Learning Curve

Finn

I don’t know anything more about Professor Winslow than the internet and the first five minutes of class have told me, but I already hate him.

The way the girls in my class nearly faint at the sight of him in his expensive suit. The carefree smile. The teasing jokes tossed toward my classmates.

He’s the picture of a man whose asshole has had nothing but rainbows and sunshine shooting out of it since his mom was changing his diapers.

He grabs a black marker and starts to write something across the giant whiteboard at the front of the lecture hall, and my heart pounds hard in my chest. My half brother. Here in the flesh.

I still cannot fucking believe my dad has five other kids, and I’ve known for years at this point.

My fists clench with the effort to stay in my seat—to not jump up and shove the news of our relation right down his smug throat in front of the entire class. But I don’t think it’ll do me any good to blow my load this soon. I need to strategize to make sure it hurts as much as possible—to make sure he feels the way I’ve always felt.

My phone vibrates again on top of my desk, and Scottie the Cheerleader glances my direction furtively. She’s a bundle of nervous energy, so I’m not surprised she looks this way with pretty much every move I make.

I check the screen, figuring it’s one of my siblings—the most common texters in my inbox—but instead, it’s my roommate Ace…again.

Ace: Dude. Why didn’t you tell me the two blocks between our dorm and Newton are fucking SWARMED? I’ve lived in New York my whole life, and I feel like I’ve never seen this many people out at one time. Don’t these assholes have anything better to do???

I don’t know what it is about Ace Kelly, but for the past six days, he’s made it impossible for me not to be his friend. He’s just one of those people who demands your friendship and does it in such a way that you find yourself going along with that plan willingly.

He’s wild, boisterous, is always making jokes, and gets a thrill out of pranking people. How do I know this? Because I’ve already witnessed three of his infamous pranks, and we’ve been roommates for less than a week.

The two clueless dudes in the dorm room across the hall from ours came out of their place this morning dressed in their finest clothes—looking nervous as hell—because they’re convinced the dean wants to have a personal meeting with them.

There’s no meeting. Only Ace and his pranks.

Regardless, I don’t bother telling him it’s not my job to babysit him or wake him up for class. Given his personality, I feel like he’s going to have to learn to swim or sink the hard way.

Ace: I think I’m, like, five minutes away. Has he started class?

Me: He’s writing on the whiteboard as we speak.

Ace: SHIT.

Phone returned to my desk, I move my eyes back to my target. My half brother who’s had life by the ass and didn’t have to experience our father’s violent, drunken ways.

Lucky asshole.

My older brother Reece would be so pissed at me for coming to Dickson for the reason I did, but Reece can suck a fucking egg. He chose to go to college in California—thousands of miles away from home—and he’s not the one who discovered our dear old dad has a whole other family.

I clench my fist and open it again but am shocked that the motion finishes with Scottie the Cheerleader’s hand on mine. I’m startled by her touch, but to be honest, she looks startled too. Her hand is remarkably warm and soft.

I look down at where her fingers are gently placed over mine and then back up at her again.

“Here,” she whispers and slides a folded-up piece of notebook paper into my hand.

Confused, I unfold it until I can see what’s inside—a note in some of the prettiest fucking handwriting I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s all swirls and clean lines and nothing at all like my chicken scratch.

I’m sorry about before. Outside. When I was a super klutz. You must think I’m a total bitch for running off on you without a thank-you. I swear, I’m not! I really wasn’t trying to be rude. Thank you for trying to help me.

PS: I’m Scottie Bardeaux. What’s your name?

Without even thinking twice, I pick up my pen and scribble a response.

Finn Hayes. And I don’t think that. But I do think your knee is still bleeding.

I pass the note back to her and then reach into my backpack to snag a tissue. She’s still reading my response when I tap the excess blood off her knee. She jumps a little when the soft cloth hits her skin, but other than that, she just sits there, her warm hazel eyes fixated on my face as I dry her scrape.

I don’t know if it’s a fucking cheerleader thing or a college girl thing, but Scottie Bardeaux is beautiful. Girls back home never looked like this.

She’s wearing makeup, but it doesn’t look like a ton—my ex used to cake the shit on like she was tarring a roof—and from this close, I can see that the hazel of her eyes is more green than anything else. It’s just the gentle ring of brown in the center that makes them look the way they do.

Thank you, she mouths before putting her head back toward the paper and scribbling out another response. I watch the way her white teeth dig into her full bottom lip so intently that I’m startled when Professor Winslow’s teacher’s aide, Doug, drops a syllabus packet on the desk in front of me.

I don’t bother reading it. My plans for this class don’t quite follow the same bullet points as Professor Winslow’s.

Scottie slyly slides the notebook paper back to me, and I’ve got the paper open to her new words in seconds.

Got any plans this Friday, Finn? The cheerleaders are throwing a party with the Delta Omegas at their house on Sorority Row.

I don’t know why seeing my name in her handwriting urges the hint of a smile to form on my lips, but it does.

And while I’d love to do a lot of things with Scottie, going to some party with sorority chicks and frat bros isn’t one of them.

I appreciate the offer, Scottie, but I’m not really a party kind of guy.

Her response is back on my desk mere seconds later.

Really? That’s a surprise.

When I glance back at her, she’s focused on Professor Winslow as he starts to talk about our first reading assignment—Wuthering Heights.

I should probably pay attention too, given the financial aid requirements for me to stay enrolled here, but finding out why she would be under the impression that I like to party seems like a higher priority.

Why is that a surprise?

She glances down at the paper and then back at me before quickly scrawling out a response.

You just look like trouble, you know? But, like, the good kind. Don’t be mad. LOL

Is she flirting with me? I move my eyes to her, and even though she’s not looking in my direction, I don’t miss the way her cheeks are flushed pink.

I thought this girl had a boyfriend—an asshole boyfriend, at that—but when I glance toward the back of the class where I saw his douchey head full of blond hair when I first came in, there’s a matching blond chick sitting beside him.

She’s bouncing her tits like they’re balls on a seal’s nose, but his eyes are locked on me, a scowl sitting front and center on his lips.

What the fuck is happening? Is she using me to play games with her boyfriend?

Scottie’s quiet demeanor, attention on the lecture, and the fact that she hasn’t noticed my silent interaction with her boyfriend at all only makes me more confused. Truthfully, I don’t think she’s glanced back in the fuckface’s direction a single time.

I turn back to the front, pen poised over the paper to tell her I don’t want to be a part of whatever fucked-up thing she has going on, when the sound of the lecture hall doors slamming open with a loud bang grabs my—along with everyone else’s—attention.

Ace jogs in, a backpack slung over his shoulder and his dark hair a mess on top of his head. He’s wearing jeans with a wrinkled T-shirt, and his long legs eat up the aisle as he moves toward the front of the lecture hall.

“Can I help you?” Professor Winslow questions, squinting toward Ace’s entrance.

“Sorry, Ty…I mean, Professor Winslow!” Ace calls out as he keeps moving up the rows of seats. “Running a little late this morning.”

“Ace, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this is—” Professor Winslow starts to comment, but another bang from the lecture hall doors slamming open stops him midsentence.

“Sorry, I’m late, Professor W!” Ace Kelly’s big-ass dad calls from the top of the stairs.

Ace is just plopping down in the seat next to mine when his brain registers his father’s voice. “What. The. Fuck?” Ace mutters, horrified as his dad’s humongous legs eat up the distance toward us in a heartbeat.

“Acer! Save a seat for me, bud!”

“Thatch Kelly, to what do I owe the pleasure of this massive disruption to my class?” Professor Winslow questions and crosses his arms over his chest.

“Well, Prof, I’ve decided to go back to college,” he responds like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “And I figured, what better time to do it than now.”

“You’re taking this class?” Professor Winslow asks, a smile just barely on his lips.

“You bet your academic ass I am.”

I glance back and forth between the two of them in abject realization—they know each other. My roommate’s dad is friends with my stupid half brother.

Thatch gestures to the girl in the seat next to Ace to scoot over, and she does, not knowing what else to do, I imagine. He takes the seat next to his son, and Ace just sits there, glancing back and forth between his dad and me.

“Dude. Am I hallucinating?”

I shake my head.

“My dad is really here? This isn’t a fucking nightmare?”

I nod.

“Fuck me.”

“It’s gonna be a good year. Right, Acer?” His dad gives him a soft nudge of his elbow as he makes a show of getting notebooks and pens and shit out of his backpack that literally still has the tags on it. He even has a fucking stapler and paper clips. “Me and you in college. Hell yeah!” He meets my eyes with a big-ass grin. “Hey, Finn. Good to see you, man.”

I smile, completely despite myself. Seeing Ace this close to a mental breakdown while his dad full sends it is hilarious.

“Dad, what the fucking fluff is happening right now?” Ace asks, his voice shaking in a whisper.

“Oh, c’mon, son. You’re going to have to start calling me Thatch around our peers. Don’t want them assuming I’m some boring-ass old man. I’m the original dick-swinger, you hear me?” His words may be meant for Ace, but they’re loud enough for the whole class to hear them.

Guffaws and side-splitting laughter take shape all around us.

“Oh my G-od,” Ace whispers, horror making the benediction at the end catch in his throat. “Are you having a stroke? Does Mom know you’re here?”

“By Mom, I’m sure you mean my hot-as-balls girlfriend Cassie—whom I just so happen to be legally wed to—and yes, she knows. Hell, she’s so jealous, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s enrolled by the end of the day. Though, she is pissed she missed rush week. Sorority sparkles and TikTok dances are her jam.” His laugh is hearty. “You think we can get her a late entry, Ace Face?”

Ace stares at his dad, each gulp of his mouth turning his skin more ashen.

“Yeah, okay, you think on that,” Thatch says and flips open his notebook. He leans over Ace and whispers to me, “Did I miss anything, Finn?”

“Do not even humor him with a response,” Ace snaps at me and shoves his dad’s big head back toward his seat.

“Oh, come on, bud. I can’t make a bad first impression for my first class.”

“Your first class?” Ace questions. “As in, you have more classes?”

“Oh yeah. I made sure we have the same schedule,” Thatch updates and chooses one of the twenty pens he has sitting on his desk to scribble something in his notebook. “By the way, I’m going to own your ass in accounting.”

Every student inside the lecture hall is one hundred percent fixated on Ace and his dad’s conversation, including me, and I realize it’s been that way for several minutes without interruption. When I steal a glance at Professor Winslow at the front of the room, I note that he’s outright smiling now.

I roll my eyes. He’s trying so hard to be cool that he’s just letting this sham play out in its entirety. It’s annoying.

Ace is at a loss for words finally, opening his notebook and turning to the first blank page, when his dad leans over to his face and whispers in a boom that’s loud enough for all to hear, “Prank champion.”

Ace’s face is a mask of shock, horror, and undeniable awe. Thatch bursts into laughter.

“You’re shitting me?” Ace questions, and Thatch just waggles his brows in amusement.

“Remember this summer? When you paid NYU acting students to pretend to do an FBI-style raid on my office? Consider this payback, baby.”

This family is fucking nuts.

Students shout and cry out, and kids stand up and charge toward us to high-five Thatch one by one. It’s mayhem.

Professor Winslow lets the madness and absolute hysterics of an overwhelmed class roar for a full minute before taking command again. “All right, everybody. Time to relax,” he orders, waving his hands up and down for both the volume and for people to take their seats again. His voice is a rumble as he adds, “Thatch, with all due respect, get the hell out of my classroom.”

“Cool your nuts, Ty,” the giant man-child says in reply. He pulls out his phone and snaps a picture of Ace. “Just needed to get a photo of this amateur’s face before I go.”

Thatch stands, shoves all of his notebooks and pens and shit back into his backpack and pats Ace on the shoulder with a hard but loving hand. “Don’t mess with the king.”

Ace is laughing and shaking his head at the same time. “You’re such a dick.”

Thatch winks. “Never forget that I’ve got friends in all the right places.” And just like that, as quick as he came, he’s gone.

Ace looks back toward our professor and glares. “Thanks a lot, man.”

Professor Winslow is still grinning. “Maybe next time, you won’t be late to my class.”

Ace nods and rolls his eyes before whispering toward me as he pulls a notebook out of his messenger bag. “I hope you know that you’re officially an accomplice to my next crime.”

I quirk an eyebrow.

“There is no way in hell I’m letting my dad get away with that bullshit without retaliation.”

My attention is pulled back to my desk when Scottie grabs the sheet of notepaper from it and scribbles something down before shoving it back over to me.

Now you have to come to the party on Friday. You and your friend Ace. No excuses.

And at the bottom of that note? Her number.

Ace sees it immediately, the nosy bastard, and snatches it from me. He’s giving Scottie the thumbs-up before I can even process any of it.

She smiles and looks down at her desk to concentrate, her cheeks pinking up once again.

So much for telling her I’m not getting involved.