“Are you sure this will work?” Junior tugged on the collar of the new leather jacket Jackson had forced him to buy.

“Yeah chill,” Jackson picked out a silver ring and slid it onto Junior’s finger.

“I don’t know this doesn’t feel right, let’s not do it,” Junior shrugged off the jacket only to have Jackson pull it back on.

“Yah! Stop being such a wussy. How do you expect her to see you as a man if you can't even act like one?!” 

Junior’s lower lip jotted out but he remained silent and listened to Jackson… after all he was the love expert. 

~3 Months ago~

Junior stood in front of the mirror checking again that he had tucked in every corner of his light blue and white button down into his dark beige khaki pants that were held in place by a clunky brown belt. He pushed his wired framed circle glasses up higher on his nose bridge.

“D-Do you think its okay?” he asked his roommate timidly.

A loud thud was heard and a moment later Jackson came tumbling out of the bedroom trying his hardest to not trip over his own foot, “I totally did not break your new telescope.”

Normally Junior would be enraged but right now Jackson could toss his entire Pokémon card collection in the trash and Junior wouldn’t care.

Seeing Junior’s indifference, Jackson dared to creep closer, “Were you talking to me?”

“Yeah,” Junior turned to face Jackson, “Do I look okay?”

Jackson glazed Junior over from head to toe, “You look a little less cool than me, yup you look perfect!”

“Really?” Junior didn’t sound confident, “M-Maybe I should wear a bowtie and-…”

“Dude, you’re acting like you’re getting ready for your first date,” Jackson groaned, “You already took her out why are you still nervous? What are you worried about?”

Junior lowered his glaze to the floor yeah he had finally built up the courage to ask the girl of his dreams out after three years. On Friday they officially went out as a couple and Junior still lost sleep over the excitement until Monday morning at 4 A.M when he sudden jolted up from dreaming about her and realised that today was the day when the entire school would know that Kang Ming Na, the most popular girl at school, was dating Park Jin Young, the greatest geek in school.

According to Junior, and the majority of the population, Ming Na was the closest thing to perfection. She was well mannered and came from a wealthy family. Being the only child in the family she was trained to succeed and excel in everything and she did… well except for Calculus which Junior thanked the gods for. If not for Ming Na’s struggles with finding the concavity of squiggly graphs Junior would’ve never been hired to be her private tutor.

Once every Wednesday night for the past three years, Junior was privileged to be able to have Ming Na to himself for three hours. During their first lesson they got straight to the math. Ming Na seemed determined to tackle the textbook, “It’s just a part of a dead tree, I’m a living human being, there’s no way that stupid piece of dead wood will be smarter than me.”

It was this exact determination that had captured Junior’s heart even more, from a long time ago he knew that she was more than icing on a cake.

Junior’s face would burn every single time she talked to him. Luckily she seemed to be concentrated on the loathsome numbers to notice Junior’s blazing face or the fact that he was practically about to faint when she leaned over to watch him solve a problem. The way the tips of her soft black hair would carelessly brush over his knuckles made his fingers numb leading him to drop his pencil… multiple times. She didn’t wear any extra artificial chemicals but her shampoo alone bathed Junior’s nostrils making him dizzy.

As the number of sessions increased, Junior’s symptoms seemed to decrease; maybe all that yelling from Jackson did help.

Ming Na also seemed to adapt to Junior, over time, she started coming to him for things other than Calculus. They’d start taking five minute breaks in between which eventually got extended to 10 and then 15. Those 15 precious minutes were Junior’s best and worst. He had his heart broken the first time when Ming Na told him that she was dating the new player on the football team, Mark. The worst part was seeing how happy she was. After her first date with Mark their next few tutoring sessions would be filled interrupting text messages from Mark or her chatters about how wonderful Mark was. It lasted for about a year, a year of Junior locking up his feelings and trying to feel happy for her.

That was all until he received a phone call from her mother one day apologising and telling him that they’re cancelling the tutoring session that week. Right away he knew something was wrong, Ming Na never cancelled, not even when she was burning an inhumanely high fever.

Hopping onto his bike he sped down the street and rushed to her house. When her mother opened the door he made the lame excuse of leaving his book here before heading to her room.

The scene he saw then shattered his heart more than when she told him about Mark. The small ball on the foot of her bed sat up immediately when Junior entered. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she had been crying. Her usually perfect mascara streaked down her tear stained face, the natural blush on her cheeks were now uneven spots of red, her long lashes that made her eyes look alert now hung lowly forming a curtain she looked so… broken… yet in Junior’s eyes she was still the most beautiful thing on earth.

Turns out that Mark had returned to L.A without telling her until two seconds before his flight which was also the time he took to break up with her over text.

“I thought we had something special,” Ming Na croaked, “I thought, I tho