Mutual Benefits Ch. 11 – First Time – by BashfulScribe..,

It was a miracle that the memories of that second date didn’t make me fail all of my finals. School should have been the first thing on my mind, but it came at a distant second place, after Morgan, and the time we got to share together at the movie theater. Any time I wasn’t texting her, I was thinking of her. Kevin of all people reminded me that I should study for the finals, though Mother also was glad to give her two cents as well.

That said, I tried to be humble but I wasn’t delusional — I was fine. Finals were a breeze. At his point it came down to “which scholarship am I going to earn” rather than “am I going to pass?” I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t Taylor.

Taylor…

We hadn’t really talked since that night. She was really mature and self-aware in the moment, but knowing Taylor, there was a full possibility that after she dropped me off at home, she decided she was angry at me for “The things I made her say” or whatever and decided to work from that point outwards, deciding what I did wrong after already deciding that I was wrong for something. Wouldn’t have been the first time. Either way, it was clear something was up. After I finished my third final, I waited outside the classroom for her, just to debrief or something. When she exited — about a full hour after me, to boot — she just looked shocked that I was there, then stopped making eye contact with me and walked away.

I wasn’t sure if she was mad at me, or if she felt guilty, or if she was weirded out that I waited for her or something. Maybe all three. Maybe none. I didn’t know, and… the ‘cool guy’ follow-up would be to say I didn’t care, but I did. Taylor may have had her bad streaks, but I cared about her in some way, and I certainly cared about how she did. Her well-being in Data Management class was my baby too, and I wanted to see it through to the end, but… maybe I was right. Now that she didn’t need my tutoring, I was useless to her.

It definitely showed that I was bummed out and dragging my feet when I went back to my locker. Taylor may not have been the most important person in my life anymore, but… that didn’t mean it had to be all or nothing. If I was never going to see her again, that would have been a bummer. If this was the last I’d see of her… well, I would have missed her.

“Yo, Quinn.”

I turned around to see Joel walking up to me, with a purpose. Instinctively, I cringed. I couldn’t help it. Was this Taylor’s last action? She told him some lie about me, or worse, the truth? This was something I wouldn’t miss at all — the drama, the bullshit, the never-knowing.

I recovered when I didn’t feel immediate pain. I opened my eyes and saw Joel smirking slightly in a cocky way, clearly amused by my little cringe. “Y-yes?”

“I got a thing I wanna talk about with you. Walk with me,” he asserted.

“W-what is it?”

“Walk with me, dude,” he replied emphatically.

I gulped. This was not going to be good. I closed my locker, locking it, leaving one of my books in there but not daring to refuse Joel, or do anything that looked like refusing him. “Where are we going?”

“Who cares?” he replied with this faux easygoing voice, the kind jocks used in public to people they pushed around. “We’re just gonna go somewhere where no one else can disturb us, alright?”

I looked around. The hallways were practically empty. Taylor finished her final considerably later than most students, and almost everyone just went home afterwards. It’s not like I couldn’t have gathered attention by shouting “fire” or something, but I knew that if Joel was trying to look for a place to “talk to” me one-on-one, he was going to find one.

Maybe it was my active imagination, but I was shaking. Joel was assertive, strong, and most importantly, completely charming to the people of the school. If anything happened, he of all people could easily get away with it.

Eventually he led me into this hallway with no lockers in it and shrugged. “This’ll do,” he remarked out loud. “All the classrooms could have teachers marking finals. You know. Witnesses.”

That was confirmation. I was fucked.

Joel didn’t break eye contact, taking his backpack off and reaching into it. “Alright, so you already know where I’m going with this I bet…” he began.

He could have just hit me in that one hallway while I was at my locker and spared me the torment. I bit down hard on my tongue, waiting for the second part of his sentence.

“…but we’re still in the hallways, so we’ll keep this quiet. You got any more notes? How much for chem?”

I paused for a few seconds. My teeth released my tongue. “Huh?”

“Like, y’know…” he made a motion with his hand, rubbing his fingertips together, the symbol for money. “Chem’s my weakest subject. You got any chem notes? I’ll pay.”

“That’s what this is about?!” I couldn’t help asking.

He looked at me like I was dumb. “Um, yeah. Why, what else would I bother ya with?”

I shook my head. “Sorry, finals must be getting to me,” I replied, my voice still shaky. “I had chemistry first semester, but my notes are at home.”

He shrugged and gave another cocky smile. “Hey, that works. How about this — I drive ya home, and I can wait in the parking lot and you go get ’em? I’ve been a, uh, a bad student — I got jack squat to work with.”

I chuckled nervously. “Haha, I see… Well, if you’re offering me a ride home, and I don’t need them anymore, I don’t mind doing it for free.”

“No shit?” Joel asked, his grin widening. “Quinn, you’re a pal! I’m glad I met ya!”

He accompanied his comment with a friendly slap on the back. It hurt a lot.

***

Hey, im hanging out at the gym after todays final. Want to come with me?

I stared at my phone, puzzled. What good would I do to Morgan at a gym? It didn’t seem like she’d be available to talk and it wasn’t private or anything, but it was an excuse to see her, so I shrugged and texted her back, agreeing and setting a time and place in the school to meet her.

The final itself was pretty easy, like the rest of them. Physics was a bunch of memorization; the better you could remember formulae, the better you did. The rest was just seeing the calculations through. The fact I breezed through my classes when they were structured like that told me both why I was good at things like math and science, and why I was always so confused around Morgan and Taylor.

After waiting around for Morgan to be done her final, we met in the intended hallway, shared a polite chaste kiss, and started to make our way outside.

“So, the gym, huh?” I asked.

Morgan looked at me as she walked, expecting me to go on. When I didn’t, she piped up. “What?”

“Oh, I’m just, I’m just wondering what we’re going to do there.”

She giggled at my question. “Well, I was planning on working out,” she said with a slightly weirded-out expression. “As crazy as that sounds.”

“…I think I don’t understand the concept of hanging out,” I admitted. “Doesn’t it make more sense to work out, and then hang out with friends or, y’know, me, afterwards? Since at that point you’re not burdened with working out.”