So Much to Learn (12 page)

"Geez, not
asking for much, are they?" I joked. "And you've got a month to get
it all down pat? Harsh."

"Yeah," Matt
agreed, leaping on the bandwagon that I had started rolling. "So
let's get going."

I nodded and
bounced to my feet. "Right. This flat is now officially Jack
scholarship headquarters." I looked over at Jack. "Show me what you
need to learn and we can get on with it straight away. I hereby
appoint myself chief tester in charge. Sorry, matey," I added with
a smile at Matt, "but we all know you have the attention span of a
gnat and would never be able to sit for hours testing someone on
things out of a book."

Matt simply
laughed. "You will get no disagreement from me," he said easily.
"I'll do Jack's chores so he'll have as much time as possible to
study, and I'll keep the others away from here so it'll be
quiet."

"Great!" I
clapped my hands. "You are totally going to blitz this, and-" I
broke off as Jack stood up abruptly and turned away from us,
running his hands through his hair.

"I don't want…"
he began awkwardly, but then he revised, "I can't let you guys go
out of your way to help me."

Matt and I
exchanged looks of incredulity and frustration.

Matt also got
to his feet and walked slowly towards his friend. "Hammer, mate, I
know you don't like being indebted to anyone, or whatever, but
you've got to let us help you. We wouldn't be going out of our
way."

That last bit
would be a total lie as both Matt and I would do everything in our
power to help him win the scholarship and Jack knew it.

"I have to do
this on my own," Jack muttered and, before Matt or I could protest
further, he strode out of the flat, banging the door closed behind
him.

I went to go
after him, but Matt called me back and, when I turned to look at
him, he was shaking his head. "Nah, let him go," he said, sinking
back down onto the couch.

"But he's
probably only gone up to the roof," I protested, knowing that that
was Jack's usual retreat.

"He needs to
calm down and think it over. He'll come round," Matt insisted and I
reluctantly sat down as well.

We sat in
silence for a couple of seconds before I blurted out, "Why does he
have to do that? Retreat and try and do everything on his own? It's
so bloody frustrating! He must know we don't mind helping, we're
basically family for God’s sake!"

"It's just the
way he is," Matt shrugged. "He's always been an independent sod,
but this is more than that. He's feeling guilty about applying for
the scholarship."

"He's what?" I
looked at Matt in surprise. "Why on Earth would he feel
guilty?"

He picked up a
pen from off the coffee table and began fiddling with it, a sure
sign that something involving emotions was about to be discussed.
God, guys were wimps!

"Well," he said
slowly, "even though it's not like he goes to see his dad all that
much I don't think he wants to leave him alone up there."

"His dad?" I
snorted derisively. "An honorary title if ever there was one. Not
exactly done much fathering has he?"

"Come on,
Talia, cut him some slack," Matt said awkwardly. "He's had a rough
time of it."

"Well, it
hasn't exactly been a barrel of laughs for Jack either," I pointed
out hotly. "He wasn't exactly father of the year before the
accident, why should I cut him slack when he’s never given one to
his son?"

"You don't know
the half of it," Matt muttered darkly, but then he shrugged and got
to his feet. "Whatever. When Jack gets back we'll try again, for
now let's start tea."

An hour or so
later, when I was sitting in my room talking to Simone on the
phone, I heard the door slam and knew that Jack had returned. A
second later Matt yelled at him to get his butt in his room and I
smiled, knowing that it was all going to work out.

It sounded like
Matt gave him an earful for about half an hour, during which time I
only half listened as Simone waffled on about how she'd enjoyed
hanging out at Sam and Michael's flat. Finally Matt's voice quieted
down, and I could hear the pair of them beginning to speak at a
normal level.

Simone and I
had just finished our phone call when I heard a soft knock at my
door. Knowing full well that it would be Jack, I sat up and called,
"Yeah?"

Sure enough a
head of dark hair appeared around the edge of the door and Jack
smiled his gentle smile at me."Alright if I come in?" He asked and
I nodded and waved him forward.

He took a seat on the edge of the bed and looked down at his
hands. The moment reminded me of the previous Wednesday when I had
adopted the almost identical pose on
his
bed. "So, uh, I just wanted to
apologise for earlier,” he said gruffly. "You were just trying to
help and I was a total jerk, so I'm sorry."

I shuffled
closer to him across the bed so I knelt beside him. "I'm sorry too.
I just sort of assumed that you would want our help and I was
pushy. I know how you like to handle things yourself and I should
have been more sensitive to that."

He smiled suddenly and looked up, though not at me. "Are you
and Matt doing a good cop, bad cop thing?" He asked with a laugh.
"He's just spent the last half hour roundly abusing me for being
such a tool and here you are saying
you
were the one in the
wrong."

I smiled too,
but didn't say anything as I suspected he had more to say. As I
predicted, after a moment, he finally looked at me, his expression
serious once more. "I shouldn't have said no to your help like
that. It's just that I spent all of yesterday thinking over whether
I was going to apply and I kind of internalised it as a personal
thing. I almost told you about it yesterday morning, but I thought
that if only I knew about it then I could still decide not to do it
without any repercussions." He smiled wryly. "I knew if I told you,
you would bully me into applying whether I wanted to or not because
you think it'd be great for me."

Ah, so that had
been what he was about to say. The mystery was solved!

"I do need your
help,” he continued. “I knew yesterday that I would need it and I
knew today I would need it, but I didn't think it would work
out."

"How so?"

"I thought
maybe that you would be more of a hindrance than a help," he said
solemnly and I reared back in shock and a little bit of
annoyance.

"How so?" I
asked again, but much more aggressively.

"I thought that if you were in the room with me while I was
trying to revise I'd be distracted by you. You know, think of
nothing, but our arrangement." He chuckled ruefully and shook his
head. "Of course after spending an hour on the roof being unable to
think of anything
but
you, I realised that this was a pretty stupid
plan."

I felt my anger
dissipate and a hint of embarrassed pleasure creep in. He'd been
unable to think of anything but me? Still, he didn't seem to
realise what he'd said so I pushed away my little ego trip and
focussed on him again.

"I want to help
you, Jack,” I said seriously. “You deserve this scholarship and I
really think you're in with a shot at getting it so please let me
do anything I can to help you. We can call off the stupid lessons
thing if you want, it'll only be a distraction." I heard myself
saying that last sentence before I'd properly thought it through
and then panicked. No! I didn't want to give up the lessons. I'd
made such progress already and I didn't want to lose that.

He seemed just
as surprised as I was about my sudden about face. "Is that what you
want?" He asked. "Because if it is then we shouldn't do it
anymore."

"It's up to
you," I said, bouncing it back to him. "If you think it would be a
distraction then-"

"It wouldn't be
a distraction," He said quickly and I almost sighed in relief.

"OK then," I
said slowly, "the lessons continue."

"Yeah, the
lessons continue," he repeated. "And I would really appreciate your
help studying for the requirement test, if you have the time."

"I have the
time," I assured him.

"That's sorted
then." He stood up and then turned to look down at me. "I'm lucky
to have you," he said quietly before leaning down and kissing me
gently on the forehead. "Really lucky."

For the rest of
that week the scholarship plans took over any other concerns the
three of us had. We ate, drank and breathed the requirement test
and it didn't take hardly any time at all to see that it was having
a positive effect on Jack.

On Tuesday he
was restless and paced around the lounge room as he recited the
answers to problems on angles and the different theories of
building design. On Wednesday he didn't pace, but still shifted
around a lot, but by Thursday, he was docile as a kitten and
focused intently on the questions I shot at him.

We'd studied in
the lounge room on Tuesday and Wednesday, but on Thursday Matt had
one of his sports science friends round and they were going to do
their tute questions in the main area. Jack and I relocated to his
bedroom and I sat down on his computer chair while he made himself
comfy on the bed.

"Alright then,
let's start where we left off yesterday," I said, pulling out his
huge first year fundamentals book.

We slipped into an easy rhythm, me asking a question, him
answering, me correcting or congratulating. He got very few
questions wrong, but when he did stuff up I saw that he got
frustrated. I wanted to tell him that he was amazingly intelligent
and that he didn't have to be word perfect, but I knew he would
disagree. He was always pushing himself to do better,
be
better.

As he began
giving a very long and detailed answer to a question I had posed, I
took the time to study him. Dark hair and light eyes really are a
killer combination, I mused. His hair was such a dark brown that in
poor light, such as we were in at that moment, it looked almost
black. He had probably gelled it into a proper style that morning,
but bits of hair were curling out of place now and one piece was
dangling over his forehead. He leant against the wall his legs up
and his arms resting on his knees. He looked relaxed for once and I
was glad.

He was still
answering the question so I allowed my eyes to leave his unruly
hair and startling eyes and wander down his slightly crooked and
knobbly nose (broken three times on the footy field at last count)
to his lips. And that's where the real jackpot lay. When he had
kissed my forehead on the Monday night I had barely had time to
register what he had done, but the sensation had become burnt into
my memory. It had felt soft and warm, but there’d also been the
slight scratch of stubble. He had gorgeous lips, I decided, perhaps
some might find them a bit too full for a guy, but he could totally
pull them off.

"Um, Tally. You
still with me?"

I snapped my
eyes up to his and immediately felt a blush shoot up my neck and
blossom in my cheeks.

"Sorry, um…no I
think I got a bit lost there for a moment," I stammered, flipping
uselessly through the text book trying to find what he had been
talking about. "Wait a minute, I'll find it in a sec."

He watched me
for a while then got off the bed, crouched down beside me and laid
his hands over mine effectively cutting off my frantic search.

"I think you
were already on the right page," he said, clearly trying to hold
back a grin.

I sighed and
let myself relax. "Go ahead, laugh it out," I said wearily. "You
caught me checking you out, fairs fair."

"Why would I
want to laugh?" Jack asked, his words eclipsed by a smile tugging
the edges of the lips I had been so enamoured of moments
before.

I looked at him
then, one of the very few times I had ever been in the position on
looking down at him rather than up. His face was a lot closer than
I had realised and I wanted to turn away, but I just couldn't make
myself do it. "You don't want to laugh?" I asked, trying to keep
focussed on the conversation.

"Oh no," he said, his voice slowly losing the amusement it’d
previously been laced with, "laughing is the
last
thing on my mind."

"I'll see if
they've got one," said Matt's voice from just on the other side of
the door and, in a flash, Jack had straightened and moved away and
my gaze was back down on the book.

The door opened
and Matt stuck his head in. "Sorry for interrupting," he said
cheerily, "but you guys don't have any white-out do you?"

There was a tub
of the stuff sitting on the desk right in front of me and I chucked
it at my brother and quickly returned my gaze to the book in case
he noticed how red and flustered I was.