FORBIDDEN CHEMISTRY: The Pleasure Contract

Cracks in the Ego

The second session, Jason showed up on time and hadn't studied at all.

I knew within the first two questions — the hesitation, the guesses dressed up as answers, the way his eyes flicked toward my face after each one, waiting to see if I'd react. I recognized the test for what it was. He wanted to see what happened when he failed me on purpose.

I didn't raise her voice. I didn't even change my expression. I simply set my pen down, looked at his answer sheet, and said, "You didn't open the material."

"I got a few right."

"You got a few right by accident, which is worse, because it means you can't tell the difference between guessing and understanding." I turned the sheet around to face him, tapping each wrong answer in sequence. "This one — you clearly know the formula, you just transposed the variables, which tells me you're not careless, you're bored. This one, you left blank, which tells me you didn't even attempt it, which tells me you didn't care enough to try and fail."

"Maybe I just don't test well."

"You test exactly fine when you actually prepare. I've seen your transcripts from freshman year, before you apparently decided being interesting mattered more than being smart. You were a solid B-plus student who barely tried." I said it flatly, not as an insult, just an observation, which somehow made it land harder than if I'd meant it cruelly.

"You looked up my transcripts?"

"Dean Vance gave them to me. Part of the arrangement." I shrugged like it was nothing, though I'd noticed, reading through them the night before, a strange little pang of something that wasn't quite pity — more like recognition of a person who'd clearly given up on himself long before anyone else had the chance to.

"I think the stunts, the car, all of it — I think that's easier than this. Easier to be reckless on purpose than to actually try at something and risk finding out you're not as clever as everyone tells you."

He didn't answer right away, staring down at his own uneven handwriting like it might rearrange itself into something less damning.

The words landed somewhere Jason hadn't expected, somewhere past the practiced deflection he usually had ready. Nobody talked to him like that. People either flattered him or feared him, and both kept a careful distance from anything real.

"You don't know anything about me," he said, sharper than he meant it.

"I know you got fourteen out of twenty wrong on material a decent student could pass with two hours of review." I slid the diagnostic back toward him. "I'm not here to be impressed by you, Vincent. I'm here to fix this specific problem. So either we do that, or we don't, and you can go explain to your father why the tutor quit in week one."

He laughed, short and humorless. "You really don't care what people think of you, do you."

"I care what my transcripts say about me. That's about the extent of it."

"Must be nice," he said, and there was an edge to it that surprised them both, something bitter and unguarded slipping through before he could stop it. "Not caring what anyone else thinks."

"I care plenty. I just don't let it change what I actually do." I met his eyes steadily, refusing to soften the moment even as something in his voice tugged at me more than i wanted to admit. "That's the difference, Vincent. Caring and performing aren't the same thing."

He was quiet for a moment, the practiced charm nowhere on his face now, something rawer sitting underneath it instead. "Everyone gives up on this eventually. Teachers. Old tutors. Even my own father basically stopped expecting anything from me around some year of high school. Why would you be any different."

"Because I'm not doing this to be liked by you,"I said, quieter now, something in his voice catching me off guard enough that my own edge softened slightly. "I'm doing this because I need the money, and because giving up on you costs me something too. So no, I'm not going anywhere yet. Doesn't mean I'm impressed. Means I'm stubborn."

Something that might have been the beginning of a real smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Stubborn I can work with."

His phone buzzed on the table between us, screen lighting up despite rule number two. Bianca's name, followed by a preview of a message he didn't open: Where are you? You said you'd be at the mixer an hour ago.

Jason glanced at it, jaw tightening, and turned the phone face-down without answering. I noticed, filed it away, said nothing.

"Fine," he said finally, quieter than before, pushing the phone further out of reach like it was easier to ignore that way. "Show me the formula again. The one I transposed."

I almost smiled. Though I didn't let myself. But something in the room shifted — not friendship, not yet, but the first thin thread of something neither of us had a name for. Respect, maybe. Or the beginning of it.

I pulled out a fresh sheet and started explaining, and this time, he actually listened, working through problem after problem with a focus that surprised us both. Somewhere in the middle of the third problem, he got the method right on his own, without prompting, and looked up at me with something like disbelief written across his face, as if he genuinely hadn't expected his own brain to cooperate.

"See," I said, unable to keep a small note of satisfaction out of my voice. "Not so hard when you actually try."

"Don't get smug about it."

"I'm allowed one moment of smugness. I've earned it."

It was nearly an hour past our scheduled end time when twe finally looked up, and Jason's phone, forgotten on the table, had accumulated four more unread messages, the little notification number ticking upward like a countdown neither of us was watching.

Somewhere across campus, Bianca was still waiting, and growing less patient by the minute.

He didn't check the messages until he was halfway back to his dorm, and by then, four had become seven, the last one shorter and sharper than the rest: Forget it. I'll tell everyone you weren't feeling well. He read it twice, feeling the small, familiar guilt he usually reserved for things that actually mattered to him, and typed no reply at all.

He told himself the guilt would fade by morning. It usually did. But for once, some small, stubborn part of him wondered if it should fade quite so easily, and whether that said something about the relationship he'd built his whole public life around.