Not bad

I walk into the house, knocking on the open door to announce myself. "Hey Mom, is there dinner for me?" I ask.

The middle aged woman rolls her eyes, "Yes, don't worry. I know why you come here so I still have the bribe ready. It's in the microwave," she says. "After your done you'd better help James with his trig. He says he has a test tomorrow."

I groan, "seriously, he couldn't have gotten help before the day before?" I reheat my dinner of Mom's famous tuna casserole. A regular Friday kind of meal, and one she's perfected over the years.

"I know, don't blame me. He's an adult, so the most I can do is nag him to get you over. You know I don't remember anything about math." My mother hurries to leave before I could complain more.

After finishing I make my way upstairs. It's a pretty nice house. Two stories and a huge attic, in the nicest part of our little suburb. We're lucky Dad makes enough to afford it, especially with my mom doing what he calls "Catholic Housewife Spending." Honestly, him giving it a label like that probably just encourages her. It's permissive.

James tends to study in the attic, so I head up there. I find him sitting at the desk, his feet up, looking at his phone. He's a decent looking guy who has always taken care in his appearance. His soft blond hair is always cut nicely, and his skin is always tan from his time on the lacrosse field.

"You know you can study without me, right? Mom says your test is tomorrow. I might be a genius but there's only so much I can do if you don't help yourself." I grab a chair and pull it up next to him.

"Yeah, whatever. I don't get it anyway, so it's not like I'm going to pass." He opens the book to a page full of triangles.

I start helping him through the work, but I hit a wall. He's such a pain, **** to even try. At one point, after he gave enough "mmhmm" responses, I look up to find him on his phone again. "Give me that!" I say, grabbing it out of his hand.

I look at his screen to find him in a text thread with some of his friends. I'd met all of them, but we'd never gotten along all that well. My name jumps out at me from the thread and I turn my back to him to read it. Using my body to block his hands, he can't take it back.

The texts are all about me, I realize, scrolling up a ways. One of his friends, Jake, called me hot, but I'm pretty sure that was just to tease James. The rest was all very hurtful. The last text was talking about what a prude I am. That stung, maybe because there was some truth to it. I didn't have time to reflect on that right now, though, as I quickly erased James' "yeah, I bet she's never ev..." and replaced it with, "nah, you just don't know her. I heard she's wild when she wants to be." Aaaand send. I toss James his phone back.