Back to School (3/7)
On Friday night, Donna followed Josh home for her first tutoring
session. They'd decided yesterday at lunch to leave work together
as early as possible so that they could get a jump on reviewing the
classwork.
Donna was nervous. Really nervous. She'd always been a good
student. Even an excellent student, which explains the uproar she created in
her family when she dropped out. But math was a different story. When
she'd dropped out, she hadn't taken the prerequisite math
class for her government and public policy coursework. She'd put it off for
as long as possible and now, six years later, she was paying the price.
Her nervousness also stemmed from the fact that she didn't want
Josh to loose esteem for her. She had fallen into the position as his
assistant easily and he'd never made her feel any less valuable
because she didn't have her degree. But, what if, when he saw how
completely incapable of understanding math she was, he started
looking at her differently? What if he began to doubt her
ability in other areas?
It was too late to go back now, as Josh turned onto his street and
Donna followed.
After they walked in, Josh headed into the kitchen, dumping his bag
and coat on the kitchen table. "You want something to eat,
Donnatella?"
"You mean as my last meal?" she quipped tossing her bag
onto the couch and flinging herself onto it as well.
"Not funny," said Josh heading back into the room with a
bag of pretzels and two sodas.
Josh sat down next to Donna, opening her bag and pulling out her math
book. "Is your calculator in here somewhere?"
"Yeah, at the bottom," she said, sipping her drink.
"You should treat this thing better," he said, once he found
her beat up calculator. "It'll be your best friend during this
class."
"Why? Will it magically give me the correct answers? Or maybe
I could scribble formulas onto the side of it, like I used to in high
school."
"You cheated in high school?" asked Josh with his best
shocked voice.
"Only in math class," Donna smiled.
Josh smiled back and pulled Donna up from her reclined position on
the couch. "Come on. Show me what chapter you're up to and
we'll work backwards from there."
"Okay," Donna said reluctantly.
A few hours later, Josh had tabbed all the chapters where Donna
needed review and he had flagged the stuff that she absolutely needed
to understand before they could proceed.
They worked through some basic calculus problems, and once Donna
relaxed, she had gotten most of them correct. They worked late into
the night, right up to the chapter that Donna was currently on, with
Josh patiently explaining the ins and outs of the problems.
Saturday, Donna arrived at Josh's apartment early. They worked
their way up to logarithmic differentiation and things were starting to get
a little harder for Donna.
Donna sat on the floor in front of Josh's coffee table and Josh
sat across from her.
"All right, try this one," Josh said, getting up to refresh
their glasses of water.
Donna stared down at the problem before her. It combined lots of
pieces of problems that she'd successfully completed before, but
Donna started to panic, because she couldn't remember what order
towork through the problem. It was one thing to have Josh walk her
through the problem, but it was another thing to do one on her own.
"Josh? Does this problem require the chain rule?"
"Yes," he yelled from the kitchen.
"Wanna tell me which side of the equation it applies to?"
Donna said, starting to scribble notes to herself on a scrap piece of paper.
"No, because that would be cheating."
Donna sighed and started figuring the problem. She used the chain
rule on the side she thought she was supposed to and then
differentiated and multiplied both sides of the equation. She divided
out a factor of x and then stopped. She bit her lip. She was lost.
She had completely lost whatever the next step was supposed to be.
Josh sat down next to her on the couch. He peered down at her
work. "So far, so good, Donnatella."
Donna grunted.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"I'm lost."
"Lost?"
"Yeah. What am I supposed to do next?"
Josh began to realize what exactly Donna's problem with math
was. She was trying to develop a set of rules to follow for each
problem. When in actuality, the steps were always being rearranged to
meet each problem.
"Donna, why don't you work backwards and figure out
what you've already done and that should lead you to the next
step."
Donna looked up at him and rolled her eyes. "You do realize that
it's a miracle I've even gotten this far, right? I mean, there's
no way I can figure out what I've done. Let's just be happy I got this
far."
"Nope. You'll only get partial credit on a test for solving
the problem this far and we want full credit, remember? We're
striving for an A in this class."
Donna snorted. "You may be striving for an A in this class.
I'll settle for a C."
"No student of mine strives for a C in math class," said
Josh, putting on his best affronted professor voice.
Donna laughed. "Sorry, but I'm probably going to be the first
student to ruin your record."
"Well, since you're my first and only student, how about we
strive for the highest grade you've ever gotten on a math test?"
"Easier said than done," said Donna, studying the problem
before her again. She started working the problem again from the
beginning on a different piece of paper. Once she got to the same
point again, she started to try something, but it didn't seem to
be working, so she backtracked. She tried to remember what she had done
on the problem before this one, and tried that, but it didn't
seem to be working either. She sighed.
"You know this Donna," said Josh softly from over her
shoulder.
"No, Josh. I really don't," she said, willing herself not
to cry.
"Wanna hint?" said Josh, sliding down to sit next to her on
the ground.
Donna nodded, closing her eyes briefly.
"There are some powers you can combine."
Donna studied the problem again, seeing at least two places where she
could probably combine powers.
"These two?" she asked, pointing to one of the possible
places.
"Why do you think those two?"
"Um…I didn't think wild guesses were supposed to have
reasons behind them."
Josh smiled at her. "Don't make a wild guess. Tell me why
you think those two make sense to you. Visualize the end result."
Donna studied the problem again. She looked at her two possibilities
and tried to formulate the answers that using either would
provide. "Is it too late for me to ask you to stab me with the
pencil?"
"Donna."
"Okay. Okay."
She continued figuring the problem, but it was like her mind had put
up a mental block at that particular point of the problem. She
couldn't see anything beyond it. She started tapping her
pencil on the table in frustration.
Josh put his hand over her pencil, stilling it. "Combine the
powers on these two," he said, pointing to the option that Donna had not
chosen originally.
"Of course," she said, her voice sounding defeated.
She figured the rest of the problem and got the correct answer, but
she was starting to get frustrated.
Josh explained to her the meaning of the various formulas she'd
used and gave her another problem to try. He also took away the cheat
sheet she'd been using.
"Hey! I need that," she said, grabbing it back from him.
"No, you don't," said Josh, softly taking it back from
her. He pulled her book into his lap and started reading ahead to the next
chapter, leaving her to figure the problem alone.
She sighed, but then started working on the problem. She tried to
work the problem in the same order she had done the previous one, but
that wasn't working. She started with something different, but
that didn't seem to be working either. This problem seemed to be
combining several elements from all the chapters they'd worked
through. But Donna couldn't remember the order in which she was
supposed to do things.
"Josh, you wanna help me out here?"
"Nope," he said, not looking up from his book.
"Some tutor you turned out to be," she said sullenly.
She studied the problem and started to figure it out. She bit her
lip and wrote the final answer on the paper.
"I have no idea," she said with a defeated voice.
Josh looked at her work, noticing that she had started the problem
correctly, but had used the wrong formula at one point and had
therefore gotten the answer wrong.
"It's wrong, right?"
"Yeah, but I know exactly where you went wrong," he said,
sitting up straighter next to her.
"Signing up for the math class in the first place was probably my
first mistake."
"Donna."
"Okay, show me," she sighed.
"You didn't multiply both sides of the equation by y. See
right here? And then when you went to differentiate it, you
didn't have combined powers of x." He looked over at Donna.
"I have no idea what you just said."
"Yes, you do."
"But I did differentiate, right after I used the chain rule
and then the product rule."
"But those things don't always follow each other."
"They don't? Why not? They did in the last problem."
"Yeah, but that was the last problem. The sequence of formulas
always changes. That's why you have to understand each individually."
"But I don't understand the formulas individually," she
said, biting her lip to keep from crying.
"You do. That's what we did last night. Now you just have to
apply them to each problem. But not in the same sequence," said Josh,
sensing that Donna had reached her frustration limit.
Donna felt she had to be very careful not to take her frustrations
out on Josh. Even though they were friends, Josh was still her boss
and she didn't want him to be mad at her or disappointed in her.
"Can we stop for awhile?" she asked, as she got up from the
couch and walked to the window.
With her back to him, Josh could tell she was upset. He didn't
say anything for a few seconds, then he got up and walked to her.
"Donna?"
She didn't say anything.
"I think we should take a break. Maybe order in food? We've
been doing this all day and I think we're both tired," he
said,running a hand down her back, which was incredibly tense.
She just nodded. Josh knew not to push her, so he walked towards his
kitchen asking, "Do you want Chinese or maybe pizza?"
"I don't care," she said, still not turning from
the window.
Josh sighed. "Okay, then I'm getting pizza with anchovies and
pineapple"
He saw Donna raise a hand to her face to wipe away her tears, before
she turned around. "Do you plan on getting a second pizza with
normal combinations of toppings for me?"
"So, you're saying no to the pineapple? Or just to the
anchovies?" Josh asked, rifling through his kitchen drawers for a
pizza menu.
"Both actually. Can't you just get mushroom and onion like
normal people?" she asked.
"That would insinuate that one or both of us are normal."
Donna just gave him a look and headed off to the guest bathroom. She
stayed in there for a long time, running the water, so Josh
couldn't hear her crying. She knew having Josh tutor her was a bad idea, and
now she'd made a complete fool of herself. If he hadn't
thought she was an idiot before, he surely did now. She splashed some water on
her face, hoping that their working relationship could be salvaged,
now that he'd probably lost all respect for her.
She dried her face and walked out, only to find that her bag had been
packed and the coffee table was set for dinner. Two glasses of wine
sat on the table and Josh was sitting on the couch watching TV.
When he heard her behind him, he dropped his head onto the couch
cushions and looked at her. "Hurry up, Donnatella. The
movie's about to start."
"The movie?" she asked, expecting him to have packed her bag
so he could throw her out of his place.
Josh wasn't going to do any such thing though. They'd been
studying all day and he knew Donna had to be as exhausted as he was. They both
needed a mental break. He laughed inwardly though, because this
obviously wasn't what Donna expected from him.
"Yeah. The dish says that To Catch A Thief is starting in five
minutes. That's one of your favorite movies, right?"
"Yeah," she said skeptically, still not
having moved into his living room.
"Well, come on then. We'll watch it and eat pizza,"
he smiled.
"Okay," she said, sitting next to him on the couch.
After a few minutes of silence, Donna turned to him. "Josh?
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you frustrated about tutoring
me."
"Donna," Josh said, putting an arm around her and pulling her
into his shoulder. "I'm not frustrated, but you are, so we're
going to stop for today. Okay? And don't apologize."
Donna was silent for a minute and then put a hand on Josh's
chest, so she could push up and look into his face. "Thanks Josh," she
said quietly.
Josh looked into her eyes, which were swimming with tears and felt an
unfamiliar tug in his chest. He never wanted Donna to feel like she
was less than the amazing woman she was. And he never wanted her to
think that he saw her as anything less. But the tug he felt in his
heart was so much more than just concern for his assistant and
friend. He raised a hand and wiped the tear that had leaked out from
her eye. "You're welcome," he whispered back, desperately
wanting to kiss her, but instead settling for kissing the corner of her eye,
tasting her tears on his lips.
Donna sighed and opened her eyes to look right into Josh's.
His hand continued to rub her face and Donna licked her lips,
suddenly realizing that she wanted Josh to kiss her. Josh saw the
permission granted in her eyes and leaned in to kiss her. Just as his
lips lightly pressed hers, the buzzer to his apartment rang.
They both jumped apart, looking uncertainly into each other's
eyes. Josh finally broke their stalemate. "Don't go anywhere,"
he whispered, gently extricating himself from her and walking to his
door to get the pizza.
Donna sunk down onto the floor in front of his table, mentally
kicking herself for trying to kiss him. Was it just anxiety about the
calculus or was it something more between her and Josh? Something
that had been there all along, but neither one was ready or willing
to act on?
Josh was having a similar conversation in his mind as he waited at
the door for the pizza guy. He admired and respected Donna and could
not deny that he'd always been attracted to her. Lately his
feelings for her had changed and he was almost afraid that he loved her. But
he was unsure of how she felt about him, so he'd kept their
relationship platonic, hoping that somehow he could get her to see
him as more than just a friend. Now it seemed like she returned his
feelings, but Josh didn't want to push her, especially while
she was having such a hard time in her class. He wanted her to be
focused on her schoolwork, not their budding relationship, but even
that argument didn't stop him from wanting to get another chance
at their first kiss.
He paid for the pizza and brought it back to the table, sinking down
next to her on the floor. They ate in silence watching the movie and
sipping their wine.
Once the pizza was almost gone, Josh cleaned up their plates and took
everything to the kitchen, returning with the remainder of the
bottle of wine. Donna had moved back up onto the couch, her legs
tucked to her side. Josh sat down next to her and slid his left hand
into her right,tangling their fingers. Donna sighed, turning to smile
at Josh. Josh scrunched down in the seat, putting his feet up on the
coffee table and tugging Donna down with him. She rested her head on
his shoulder and they stayed like that until the movie was over and
Donna left to go home.