Over the course of one evening, Daniel had tried to recap weeks’ worth of lessons, and it hadn’t gone well. Daniel was distracted and Mollie turned impatient early on. She’d snap at him for going too slow; then when it came time to demonstrate that she’d understood, she’d miss a step and end up crumpling her paper in anger. At first, Daniel found that sitting so close to her, sharing the same book, made it even harder to concentrate on what he was telling her. Those kissing fantasies kept getting in the way. But after she’d lobbed the book at his head in frustration for the fourth or fifth time, his infatuation turned to exasperation, and finally, aggravation. By the end of the evening he didn’t want to kiss her so much as strangle her. Worst of all, he genuinely feared she might not pass the test. She’d simply fallen too far behind to catch up now. He’d woken up the next morning too late to bike to school and was forced to ride the slow bus instead. He half hoped that he might find Mollie waiting for him at the bus stop, just like old times, but she wasn’t there.
