Page 116 of The Bet
Chapter 34
“Don’t worry about it. Not everyone wants a math nerd.” But Cara’s words did nothing to comfort her. “And you kill it in all your other subjects.”
She huffed out a disappointed breath, the full weight of her exam results bearing down on her. 60% wasn’t enough to secure an internship with one of the bigger companies, which was exactly what she’d hoped to secure for the long summer break. Math wasn’t her strong suit, but damn it, she was trying. She just couldn’t afford to get extra tuition like most of her other friends did.
Cara put her arm around her shoulders and squeezed hard. “It’s only a small exam. You’re allowed to have a few bad grades. It’s not the end of the world.”
“It’s not a small exam,” she muttered, looking around at the happy faces of students as they walked past her. Why were people looking so happy? “It matters. For the internships, it matters.”
“Not as much as you think it does.”
She knew Cara was trying to cheer her up, but nothing was going to do it. Nothing.
“Come on. Let’s go to the cafeteria and get some cheesecake. Everything looks better after cheesecake.”
But she didn’t feel up to it. Nobody else felt this pressure, but she did. She knew too well what failure looked like, knew what it had done to her father, and she was determined never to be in that situation. Ever.
Getting 60% in math might not be a failure in Cara’s eyes, but it was in hers.
“You go. I’d rather go home.” She didn’t want to hang around the campus any longer.
“And do what? Eat a whole tub of ice-cream all by yourself?”
“We don’t have a full—”
“I know. I was joking. I was trying to make you laugh. Remember laughter? It’s that thing you do, you last did it when you came back from the fairground.”
She smiled. It had been a good day.
“Please let me go home.” She wasn’t in the mood to be around happy people.Please let me be.
“Ok.” Cara gave her another bear hug. “But if you change your mind.”
I won’t.
But as she started to walk down the steps to the subway, she decided to make good on the thing that had been bugging her for days.
It wasn’t the reason she had done so badly in her test, but seriously, something was wrong with her to have her wondering what Xavier was up to. As soon as her last exam had finished, she had caught up with the work he’d given her and had emailed it to him, but she hadn’t heard back.
Since when had she started to count the days since she’d last heard from him?
She walked back up the subway steps, turning away from the traffic with the thought of calling him, but then she stopped, her finger pausing over his name.
Would he think it was silly—hercallinghim about work when she normally emailed him? What did it matter? It was work related, and she was calling him because it had been a few days since her exams had finished, and she needed to let him know she was ready for more work.
So, she called him, her gut slowly traveling to the ground, her heart beating, as she waited.
“Hi,” she breathed, as soon as he picked up.
“Laronde?” He sounded cheerful, she could tell, by the way he said her name.
“I was—” she cleared her throat. “I was wondering if you uh,” What the hell was wrong with her?Pull yourself together.“If the figures I sent over were OK? I didn’t hear from you so I was wondering. That’s all.”
“I’m sure they are, you never get anything wrong, but I haven’t had a chance to look through them yet. I was busy looking over Hennessy’s contract.”
“You’re still going ahead with that?”
“No reason why not.”
