Dedicated to AlexanderGomna and @RealSo. For some reason your username is not showing up for me to tag you, but if you do read this, I want to say thank you for all your votes on this book🙏

"Wait what?" Ifechi couldn't believe her ears.

"Can you be my maths tutor?" He repeated but she shook her head violently.

"Na-uh not that, I heard you perfectly the first time. Me? Your maths tutor? How? Why?" She was in a frenzy, Damien rubbed his neck nervously, worried that the idea was stupid afterall.

"Look, you don't have to be scared. I know I've been pestering you a lot lately, but I promise you I don't have any bad intentions okay? Just hear me out?" He pleaded.

"Okay?"

"I...I wrote jamb okay?..." He started, Ifechi scoffed. "Didn't we all?"

"Yeah, well my dad's pissed cause I flunked it"

"Jamb?"

"Yeah"

"What did you score?"

"224"

Ifechi didn't know whether to be impressed or dissapointed. A part of her felt guilty for stereotyping Damien as one of those handsome guys that weren't smart and didn't care about their grades, but he did better than she expected. On the other hand, 224 wasn't a high jamb score. If anything, it was mid average, her conscience pricked her for looking down on him.

Not knowing whether to congratulate him on his score or not, she simply said "that's not so bad"

"Yeah...but the thing is, I got a 39 in math"

"Ouu.."

"It's terrible I know...my man went wild, like he threatens me everyday to get my grades up or else..." he paused and turned away, looking a little embarrassed. "Anyways, I really need a tutor"

"Okay...but why me?" She asked, ignoring the weirdness of him calling his dad 'my man'. Despite knowing a couple obvious reasons, she looked at him intently, as if focusing on his face would somehow reveal any ulterior motives he had.

"You're smart" he stated.

She let out a mirthless chuckle. "Yeah I know, yay! But that's not the only reason. There are tons of smart people in this school, why don't...."

"Yeah yeah but they're not youu Ifechi, I need you"

She raised a brow.

"Others are smart, but you're, you're very smart like maths whiz kinda smart, I heard you even scored a 99 in maths...wow..." He said a rush only pausing to catch his breath.

"...I can't think of someone else, pleaseeeeeee"

Ifechi wasn't convinced.

"Look, I'll...I'll pay you if that's what you want, just name your price..."

Her scoff cut him off. "Excuse you?" She hated to admit it, but the fact that he thought about paying her hurt her, was it because she was on scholarship that he thought she was broke? Well yeah she was, but it didn't make it any less painful.

"I don't want your money" she said rather uncertainly, looking away from him while rubbing her arms, it had started drizzling.

"Okay then, for free... pleaseeeeeee..." He was pressing both palms together now which amused her. She'd never seen Damien so worked up like this, whatever his father had threatened to do was certainly strong enough to have him pleading like his life depended on it. Tapping her feet impatiently while the falling raindrops slowly increased, she sighed.

"Look, I don't know what you're up to Damien, mock exams are starting next week and I don't think I have the time to...."

"It'll be fine Ifechi, just a few classes that's all..you explain the basics and I'll work on the rest on my own. I'm not that dumb you know...I'm a fast learner, I promise." He chuckled in a way that seemed rather awkward.

"Just a few classes...like how many?"

"Hmm..let's say five or six, maybe twice every week till the term's over?"

Ifechi thought for a moment. This was an unexpected addition to her upcoming exams, but she knew she could handle it if she wanted to. Mock should be easy, afterall, she'd read well from day one. And after mock was Easter break before the main exams would start. She had time to spare.

"Do you promise to be serious?" She asked earning a wide grin from her potential student, he'd finally convinced her.

"One hundred percent"

Pausing for a moment, she exhaled loudly. "Fine!"

"Yes!" He literally gave a fist bump in the air causing her to shake her head with a smirk.

Putting back her serious face, she added. "We start on Monday, 10am sharp, at the last table behind the cafeteria"

"Yes ma'am"

Ifechi sighed and turned to leave, not sure of what she'd just signed up for.

"Should I bring anything? Books, pens" he asked making her roll her eyes.

"Obviously duh!" She said not looking back.

"So like how many, one, two and oh what of textbooks, should I..."

She groaned. "Just your maths textbook and an exercise book is fine...well include past questions too"

"Okey dokey..." He said in a sing-song manner.

Suddenly stopping in her tracks, she turned.

"Damien"

"Hmm?"

"Please don't make me regret this"

*****************************************

Monday came as fast as the week had ended. Ifechi and Damien settled on one of the tables just as Agric mock exams commenced, neither of them were offering the subject.

"Okay first things first, I've listed out all the topics from SS1 to three and I need you to point out the topics you find difficult so that we can start from there." She said passing the fullscap where she'd dutifully written all the topics from their math textbook sequentially during the weekend. It was similar to the one she used for personal studies, to make sure she had covered all the topics.

Damien scanned the paper quizzically, most of the topics looked foreign to him, not that he hadn't seen them before, he just couldn't pinpoint what exactly they were about. He glanced through it again before reading out a random topic. "Trigonometry"

"Hmm okay, for that you need foundational knowledge on the three main functions sin, cosine and tangent. Do you understand Pythagoras theorem?"

"Pytha what?" He raised his brows, Ifechi gave him a bored look and he quickly masked his oblivion.

"Oh Pythagoras rule..."

"Theorem." She corrected. "What is sin theta"

"Erm... opposite over hypotenuse?" He replied. It was more of a question than a suggestion. He felt a huge wave of relief when Ifechi smiled.

"That's correct" she said. Perhaps this wasn't as bad as she thought.

They continued the lesson with Ifechi explaining while Damien listened attentively. He loved the way she broke down every bit of information as if she were explaining to a child. Perhaps if all maths teachers were like this, students would love maths. Besides, who wouldn't want to have a gorgeous, light skinned, goddess explain to them why sin²∆ + cos²∆ = 1 with every word sounding beautifully from her slightly pink li....

"Damien!" Ifechi snapped her fingers twice, he sat straighter and looked at his book embarassed that he had been caught staring.

"Are you listening?"

"Yeah yeah"

"What did I say last" she quizzed, looking at him suspiciously.

"Uh...ok..yes...you were saying something about the sine of one angle being 90°"

She sighed. "No, I said that the sine of angle A is the same as the cosine of angle B given then A+B=90"

"Oh"

Way to go Dumbhead! His subconscious mocked him.

Ifechi let out a deep sigh. "You know what, let's just start with something really simple...like algebra"

"Um...ok" he replied a bit awkwardly, dragging his chair forward. He tried his best to pay attention this time, wary of how easily irritated she got nowadays- her fingers tapping the table softly but impatiently anytime she asked him a question and he took too long to figure the answer, the constant twirling of her side hair strands, how quickly she looked from him back to the book every now and then, unwilling to make any prolonged eye contact, and the twitching of lips just before everytime she had to reexplain a concept he didn't quite understand.

He knew she wanted to leave badly.

So he wasn't surprised when she sighed in relief as the break bell rung. He tried to hide his dissapointment as she packed her things quickly, as if she was on a timer.

"Are we done?"

"For today yeah...just go through the examples we solved again and attempt the past questions underneath, okay?"

"Sure"

Just as she was about to leave, he held her hand.

"Can I at least buy you lunch?"

Ifechi shook her head, the warmness of his hand on her arm clouding her senses. "I'm fine, thank you"

"But..."

"Damien..." She warned. "Don't push it."

He let her go. "okay, fine... I'm sorry."

"I'll see you on Thursday, we will treat matrices next" she said and scurried off without waiting for his reply.

She wrote her first two papers with ease- Chemistry and ICT, on Tuesday and Wednesday. She was already dreading her session on Thursday when a small voice spoke to her.

'you're being too harsh on him'

But was she? She was trying her best to teach him all he needed to know, even though she was a bit impatient. Afterall, he was the one that met her, it's not like she waltzed up to him and begged him to take her as his tutor.

Even though.

"Urghh fine..." Sighing in defeat, she threw her bag on the bed and sat down hugging her knees.

What was it about Damien that repulsed her? It was definitely not his looks, if anything he'd even gotten more attractive since they were friends. But everything else about him, from his aura, the way he looked at her, even his cologne seemed to make her want to avoid him as much as possible.

"It's fear" Emmanuella told her after she'd randomly narrated her ordeal that morning before assembly.

"Fear kwa?" Ifechi replied quizzically.

"Yeah. From what you've told me, I think you're afraid of being around him or getting too close to him because you're scared that you'll fall for him again and have your heard rebroken"

"Hmm..." She thought. That makes sense.

"So what should I do?"

Emmanuella hummed. "Well, first off I think you should accept your feelings, accept that you're still hurt and that you haven't gotten over what he did to you. Then accept that you need to move on, if you hated him, you wouldn't have agreed to teach him, so I think a part of you still wants to be friends, but there's this insecure side that's chasing you away and making you have all these annoying emotions. I suggest you disregard them and focus on establishing a healthy student-tutor relationship."

"Wow...that, for some reason that makes absolute sense" Ifechi said genuinely, the head girl's response was a chuckle.

"I know right? I am considering switching to psychology sef"

Ifechi gave her a weird look. "From accounting to psychology...how e wan take happen?" She said in pidgin, Ella waved her off.

"No mind me sha I'm joking..." She said as Ifechi stood up to leave.

"...by the way I suggest you also apologize to him"

"Who"

"Damien...for the way you said you acted."

"Oh got it"

And just like that, her mind was settled. When they met at the usual table, she was the first person to speak.

"I want to say I'm sorry for the way I acted on Monday, I know I went a bit hard on you because I was impatient."

He smiled at her, surprised at the apology. "It's fine"

"So I was thinking, instead of focusing on cramming formulas and trying to solve as much questions as possible, I was thinking of actually explaining the formulas and their real life applications so that way you can visualise the problems you're trying to solve and it'll make much more sense, is that alright?"

"Yeah, sounds good"

She smiled hopefully, this better go well.

The next day she 'bumped' into Pedro after their civic paper.

"So you and Damien huh?" He said, with a weird smile and an unreadable expression on his face.

"It's not... we're not doing anything, we're just...."

"Friends?" He cut her off by completing her statement.

She pursed her lips before replying. "Yeah"

"Hmm...I see, so you too have just been hanging out recently with no strings attached...surely you don't expect me to believe that" he said with a smirk, Ifechi wasn't sure if he was actually serious or he was just teasing her.

"I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but if you must know I'm just tutoring him"

"Wait what?" He looked at her surprise.

"I'm tutoring him, in maths, he said he wanted to boost his grades and he asked me, so I decided to help him" Ifechi shrugged in an attempt to portray nonchalance, she didn't want Pedro to think they were back as close friends, it's not like they were back to begin with... why did she even care what Pedro thought anyways?

"Damien asked you to teach him maths..." He repeated the words slowly as if they sounded too stupid to be true

"Yeah, I just said that..."

"...and you agreed?"

"What's the big deal?"

Pedro threw back his head in laughter.  "Ifechi, Damien doesn't give a cent about his grades" he spat avoiding the use of offensive language where she was.

"How sure are you?"

"I know him" he blurted. "And I'm sure deep down you know too, look at him...do you really think he came to you, you of all people just to teach him maths, you don't think there's another intention behind it?"

She folded her arms and looked away. Maybe Pedro was right, but she'd already accepted his request and was starting to enjoy teaching too.

"So what do you want me to do?" She asked rather sarcastically. "Are you saying I should stop tutoring him?"

"What no! I mean I don't think it's the best idea but please...you're free to do whatever you like and teach whomever you like, I'm not going to tell you whom to talk to Ifechi, it's not like we're dating or anything so I don't have the right to..." He said, she didn't miss the sadness in his eyes when he mentioned the d-word.

"...just be safe okay?" He said and patted her softly on her shoulders before leaving.

Ifechi groaned in frustration after he'd left. Just when the weekend was starting to go well. It was a good thing the next week was packed with their tough subjects.

Something to get her mind off these boys and their wahala...

A/n

I know I said tomorrow, but in my defense, tomorrow is yesterday which is today (if you dongerrit forgerabourit)😂😂😂💔

Anyways this is sort of a filler chapter, you know ..just to set some things in motion. A series of serious events is about to happening very soon. You know we've not heard from Grace and co since, (if you're missing then say 'hi'😂). So watch out for the next few chapters.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter though, was Ifechi wise to accept tutoring Damien? Did Pedro do the right thing by telling her what he did? What are your thoughts, pls leave me comments, I love reading them.

Also don't forget to vote and share my story if you like it.

God bless you ❣️❣️