A Longtime (and at one point Illegal) Crush (2 page)

Elsie
’s mantra of future marriage was drained of its magic that night. The words no longer had power to lift or warm her. The sentence sat in a mangled heap around her feet, deflated.

That was the last image she had of Kye before he went to college
: Him in a tux, achingly handsome, never once turning to glance in her direction.

Now that same man was heading toward her car, and he was close enough she could see the amusement in his eyes—and something else, s
omething she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Annoyance maybe? Or worse, pity?

If her last Kye
McBride sighting had ended on prom night, things wouldn’t have turned out so badly. Elsie eventually stopped acting like she wanted to be one of the guys and embraced all things girly—fashion, shoes, and makeup. She grew out her dark brown hair and had a way of running her fingers through it that made guys stop, pause, and take notice.

The only vestige of her crush on Kye was a permane
nt placement in advanced math. She had devoted herself to math back in elementary school on the off chance Kye would notice her report cards laying around and consider her brilliant. This never happened, at least not that she knew of, but by the time he’d left for college, she was too well entrenched in the gifted math program to let it all go.

If Kye hadn’t come back,
Elsie would have remembered him as a childhood obsession that flared into and out of existence along with her crushes on actors and musicians. That’s where those crushes belonged—behind the unachievable and anonymous walls Hollywood had erected.

On the first day of her senior year,
Elsie walked into her honors calc class and saw Kye writing
Mr. McBride
on the whiteboard in the front of the room.

H
er arms went slack and her calc book slid from her hands onto the floor.

Kye turned at the sound
. Elsie blushed bright red, hurriedly picked up the book, and slipped into a seat at the side of the room. He smiled at her, but it was just a piece of kindness—a sort of welcoming smile that said
I’m not the sort of teacher who eats students
. He showed no recognition, didn’t speak to her at all, until after he’d gone over the class rules, the syllabus, and was taking roll.

“
Allie Anderson . . . Madison Basha . . . Tyson Boggle . . .” He marked off each student when they answered back.

Kye
paused then, and Elsie knew he had come to her name, recognized it. He looked around the room, trying to spot her. His gaze passed right over her without stopping. “Elsie Clark?” he asked.

“Here,” she called back, already uncomfortable at the tone she’d used. It sounded too nervous, to
o questioning, as though she wasn’t sure herself if she really was here.

Kye’s
gaze shot to her, and she knew he still didn’t recognize her. She had watched him grow up during his four years of high school, but he had never seen her change from the eight-year-old he’d played basketball with.

She breathed softly, carefully waiting for some sort of pronouncement from him.
Notice me now
, she told him silently.
Really see me. I’m every bit as beautiful as the girl you went to prom with.

Kye’s eyebrows dipped together.
“Are you Carson Clark’s little sister?”

“Yes,” she said
, fighting a blush that threatened to creep back into her cheeks.

“Wow,” he said.

Wow
. She could eat that word. She had waited long enough for it. Before she could hold the word up and admire his praise, he added, “I suddenly feel old. You were like, what, six when I left for college?”

T
hen he went on with the rest of the roll.

In so many ways
those sentences had put her back on the stairs, an awkward, invisible girl with braces. It wasn’t a role she wanted. And it wasn’t a role she intended to keep.

Seventeen-year-olds
are reckless in so many ways.

Chapter 2

That night at dinner,
Elsie had told her parents that Carson’s friend was her teacher. Her dad nodded as though it was a sad event, one to be mourned over. “Kye was going to get his electrical engineering degree, but after last year when his father had that knee injury, Kye got his teaching certificate instead. He came home so he could help run the ranch.”

Kye was the youngest of three children
. Elsie didn’t know much about his older sister and brother except that they were both married and living in other states. Apparently neither could come back to help out on the ranch.

Elsie
had never thought she could be grateful for someone’s injury before, but she was. Kye was back. He would be teaching at her school for at least a year. Best of all, he was gorgeous and still single.

Elsie’s mother
took a bite of her lasagna. “It must be hard on him to be back home when most of his friends are gone.”

Gorgeous, single, and lonely—even better.
Well, not really. But sort of. It wasn’t
that
long until she graduated. Only nine months. And then she and Kye could have a romantic whirlwind summer. She could picture them walking hand in hand across the overgrown grass on his ranch, sunshine pouring around them.

“
Kye always loved my homemade applesauce,” Elsie’s mother went on. “I’ll send a bottle with you tomorrow to give to him.”

Strictly speaking,
her mother’s applesauce was more like pie filling. That’s why everyone loved it.

The next day, Elsie was the first one to reach Kye’s classroom.
She had been looking forward to giving the bottle of applesauce to him all day—had spent extra time on her hair and makeup in anticipation of this event—but now she just felt nervous. Transparent. It was one thing to be an eight-year-old with a crush on him. Now, well, this was entirely different. He was a teacher and she was a student. This could turn into the most awkward hour of the day if he knew how she felt. She fingered the jar of applesauce hidden behind her books and wished her mother hadn’t sent it.

Kye was sitting on the edge of his desk
, flipping through the math book. His brown hair was mussed, and his button-down shirt a little wrinkled. Such a bachelor.

He looked up when she c
ame in, turning his evening-blue eyes on her. He held her gaze, perhaps because she was staring at him and walking slowly over.

“Did you have trouble with the homework?” he asked.

He had told the class yesterday that he offered tutoring in the morning before school. She had considered faking confusion so she could spend extra time with him, but the assignment was just a review of the stuff she’d done last year. And besides, she wanted him to know how smart she was. Kye, she was sure, liked smart girls.

“No,” she said. “I brought something for you.
An apple for the teacher.” She pulled out the bottle and handed it to him.

He smiled in happy surprise.
“Your mom’s applesauce?”

“Yep.
She insisted I bring it to you.”

Kye
turned the bottle in his hands. “This is the best stuff. Tell her she’s completely ruined me for store-bought applesauce.”

“Well, t
here’s more where that came from.” The Clarks had four apple trees in their yard, which meant there was
a lot
more where that came from. Suddenly Elsie was glad she’d always been drafted into applesauce duty—the way to a man’s heart and all of that.

Kye put the
bottle on his desk and surveyed Elsie. “I see how it is,” he said, teasing. “Your mom thinks she can bribe me into passing you. It might work. She should at least try.”

Elsie smiled back at him,
more comfortable now. “I won’t need bribery to pass calculus. I learned everything I know about math from Carson.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Remind your mom I like the cinnamon kind too.”

Elsie had meant it as a compliment to Kye—he had taught Carson, Carson had taught her. Although strictly speaking, Carson hadn’t helped her that much with her math, so it was probably a convoluted attempt at a compliment to begin with. “I’ll be fine,” she said.

Kye
held out his hand, palm up. “Let’s see your homework.”

She pulled it
from her notebook and handed it to him, already feeling a glowing sense of pride. He glanced over it, nodded with approval, then set it down on his desk. “You obviously
didn’t
learn everything you know about math from Carson. I hate to disillusion you about you your big brother—especially since he’s one of my best friends—but Carson frequently couldn’t remember which order the numbers went in.”

Elsie laughed. “I don’t think he
was quite
that
bad.”

“Seriously,” Kye said, lowering his voice because a couple more people had entered the room. “If you need help later on when things get harder, I want
you to come in for tutoring.”

“
I’ll be fine,” she said again. “I’m a straight-A student.”

“I know. That’s why I’d hate to be the one to ruin your GPA.”

He knew her GPA? That meant he’d checked up on her after yesterday. The thought made her feel breathless—even if he’d only done it because she was his friend’s little sister. “I can tell you’re a smart girl,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hardest for the smart kids to ask for help.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll get help. I mean, I’ll ask for it. If I need it. From you.” She obviously needed help, although not in math. She needed help in knowing how to carry on a conversation with hot older men. She needed help acting like she wasn’t an immature teenager. “Um, thanks,” she finished and walked over to the nearest desk. One in the front row. It became her desk from then on.

S
eeing Kye every day became a sweet sort of misery. Elsie stared at him dreamily, relentlessly. Her eyes traced the lines of his hands as they swept markers against the dry erase board. His handwriting was a swirl of passion in numbers. Sometimes it was hard to pay attention to the calculus because all the old words about marrying Kye kept stirring themselves up and inserting themselves into the integrals on the board.

Dx
(uv) = u(dv/dx) + v(du/dx) = we will have children with brown hair, blue eyes, and your smile that quirks up at the side.

The other girls at school declared
math was much more enjoyable with Mr. McBride teaching it, but none of them were as devoted as Elsie. All year long, she excelled in math. She got perfect scores on her homework. Aced the tests. She lived for the moments when Kye handed her papers back with a smile and a word of praise.

Every Monday she came to class early and
brought him a bottle of applesauce. She didn’t even complain when her mother made her help in the applesauce canning marathon. Some of these bottles would be for Kye. That made the work delicious.

Sometimes
while waiting for class to start, Elsie would talk to Kye about Carson or her family, or anything—books she’d read or things in the news. In those moments he talked to her like she was a friend. At those times she was sure he felt an attraction to her too. He always held her gaze a little longer than normal, smiled more easily.

B
esides those unspoken moments, he never gave her an indication he saw her as anything else than a student. She knew there were rules about students and teachers. She didn’t want him to do anything to risk his job, but she wasn’t going to be in high school forever. She could have lived until graduation on a teaspoon of encouragement. And then after graduation, well, she and Kye would have an entire summer before she went off to college.

Summer.
The warmth of it continually swirled around in her stomach.

Elsie
let other boys flirt with her in class, even flirted back with them sometimes. She did this to show Kye that she could, that she was someone worthy of his attention. If he was jealous, he didn’t show it. As he told the guys to settle down and get to their seats, he only seemed annoyed they were wasting class time.

Precious math time.

Dx(u/v) = (v(du/dx) – u(dv/dx))/v2 = we will laugh about all of this on our tenth wedding anniversary.

Things probably would have gone on that way, and she would have graduated with her dignity intact, if
it hadn’t been for that night at the Mathematics Decathlon.

It
was a couple of weeks before graduation. Elsie was on the team and Kye was one of the advisors. They traveled to Montana State University, and it had all gone well enough—or at least as well as anyone expected. The team from Lark Field High didn’t win, but they made a decent showing. They had fun and got to joke around with other mathletes.

“Why did the chicken cross the
Mobius strip?”

No answer was required. A
Mobius strip only has one side.

“Dear Math, P
lease stop making me find your X. Just get over her.”