Daisy
Daisy checked her watch for the third time in five minutes. 4:17 PM. Hayden Matthews, star defensive end, was already seventeen minutes late to a session he was required to attend if he wanted to keep his spot on the field.
She'd claimed a study room on the library's second floor; quiet, away from the main bustle, with a whiteboard she could use if he actually showed up. Her anatomy notes were spread across the table, with color-coded tabs marking the chapters on the cardiovascular system that she needed to review tonight. She'd allotted exactly ninety minutes for this tutoring session before she had to get back to her own work.
The campus grapevine had painted Hayden in broad strokes: star defensive end, brooding loner, the guy who showed up to class only often enough to avoid automatic failure. She'd seen him across the quad a few times, hard to miss someone that tall, always alone, earbuds in, shoulders hunched like he was braced for impact.
Daisy pulled out her phone, debating whether to text the academic coordinator that he was a no-show, when heavy footsteps echoed in the hallway.
The door swung open without a knock.
Hayden filled the doorframe, gym bag slung over one shoulder, jaw tight. His dark hair was still damp from practice, athletic shirt clinging to his frame. His eyes, steel gray and guarded, swept the room before landing on her with something between resignation and irritation.
"You're Daisy." Not a question. His voice was low, rough-edged. His 6'3" frame towered over her as he walked closer.
Daisy straightened in her chair and nodded once, looking up at him.
"And you're Hayden," she said, tilting her head to the side. "And late."
Hayden's jaw worked for a second, and Daisy wondered if she'd offended him. Then, he spoke again.
"Practice ran over," he said flatly. Not an apology, just a statement of fact.
She pulled out the calculus textbook the tutor center had given her for Hayden.
"Come on. Sit."
He dropped his gym bag by the door with a dull thud and crossed to the table, pulling out the chair across from her. The metal legs scraped against the floor, louder than necessary. He sat, arms folding across his chest, gaze dropping to the calculus textbook she'd produced, as if it personally offended him.
She noticed the way his eyes flicked to her color-coded notes, the neat handwriting, the meticulous organization. Her eyes stayed on him as he observed everything in front of him.
"Look," Hayden said, leaning back in his chair, "I know you got voluntold to be here. I just need to pull my grade up enough to stay eligible. So let's just... get through whatever worksheet they want me to do, and you can get back to..." he gestured vaguely at her anatomy notes, "... saving lives or whatever."
His tone was dismissive, but his hands had tightened where they gripped his biceps. She glanced at his hands, then back to him, opening the calculus book.
"I wasn't voluntold, for the record. I tutor because I enjoy doing it."
She crossed her arms on the table.
"So, Rule Number One: no acting like this is some kind of burden to me."
He blinked at her, then shook his head, almost like he was shocked she'd actually want to be here doing this.
"Rule Number One," he repeated, a hint of something that might've been amusement flickering across his face before it disappeared. "You got a whole list, or just making them up as we go?"
She leaned back in her seat, watching him. "Mostly as we go." She said, smirking. She noticed the way his eyes were always darting around. The way his shoulders hunched, as if he was trying to take up less emotional space, even as he physically took up so much.
"Did you bring a notebook? Pencil?" She asked, glancing at his bag.
His expression went carefully blank. He glanced at his gym bag by the door, then back at her.
"No."
When he admitted he didn't have any supplies, she wasn't shocked or disappointed or annoyed. She simply reached down into her bag and handed him two notebooks, one green, one red, and a pack of pencils. Her lips curled up into a small smile as she opened the textbook to the first section.
"You always this prepared for people who don't want to be here?" he asked. His shoulders were still tense, but he leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on the table. A concession.
She shrugged, flipping the pages of the textbook until she got to where she needed to be. "I'm always prepared for everything."
"Okay..." She looked at him from under her eyelashes. "Calculus."
Hayden stared at the notebooks she'd placed in front of him, green and red. She noted how lost in thought he seemed to be.
He picked up the green one, running his thumb along the spiral binding, then reached for a pencil.
"Calculus," he echoed, grimacing. "Fantastic."
He opened the green notebook to a blank page, pencil poised, and Daisy noticed the way his hand slightly trembled.
"Alright," Hayden said, exhaling slowly. "Where do we start?"
For once, he didn't sound dismissive. A small smile played on her lips, and she nodded, moving to the chair beside him. Hayden went still when she moved her chair beside him, but she pretended not to notice.
"Calculus is just the math of motion and change, and nothing moves and changes faster than twenty-two players on a football field."
Years of tutoring football players made this one of her easier tasks. Translating subjects into football jargon was the best way to get it to click for the players. She wrote down the problem on the whiteboard and began walking him through it.
"You're the free safety. Twenty yards from the sideline. The running back breaks through at the forty, heading straight downfield at eight yards per second." She tapped the whiteboard. "You can run ten. What do you do?" She looked over at him and smiled shyly at his expression that made it clear he did not expect her to know a thing about football.
Once his shock wore off, his eyes dropped to the whiteboard, following her handwriting. She watched him work through the play in his head, waiting patiently for him to get it.
"I'd take an angle," Hayden said slowly, his hand moving almost without permission to sketch a quick diagram. Two dots, lines showing their paths. "Not straight at him. Cut him off at—" He paused, pencil hovering. The math was right there, just out of reach, but the concept was crystal clear in his head. "I'd intercept around the thirty-yard line. Maybe twenty-eight."
He looked up at her, and for the first time since walking into this room, his expression wasn't guarded. It was engaged. Surprised, even, that something had actually clicked.
"That's calculus?" he asked, voice losing its sharp edge.
She saw it when it happened: The light bulb moment. It was her absolute favorite moment of tutoring, when they finally just... got it. She grinned at him.
"That's calculus. You need to find the optimal intercept point. Not too shallow, not too steep. The perfect angle that gets you there in minimum time."
She noted the way his shoulders relaxed; How his steel-gray eyes softened just slightly.
"Minimum time," he repeated, writing the words down in his notebook. Daisy watched him, a small smile playing on her lips.
"You do this with all the football players?" Hayden asked, the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Translate their homework into game film?"
"I've been tutoring since I was in fifth grade. Football players are among the majority of the ones I tutor. So, I learned the sport." Daisy shrugged, "It was the only thing that really clicked. I will say, however, you got the light bulb moment way faster than most."
His pencil tapped against the notebook, a nervous habit she assumed, but his posture had opened up. He wasn't folded in on himself anymore, wasn't counting the minutes until he could escape.
"Light bulb moment?" He asked, tilting his head to the side.
She nodded, grinning. "The moment everything just clicks. The gears in your brain stop grinding against each other and start working together smoothly. I saw it happen."
He looked at her; she couldn't tell if it was with admiration or disdain.
"You're pretty cool, Daisy." He said after a few moments.
She choked out a laugh, looking over at him. "Thanks.. I think."
He nodded with a small chuckle. "Definitely was a compliment."
She smiled at him, and they looked at each for a few seconds longer than usual.
"Alright," he said, breaking the moment. He leaned closer to study the textbook she had open. "Show me another one. I'm.." He paused, looking like he was choking on the words. "I'm actually following this."
Daisy chuckled, nodding her head. "I love the spirit!"
She wrote down a new problem, smiling as she walked him through it, then another and another. On the fifth problem, she leaned back.
"Okay, show me what you've got."
Hayden stared at the blank space below the problem she'd written, his grip tightening on the pencil. She noticed how nervous he was, his leg shaking up and down as he looked at the problem.
But Daisy was leaning back with that calm confidence. She had zero doubt he could handle this. She'd already seen him figure it out and was just waiting for him to catch up to what she knew.
He exhaled slowly and started sketching. She watched his face, how his eyebrows knitted together, how his tongue jutted out of the corner of his mouth every now and again when he was really concentrating.
His pencil moved faster as the problem unfolded. The equations she'd shown him, derivatives, rates of change, suddenly weren't abstract symbols. They were players in motion, trajectories intersecting, the exact moment of contact he could predict before it happened.
"Point of intersection is..." He worked through the calculation, showing his steps the way she'd demonstrated. "Here. Four-point-three seconds into the play, at the thirty-two-yard line."
He looked up at her, and for a split second, something raw flickered across his face; hope, maybe.
"Did I..." He paused, jaw working. "Is that right?"
His eyes held hers, genuinely wanting the answer. She'd gotten him to care about calculus in under an hour, which originally felt impossible.
Daisy leaned forward, looking at his work. A slow grin spread across her face as she looked up at him.
"You got it!"
Her eyes were full of pride. She knew he had it. She'd seen the light bulb moment. He just had to believe that himself.
"See? It isn't so bad, right?"
"Yeah," he said, voice rough. "I mean, when you explain it like that... it makes sense."
The corner of his mouth quirked up, not quite a smile, but close. She couldn't help but feel a flutter in her chest when she caught it.
"You're a good teacher," he admitted quietly, pencil tapping against the page.
Daisy smiled at him. "Thank you. You're a good student."
"When's our next session?" As soon as he'd said it, his cheeks turned pink, and he rubbed the back of his neck.
His hand moved closer to hers on the table, but didn't touch.
She was caught off guard by his question; there was a hint of excitement to his tone. That wasn't something she was used to from the other people she had tutored. She looked up at him in surprise at first, then quickly recovered.
"Next week, same time?" she said, closing the calculus book and tucking it into her bag. She pulled out her phone, opening it to a new contact. "If you give me a fake number, I'll take it very personally," she said, her tone teasing.
Hayden stared at the phone she held out, then back up at her. He looked like he wanted to say something, but subtly shook his head.
"Personally, huh?" He said after a few seconds. He took the phone from her hand, their fingers brushing for half a second. The contact sent an unexpected jolt through her that she quickly buried. "Can't have that."
He typed in his number and added his name with just "Hayden" before handing it back. No last name, no football reference. Just him.
She saved the contact and stuffed her phone back in her pocket.
"Thanks, Daisy," Hayden said, shouldering his bag. His voice had lost all its earlier edge. "For... not giving up on me before we even started." He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, letting out an embarrassed chuckle. "Everyone else does."
Her heart twisted at his expression, seeing a mix of hurt and vulnerability in his eyes. She gave him a small smile and nod. "Of course."
He held her gaze for a beat longer than necessary, his eyes showing something unguarded; gratitude, maybe. Then he turned toward the door, pausing at the threshold.
"See you next week." It sounded almost like a promise.