A different angle

"Miss Warren?" he inquired, and she couldn't help but smile to hear his accent. She found accents so interesting.

"You can call me Cat." She stepped into the foyer as he waved her in.

"Is that actually your name?" He looked a little surprised and slightly disappointed.

"Well, no… technically, no. It's Catherine. Although everyone calls me Cat, since I was little."

"Ah. Well, good to meet you, Catherine. Would you like some tea?" he offered. "You have to be cold in that." He nodded to her skirt and bare legs. She flushed, remembering her conversation with Paj. It was March, and she had run out of the garage without stopping at her locker for her jacket. Her books and crossed arms covered her chest, but she could feel how hard her nipples were from the cold.

"I am a little," she admitted. "I forgot it was going to be so cold today. I should have worn pants." He stopped, and she looked curiously at his bemused expression and raised eyebrows. "But I don't really drink tea. Do you have Coke?"

"Sorry, I don't have any soda." His eyes flitted briefly back to her skirt hemline, waving her further into the house. She thought proudly that her little English schoolgirl outfit must be the reason for the sudden interest in her skirt, and she was glad that she didn't know that it was actually her reference to not wearing "pants." In England, she later discovered, they called underwear "pants."

It was sparsely furnished, but nice anyway, somehow. Huge book shelves lined one wall, but there were no other real decoration. Sparse. That was another vocabulary word. "Besides, soda wouldn't keep a girl very warm when she's not wearing pants, would it?" He smiled then, and she found herself smiling back, warm already. "Come on, live a little! Experiment…try life on the edge."

"Ok." She realized he was teasing and unable to come up with some witty reply, but wanting to. He winked and went into the kitchen, and she followed.

"So, geometry… your father says you'd like a little help?" He ran water into a kettle and lit the gas burner.

"Pul-eeeze. Get real." Cat snorted, forgetting herself and plopping down into a kitchen chair. "Is that what he told you, Mr. Slater?"

"You can call me David." He glanced at her wide sprawl and crossed arms with something that bordered between interest and amusement. "So what are you telling me? You don't need any help?"

"Well no, not exactly. I mean, geometry is not my best subject, I admit. Ok, so it's my worst. It's just my SATs. He wants my SAT score to be up to a certain level." Cat eyed some sort of cinnamon bakery confection sitting on the kitchen table.

"Ah. So we're really here to help you improve your geometry skills, hm?" He had his own arms crossed now, leaning back against the counter.

"Hey, that looks really good, I'm starving." She pointed to the puffs of pastry, her finger touching the frosting. "Oops." She licked her finger, and she gave him an appreciative look. "Mmm, that's yummy."

"Would you like some?" he asked a little wryly.

"Sure!"

When he sat at the table with their tea, watching with a small smile as she licked her fingers, he remarked, "Well I hope your enthusiasm for geometry is as fervent as your enthusiasm for Danish pastries."

"Highly unlikely," Cat replied moodily, mouth full. "But I guess we have to get to it, huh?"

"Well, I do have another student at five." He glanced at his watch. "Let's see how much we can do over frosting, hm?"

Cat reluctantly finished the last of her sweetness, downed the rest of her cup of tea, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She glanced over at him looking at her, his mouth fixed in a funny little smile, and was struck again by his eyes, how they seemed to miss nothing. She felt suddenly self conscious and tucked her short brown curls nervously behind her ears and cleared her throat.

"Geometry?" she asked.

"Yes," he affirmed. "Let's see your book, and we'll start there."

And so that's how the torture began every day, with a little sweetness, washed down with a warm dose of tea, following by an excruciating hour of math-induced hell. Cat threw books across the room, tore papers in half, swore-

although she always apologized to him, somehow it didn't feel right to swear in front of someone who was British-and slammed her fists on his kitchen table.

She knew he was being patient with her-really his patience was beyond human comprehension-but his sighs, his attempts to show her yet again, a different way this time, something new, somehow it just never sank in. She was a senior in high school, and yet she couldn't seem to grasp middle school geometry concepts.