FROM: Office of the Dean Academic Affairs RE: Mandatory Tutoring Assignment M.
Miller Harper Jones read the email through again‚ and a third time‚ and a fourth‚ as if the words might rearrange themselves into something less catastrophic․ “Miles Miller.
Thee Miles Miller.
Whitfield ‘s golden boy, the guy whose jersey number was stitched onto half the freshman class’s backpacks,” one girl in her dorm whispered about it like he was some weather report.
Harper sighed and closed her laptop a little harder than necessary.
“You’re going to break that thing,” Sky said from the other bed, not even looking up from her phone, scrolling with the particular intensity of someone deeply invested in something that was not her own life.
“I might actually combust first.” Harper dragged both hands down her face.
“They want me to tutor Miles Miller.” That got Sky’s attention.
“Thee Miles Miller?
Captain, cheekbones, allegedly cried once during a Save-the-Whales documentary Miles Miller?” “I don’t know anything about whales.” “Harper.” Sky sat up fully now, abandoning her phone like it was nothing — which, for Sky, was the highest possible level of alarm.
“Do you understand what you’re being handed?
Do you understand the opportunity?” “It’s not an opportunity, it’s a deathroll.” Harper stood, pacing the three available feet of floor between their beds like the room might be smaller than her problem and therefore easier to contain.
“I have the McAllister review due Friday.
I’m already working two jobs.
I barely sleep as it is.
And now Dean Carter’s office wants me to play babysitter to some guy who probably thinks practice is more important than reading comprehension.” “You don’t even know him․” “I know of him․ Everyone knows of him․” Harper snatched her bag up off the floor with more force than the bag deserved․ “There’s a stipend attached to this‚ Sky․ You know what that means for me right now?
I don’t have a choice․” Sky’s face softened at that, dropping the teasing out.
“Hey, Look at me.
You could just talk to them and explain that you’re already stretched thin.” “And say what — that the top student in the junior class can’t handle tutoring one hockey player?” Harper laughed, short and humorless, already shoving her arms into her jacket.
“That’ll go over great with the scholarship committee.” She was at the door before Sky could answer.
“Where are you going?” “To fix this.” Harper yanked the door open.
“Before it becomes my entire semester.” The walk down to Coach Reyes ‘office carried her across the quad, past the bronze statue of Whitfield ‘s first headmaster forever gaping in disgust at everyone who passed him and right into a wall of cold November air that did nothing to lift her spirits.
With each foot fall she rehearsed what would come out of her mouth.
“I appreciate you thinking of me, but I am actually unable this semester.
Surely there’s someone else who would do the job.” She had convinced herself a million times․ But when she walked through the door of the building for athletics‚ she repeated it again and again in her mind until half of a prayer became an adieu․ Good.
She needed to sound certain.
She needed Coach Reyes to look at her and see someone who could not be talked into this, no matter how the Dean’s office had spun it.
Rubber floors and ambition․ Polished hallways․ Year after year‚ framed photos of the teams hung on the walls‚ and she could hear laughter emanating from the half-open door at the end of the hallway․ Low‚ easy laughter‚ the kind that filled the room as easily as if it had been air‚ laughter that had never once in his life worried about whether he might be unwelcome anywhere․ And immediately Harper’s stomach dropped.
This laugh was familiar‚ or maybe it was not‚ and she had never heard it in her life‚ but she knew who it belonged to․ She opened the door anyway․ And there he was.
Miles Miller all sprawled-out in the chair opposite Coach Reyes’s desk like he was the centerpiece of the office instead of vice versa, one ankle draped lazily over his knee, head tipped back caught mid-laugh at something clearly just been said by Reyes.
Dark hair —dishevelled in a way that could almost seem an intentional choice.
A half-eaten protein bar hangs forgotten from one hand.
That simple, effortless brand of confidence that seemed to suggest the very walls had given his body a little more of a lean than other bodies.
He hadn’t noticed her yet.
Harper stood frozen in the doorway, her carefully rehearsed speech evaporating somewhere behind her ribs, and watched him laugh like he owned the room — like he owned the building, the team, the entire university, and was simply, generously, letting the rest of them borrow it.
Coach Reyes was the one who looked up first.
“Harper.” His face shifted instantly into something more composed, more official and something in his tone made the bottom of her stomach drop out completely.
“Good.
You’re early.
We were just talking about you.” Miles’s head turned.
And when his eyes fell on her‚ a smile creased his mouth․ “Well‚ look who it is․” CREATORS’ THOUGHTS Just_a_writerrr Hi there my lovely readers !!
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