Teacher's Pet

“It’s in the system,” he said. “You can find anyone if you know where they work, or full name. The internet is free, and yet, there are so many things on there that you should be paying for. Like, addresses.” He shrugged. “So, are you going to invite me in, or should we wait until one of your neighbors comes to their peephole and sees me?”

Asher had a smug smile I’d seemingly fallen for these past couple of days. “You smug son of a—” I held back my smile, pulling him in by the backpack. “You know I didn’t invite you.” I closed the door after him.

Kicking off his shoes, Asher stretched on his tiptoes. “This is a nice place you’ve got,” he said. “Oo, what are you watching?” He quickly made himself at home, sitting in my spot on the sofa, wiggling around to get comfortable.

I grabbed his backpack from the floor by his shoes and opened it up. “This is the type of practice you were talking about?” I asked, picking out his kitten ears.

“I figured, that could be a reward,” he said. “We talk about this test thing, then you help me.”

“I thought talking about the test would be helping you,” I said, sitting beside him.

His eyes were fixed on the TV. “What are they doing?”

“Ok, so, there’s like six teams left, each of them have a food truck. One of them does dumplings only, and then there’s a truck that specializes in Latin flavors, or something they said. But today, they have a challenge to sell the most crab leg dishes,” I told him, explaining briefly an otherwise complicated reality TV show.

Cocking his head like a confused kitten, he stared at the TV. “So, why are they selling their dish for eighteen dollars?” he asked. “Wait, that other team is selling theirs for ten dollars. Obviously, if it’s about volume, you price down and sell more.”

Ok. Maybe we were getting somewhere with him. “That’s what I said.”

“Oh.” His brows rose and wiggled. “I don’t see anyone else here, so who did you say it to?”

“Obviously myself,” I told him. “But I still said it.”

Asher smiled at me. Intoxicating. I smiled back, much larger than his smile. “I don’t think it counts. One person’s view of things isn’t reliable.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait.” I touched his arm, holding it for a moment. “Are you saying I’m an unreliable narrator of my own words?”

“I didn’t say that exactly, but I can’t trust something you only said to yourself,” he said, touching my hand. He held it for a moment as it grew warm. “So, I’d say since I said it first, it was my idea.”

I was inclined to let this one pass, since he was using some form of critical thinking. There was more depth to him than I realized. It was interesting to feel and see, but according to him, I couldn’t be trusted. I chuckled lightly. “If you think you can come here and play me for the answers to the test, then you’ll be wrong.”

“I’d never steal,” he scoffed. “Wait. No, there was that time I stole a full bottle of vodka from one of the frat houses, but in all fairness, they hardly had anyone there, and the Omega Nu house was alive, so it was basically my right to take it.”

I fought my desire to kiss him there and then. Instead, I stood and put his bag aside. “Let’s start with turning the TV off and we can focus on some of the sociologists we’ve been covering.” I snapped my fingers at him. “Yes?”