He Faked a Romance, Noah Gave Him One Real Chance novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Nine Sharp

Noah arrives at the Haverstock house for the tutoring job, sees whose house it is, and nearly leaves; Mrs. Haverstock's contract and the Yes Jar keep him there, and the bathroom door between their rooms swings open.

Noah Blaze rang the Haverstock doorbell at 8:58, and at 8:59 he was walking back down the front steps.

Cassian ran after him in his socks.

"You're the tutor," he said. "You said yes on the form."

"The form said a family placement." Noah did not slow down. "It didn't say whose."

"My mother didn't want to scare you."

"It scared me." Noah turned around on the gravel with his canvas bag held in front of him. "You nodded at a bully for a full minute, and you're going to teach me nothing, and I'm going home."

"Your dorm is closed."

Noah stopped.

"Break started yesterday," Cassian said, because Britteny's slide had said to be nice, and because it was true. "The dorm shut at noon."

"I have a room on Pike Street."

"Do you want to go back to it?"

Noah looked at the gravel.

"It's a room in a house with four other people and one microwave," he said. "And rent is due Friday."

"I can't help with that."

"No," Noah said. "You can't."

The front door opened behind them, and Cassian's mother came down the steps in her reading glasses with a folder under one arm.

"Noah," she said. "You came. Come in before the retriever decides you're a burglar."

She did not wait for an answer, and neither did the retriever, who trotted out, leaned his whole weight against Noah's knees and sat on his left foot.

Noah looked down at him.

"I don't have a lot of experience with dogs," he said.

"He'll tell you what to do," Cassian's mother said. "Come in."

They ended up at the kitchen table, because that was where the Haverstocks did everything.

Cassian's mother opened her folder and uncapped a pen.

"Fourteen days," she said. "Nine to five, plus any evening you think he needs. Two thousand one hundred dollars, paid in full on the last day, and a bedroom here so you don't have to take two trains in the dark. Lunch is included."

Noah did not move.

"Two thousand one hundred," he said.

"Yes."

"And the room."

"The blue room, down the hall from Cassian's. The two rooms share a bathroom. The lock on Cassian's side has never worked, and he knows that."

"Sure," Cassian said.

Noah turned his head slowly.

"What did you say?"

"The lock," Cassian said. "I know it's broken."

"That's not what she asked you."

"She didn't ask me anything."

"Then why did you say sure?"

Cassian opened his mouth and found nothing to put in it.

Noah pulled the folder across the table and wrote on the back of it in block capitals: THE YES JAR.

"New clause," he said. "Every time you say sure and can't tell me why, you put a dollar in a jar."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to spend two weeks asking you why."

"Moved," said Cassian's father, from the pantry door, where he was holding a washed-out pickle jar.

"Seconded," said Cassian's mother, writing it down.

"Carried," said Cassian's father, and set the jar in the middle of the table.

Cassian looked at the jar.

"That's one dollar for a sure," he said, "and I've said it twice."

"Four times, counting the one in the driveway," Noah said. "But I'm not charging you for the lock."

Cassian took out his wallet and put two dollars in the jar.

The retriever lifted his head and watched the bills go in.

"Second clause," Noah said. "Nine to five, and no friends at the house during sessions."

"Sure."

Noah raised his eyebrows.

"They'd be loud," Cassian said, and heard how fast it came out. "And you'd spend the whole day being polite to them."

"That's a reason." Noah wrote it down. "Third clause. You do the problem sets. All of them."

"Sure."

"Why?"

"Because I failed Statistics 201 last spring," Cassian said, "and I'd like to find out what I'm bad at."

Noah's pen stopped.

It was the first time Cassian had said a true thing out loud in front of him, and neither of them knew what to do with it.

"Fine," Noah said. "That's a reason."

He put the pen down and held out his hand.

Cassian shook it.

Noah's hand was warm and dry, with a callus on the middle finger from writing, and he let go first.

He did not look at Cassian's forearms, where the cardigan sleeves had pushed up.

He looked at them for a very short time and then at the wall.

"Ground rule," Noah said. "No touching the tutor."

"Sure," Cassian said, and then, quickly, "because you're working."

"Good," Noah said. "That's good."

The jar stayed at two dollars until ten that night.

Cassian ran a bath because it was the one place nobody asked him to explain anything.

He put his headphones in, the bees came on at one and a half speed, and he sank up to his chin.

He had also, for the third time that week, forgotten to push the bathroom door shut on the guest-room side.

The bees were telling him that the drone's single mating flight was also his last when the door swung open on its own.

Noah Blaze stood in the steam with a toothbrush in his mouth and his shirt half off.

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