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"You’ve got to be kidding—"
He stopped speaking as soon as I stood up in front of him and held the headphones over his head. His eyes flickered up to mine and I slipped the headphones over his ears. They were huge and bulky, with a crack on the right side, and I’d bought them refurbished from one of my dad’s research students. But they were also the best headphones I’d ever used in my life.
With a few clicks, I clicked open one of his textbooks. The athletics department paid for all of the upgrades. There it was, one of the expensive audiobook add-ons for the textbook. I waited while Adam was silent next to me.
The seconds counted down.
"You get ten bonus points if you write notes for the chapter," I told him, reading off the screen.
Adam walked slowly back like we were in the midst of a hostage situation. Like he was expecting me to detonate a bomb. Which he wasn’t completely wrong about. I drummed my fingers on the table while he pulled out his chair and took his seat, watching me with narrowed eyes.
“Ice princess,” he began. “I could get you in a lot of trouble for—”
“We’re two weeks into spring and you decide to embarrass me like this?” I grilled him.
Adam froze. His frown deepened. “Embarrass you?”
“Yes. Embarrass me. Because this is embarrassing.”
“Hold on.” He threw up his hands. “You were the one jumping around and shit!”
“We’re not even a quarter into the semester. Why are your grades this horrifying?” I woke up the tablet again, showing him everything he already knew. “Your team made me sign a contract saying I would keep you out of trouble and you’re this close to getting there with your grades? All those lunches I was getting my coding projects done and what were you doing?”
“I’m still above a two point three.”
“A two point three?!”
Adam frowned, genuinely confused. “Yeah, I can still play football with that.”
“Wow.” I pushed the tablet towards him. “So, you're telling me that’s the best you can do? That’s it?”
“I’m becoming a professional football player,” Adam said, like I had my brain sucked out before lunch and couldn’t remember the only thing that was reiterated to me every single day. “I don’t need this shit. I keep my grades above seventy-five in every class. I do enough to get by. None of this is going to apply to jackshit I do in the future.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s your reason?”
“Yeah. It’s a great reason.”
“So, ten years down the line, you’re okay with all these managers and agents and investors and everything being the smartest in the room?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re fine with being led around like a dog? You don’t want better? Fifteen years in and you get caught up in a cryptocurrency scam and your big defense is—oh, man—I forgot how to read.”
“I aced my business classes last semester,” Adam dug in.
“You can make a PowerPoint? Amazing. But here you are barely passing in basic math.”
Adam sat back in his chair, staring at me with every inch of disbelief he had in him. He started to laugh, but it was the most hollow laugh I’d ever heard from him. I really ticked him off. Another button that riles him up.
“I could do this shit if I wanted to,” Adam said.
“But you can’t,” I countered. “So you don’t.”
“You’re trying to psychology me.”
“How would you know? You’re almost failing that class too.”
Adam shifted back in his seat. “What the hell do you care for?”
That grated my nerves. Why would I care if he was missing a class? Because he was squandering a free education for nothing. My parents would’ve been furious.
“Because if you miss a class tomorrow, you’re screwed,” I snapped. “And that’s on me, your babysitter.”
