Josh

Ezra was uncharacteristically quiet after that. He always seemed to be… thinking, his head lost in the clouds. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking about, while he was clearly not paying attention to anything in classes. He still managed high scores on the assignments in the next week or so, but I didn’t see him take a single note.

We were both studying for some quizzes one night, me at my desk with a maths textbook in front of me, and him in the corner of his bed, surrounded by three different notebooks and two textbooks, his open computer lighting up his face enough for me to see that his eyes were surrounded by dark circles as though he hadn’t slept in a few days. (Though it wasn’t like I was staring. I just… he was more interesting than maths.)

I was having a problem with one of the equations, and the more I struggled, the more I remembered that Ezra was known for being really smart, and being in a lot of AP classes.

After fifteen minutes of being stuck on the same problem, I finally sighed and turned around in my chair. “Hey, Ezra?”

He looked up tiredly. “Yeah, Josh, what is it?”

“Can I get some help with this maths problem?” I paused. “I’m really stuck on it, and… even if I don’t like you, you’re smarter than I am.”

He smiled a little, sort of an ‘at least you’re making some sort of effort to be nice’ smile. “Yeah, I’ll help you. I…” He looked around at his workspace. “I’ll go over there, yeah?”

“Yeah. Pull up a chair if you want.”

He pulled his desk chair right next to mine and sat in it, slumping over, somewhat onto the desk. “What’s the one you’re stuck on?”

I pointed it out, and he frowned at it a little. I sighed. “You can help me, right?”

“Yeah, of course I can. I just… give me a second to solve a similar problem, remind myself how to do it…” He grabbed a scrap piece of paper and scribbled something out it handwriting that was surprisingly nice. I couldn’t follow his steps as he worked down the page, crossing things out and redoing them, but he finally ended up with 289.45, circled multiple times. He pulled out his phone, which I’d never seen him with before-- I’d assumed that he didn’t have one-- and opened some sort of calculator app where you could write out the problem and have it solved for you. When the calculator also came up with 289.45, he nodded. “Okay, I can explain it to you now.”

“How do you do it?” I stared at his paper, confused by his thought process. The clear and scratched out sets of numbers were gibberish to my brain.

He sheepishly pushed the practise paper aside. “Don’t try to figure that one out. Here, I’ll walk you through one.”

I watched as he wrote out an equation that looked like the one on the paper, but it involved different numbers.

He turned to me once he was done. “You’re still sure you want me to help you? It’s not going to… hurt your ego or something?”

“No, I…” I sighed. “I need the help more than I care about my ego.”

“Okay.”

He walked me through the steps carefully, explaining them one by one and making me do the calculations on my own. He was actually quite civil while he was going through it, gently pointing out when I did something wrong and making sure that I knew how to do it correctly before I went on.

I got 326.56, in the end.

“That’s correct.” Ezra stood. “Congrats, you can do maths now.”

“Yeah. And… uh… thanks for the help.” It sounded a little forced, which I didn’t intend. I really was grateful.

But Ezra just gave me a little bit of a pained smile. “Don’t push yourself too hard. I don’t need your fake kindness.”

I thought that I felt a little bit of a pain in my chest, but it passed quickly, and I couldn’t think of a reason for it, so I assumed that it was something I’d imagined.

-+-+-+-+-+-

“Ezra’s such a brat,” I announced a few days later as I sat down at my lunch table.

Kieran looked up from his food, raising an eyebrow. “What do you think he did now?”

“It’s not that,” I insisted. I served myself a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. “It’s just… well, I asked him for help with a maths problem, and now he asks me if I need help whenever I’m struggling at all. It’s obnoxious.”

“Does he use a condescending voice?” Kieran asked. He and Ian exchanged a look I couldn’t read.

“No, not exactly,” I admitted.

“Does it seem like he’s trying to be mean?”

“I mean… no…”

“Then what’s your problem?”

“It’s-- I-- but it’s--”

“It’s Ezra, that’s your issue.” Kieran gestured wildly at me with his fork. “You just can’t deal with the fact that he’s a decent person, not some dark, angry and brooding emo kid.”

“I-- come on, I’m not that shallow!” I pouted.

Kieran was notoriously unconvinced. “Oh, you’re not? Josh ‘Ezra’s a brat because he genuinely wants to help me’ Preston isn’t shallow? Yeah, you keep thinking that.”

“Wha-- Kieran!”

“He’s actually right,” Ian mumbled. He’d been quietly eating his salad the whole time thus far.

“I feel so betrayed.” I sighed. “I thought we were all friends.”

“We are,” Ian assured me. “But Kieran’s right. If Ezra wants to help, let him help. He’s… well, he’s in one of my classes, and he’s a sweet guy. Good table partner.”

“I can’t believe you.”

Ian put his hands up in surrender. “All I’m saying is that he’s your roommate and if he wants to help you, then you should let him!”

I frowned at Ian, then Kieran, and then I turned around to frown in the direction of Ezra’s table, where he and his especially hands-on (with each other) friends were talking about something-- probably something smart or something.

I might’ve scowled in his direction for too long, because he noticed, turning to give me a slightly cautious wave. I saw him mouth something, but I couldn’t make it out.

I turned back to my table, rolling my eyes at Ezra. He’s such a freak, I thought, but a part of me felt like it wanted to argue that.

I bit back all of my arguments and tried to focus on Ian and Kieran, but neither of them were talking.

-+-+-+-+-+-

“You were staring at me at lunch,” Ezra accused me later, once I got back from practice (and goddammit, if his stupid massage didn’t do wonders for my back).

I forced myself to scoff. “I don’t know what you're talking about.”

“Oh, of course you don’t. And Mark and Tommy don’t have picture evidence.” He smiled a little, to himself. He hadn’t looked up from his book since I had walked in.

“They-- what?” I turned to face Ezra completely.

He shrugged. “Mark insisted they needed it for later or something. I’m not going to blackmail you, so don’t worry.”

I shouldn’t have been so convinced by that statement, but something about the submissive way that Ezra held himself-- like he was doing something wrong, and he didn’t want to get hurt-- made me believe it.

“Oh. Thanks.”

He looked up, then, clearly confused. “For what?”

I hesitated, then answered honestly, “I don’t really know. But thank you.”