Vertex - Prologue, Math as a Matchmaker

					Prologue, Math as a Matchmaker


It was damned nippy, Craig noted the moment he stepped outside. He was too stubborn to turn back around and take a scarf with him. Not that he'd really need it, he knew Farai lived only like, two minutes from him.
Seven minutes later Craig arrived at the block Farai lived in. He had expected she'd be waiting for him at the bus stop, since she had no reason to assume he actually knew where she lived beyond that, but he did. He had once gathered his courage and looked around until he found the building with her last name listed. He even had managed to ring the doorbell.
...she hadn't been home. Maybe that was good. Craig hadn't actually believed she'd say yes if he asked her out. He had to ask her just to show himself he could. And then he couldn't. That had been back in middle school though.

Farai had grown up since then, Craig noted. Every day. Ahem. Right. She was wearing her casual clothes, tight grey jeans, white leather boots with heels and a warm-looking long coat. She didn't look warm at all though.
"Hey" she greeted him with an awkward smile, obviously shivering. It wasn't THAT cold, dammit.
"Hey" Craig replied, his shoulders slouched and his hands in his coat pockets. He hadn't taken gloves with him either.
The two of them stood several paces away from one another for an unpleasantly long time. Craig didn't look her in the eyes. Or the face. Or anywhere, really. He stared intently at the ground.
"You, uhh, like my boots?" she broke the silence.
"Tsk. Yeah..."
Why the hell did he say that then? Sure, he liked them, not as much as the black ones with the high heels he sometimes saw her wear, those he fantasized about, but...
"Come on, I'm freezing my ears off, let's get going!"
Craig nodded and followed as she turned around and walked to the building he already knew she lived in.
"This is where I live" Farai said redundantly, and pointed at the sign listing her last name. Her apartment was on the third floor.
"My apartment is on the third floor"
Why was she even bothering to point this out?
"Look, here..."
She handed him a post-it note.
"That's a shopping list. Could you please go grab that stuff? I'd go myself, but I can't stand the cold..."
That sounded like an excuse. Craig looked at the list. It wasn't unreasonable. It was actually just cocoa, four liquorice sticks and four lollipops. Specifically those quantities.
"I'm not carrying my wallet" Craig pointed out.
"Oh, that's fine, that's fine, here..."
Farai dug around her pockets and handed him piles of change. Her hands felt warm when compared to his.
"I'll just..."
"Yeah, I'll be waiting!"

Hmm. Craig rushed to the kiosk nearby to run this errand. Maybe this was a good thing. It was good to get a little break and centre himself; he hadn't really known how to behave around a girl like Farai.
She was a Dark Elf, and those were always thought of as high class girls, the kind that guys like him weren't expected to be around much. Not that Craig was a Casanova or a Bitchboy, he was one of those guys who blended into the background well enough to avoid trouble unless they looked for it, and Craig usually didn't. Farai had always been a little... paradoxical.
On one hand Farai had always seemed to be unreachable and stuff, a beautiful Elf with an impeccable fashion sense and that exotic, Dark skin that was so very much unlike the darker skin colours in humans.
Then on the other hand she'd been his classmate since... the third grade? All the way to the ninth, and then they went to the same high school, even if the classes were different, and he'd had plenty of time to get to know her, even if he had hardly ever actually TALKED to her directly.
So how had he ended up with this little rendezvous?

First of all, this was not a date. At all. Farai had always been beautiful and somewhat athletic, but while she wasn't some dumb blonde, she most certainly wasn't an honour student. Craig on the other hand had always distinguished himself with his ability to score above average in most tests without working too hard. To be perfectly frank, Craig wasn't a good student, he just had the image of one. Not his physical appearance, but his... brand? Yeah. Teachers loved him, and not just the ones who offered better test scores for cunnilingus, all of them. They said he had this "maturity" about him. Tsk, like hell.
Anyway, it was because of this that Farai one day stopped him in the hallway and asked if he had gotten his head wrapped around geometry. Now that he actually did know how to do. She asked him to tutor her. He agreed, butterflies in his stomach.

The money he had gotten from her was more than enough, and Craig returned to the building quickly enough. While walking back from the kiosk he did find himself wondering why he had let her boss him around like this. He'd never been an errand boy before. Nor had he ever been a tutor before. Hmm.

For the second time in his life, Craig rang the doorbell to Farai's home. This time the door was opened.
"Hey, got everything?"
Farai looked a lot more relaxed now than she had outside. Maybe that was because she had the home-field advantage?
She was no longer wearing her coat or boots. She had a white hoodie on. Huh, Craig couldn't recall she was into clothes like that. Whatever. He got inside and handed the grocery bag to her while kicking his sneakers off. There was a big line-up of shoes here. Could they all be hers? The familiar pair of black, high-heeled boots were there. Craig couldn't help but smile a little.
"Let me get your coat..."
That caught him off guard, and he jumped a bit.
"Ah, I've got it..." he mumbled, quickly taking his coat off. Had she seen his gaze linger there? She had just been joking earlier with the comment about the boots, right?
Craig's coat now hung up, the two entered the kitchen area. Craig tried to ignore the fact that the entire house seemed to smell really, really nice.
"I'm surprised you only wore a t-shirt under the coat, it's damn cold out there" Farai said, gesturing for him to sit down at the kitchen table. It felt weird, hearing her talk like that. So casually.
"You're probably wondering why I had you get all this sweet stuff" she said, leaning against the kitchen counter. It was just a statement, not a question.
"Yeah" Craig still confirmed.
"Weeeell, I think a little motivation goes a long way, you know? So I thought I'd get some stuff to help me stay motivated. I was going to go to the kiosk with you, I swear, but my ears really do get cold this time of year when there's no way to know what to wear, you know, how much is too much and how much is too little, I mean, I think you wore too little, but... hey, is that a MetalMorphosis tee?"
"Yeah" Craig said. He hadn't actually been to any of their performances, he got the shirt from his brother, who outgrew it very quickly.
"Cool, cool. You like it too, huh?"
"I guess I do..."
That topic didn't really go anywhere.
"Uhh, anyway... the candy! I got the candy, oh, I mean you got the candy, no, I got you to get the candy because I work best when I've got a reward coming! So... here's what I had in mind!"

She slams the math book on the table, then opens it up from where her notebook had been stuffed in-between pages.
"See these exercises here?" she pointed them out with the pencil that had been in tucked inside the notebook.
"These I managed with the examples listed on the page, yeah? But then there's all the rest. So here's what I figured we would do! You walk me through these next, say... two? Yeah, two seems right. So you help me with these two, and then I try to solve the next four, rest of the ones on this page, on my own, yeah? And for every one I solve on my own, I get a lollipop!"
That made sense, kind of.
"And if you don't?"
She crossed her arms and made a pouty face.
"Some teacher you are. Where's the faith in my abilities?"
"How could I have faith in your abilities when I haven't seen you do anything?"
"Touche. Ahahaha!"
She had such a pretty laugh. Craig chuckled a bit too. His stomach didn't feel so upset anymore. Had it been feeling upset? Most certainly.
"Ahem. So if I don't get one right, I don't get a lolli, sure"
"Does that mean I get one instead?" Craig asked, feeling like he could joke around with her.
"Hmm? But wouldn't that mean you had an incentive to sabotage my learning?"
"Touche"
Her eyes were gleaming with her smile. It was such a pretty smile. She was such a pretty girl. Her ears twitched when she laughed. Her hair wasn't cut Elven-style, it was shorter, it barely reached her halfway down her neck. Was she wearing any make-up? No. She was just naturally like that. And she didn't need to work on a tan to look that way... or did she? Craig had no access to her possible tan-lines.
"Uhh..." he muttered, for no real reason. How dumb.
"What?"
"So uhh..." think man, think goddammit!
"The, the uhh, liquorice and cocoa..." he managed, since those caught his eye.
"Ah, indeed! Well, the liquorice is for the next page. See, I think I can use the examples there to solve a couple on my own, and then you can walk me through, what was it, uhh, two of the exercises again, and then I'll try to solve some, and since these ones are harder, since they, like, need me to apply more stuff, I get better rewards, that's, that's the liquorice!"
She seemed enthusiastic.
"So... in the ideal scenario, you'll solve four of them from both pages, get your candy, and we're done?"
"Ouch, you saw right through me! Ahahaha!"
That was... rather lazy of her. But at least she was being honest.
"Alright, let's see it then..."
Craig reached for the book to turn it so he could read it. At the same time Farai grabbed the book to turn it to him, and their hands met. Both flinched a little, and there was some fumbling. Neither of them commented on it, but it was clear they were both feeling a little tense.
"Wait..." Craig said, trying to ease the tension.
"You never said what the cocoa is for"
Farai stared at him blankly, and then it dawned on her.
"Oh. OH! Right, that's for us to drink, duh!"
She jumped up from her chair and started to fix them some cocoa.
"Do you like it hot or cold? I'm warming up mine"
"Cold is fine, thanks" Craig replied.
Well, aren't we off to a nice start with her studies...