just as stunning, a softening feature to her fierceness. “My parents are having a party next week.”
“Another one?”
I smile wryly. “The one in August was my brother’s.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“They do this once a year, always in late September. I have to be there.”
“Mmm.”
“Come with me,” I say.
Her eyes shift from mine, down to my jaw. Her fingers trace along it.