My Math Tutor

I wouldn’t repeat my senior year if I failed Geometry. I would drop out.  I asked the boy in my class who was good at math if he would help me. Mason said yes. He had a girlfriend, and I’m sure he didn’t tell her he was tutoring a poverty girl she’d never spoken to.
 
He walked to my house while my mother was still waitressing at the diner.  I shared a bedroom with my sister. My grandpa was in the house next door. He owned both places and let his daughter, my mother, stay for upkeep.
 
Mason smiled and joked with my sister and told her he had a sister almost her age. She liked his attention and wanted to help us study. I told her to watch TV. She was mad but did as I said.
 
For a while the only sounds in my room were the soft murmurs of math. Finally, he said, “You sit across the aisle from me. If you get stuck on a test, tap your foot and I’ll try to help.”  I felt such relief. He’d never be suspected of cheating and could quickly whisper an answer.
 
As an afternoon sitcom blared from the TV down the hall, our murmurs were replaced by rustling sheets on my hand-me-down mattress. He kissed me, and said I was pretty. I almost cried. In a frantic panic, his hands roamed all over my body. Within a few minutes, we were naked under the covers of my bed. There, on an afternoon like any other, his swollen teenage passion found its way into my neediness.
 
At the moment of our joining I felt like we were the center of the Universe. There was nothing else, only the organic sounds of two teen bodies’ rhythmic meeting. My skinny legs spread awkwardly across the mattress. I remember wondering where they should be. I felt my center bouncing slightly against his pressing. My arms hugged Mason's strong frame. His shoulders reminded me of my grandpa. I imagined the sadness that mu grandfather would feel if he'd known what was happening in his daughter's house.
 
I wondered if Mason was imagining his girlfriend in those moments or if he saw me as me.
 
The sitcom down the hall was reaching its conclusion, punctuated with frequent laugh tracks. As the show’s theme song began, Mason’s eyes filled with a mix of euphoria and fear, and I knew it was happening. We clung to each other as if we might tumble from the edge of a cliff. The shivering of his body made me feel powerful.
 
Mason stayed inside of me until he was completely finished. When he finally pulled out, I felt my nakedness.

He barely looked at me, but said, "You're a beautiful girl."

He dressed and left without talking to my sister, and that made her cry. She didn't see me crying, too.
 
Mason did help me with my math tests, and I passed. As far as I could tell, his girlfriend was ignorant of what had been a one-time fling for him but a life-changing afternoon for me.