“You must be Stu,” he said, his voice friendly, excited even. Dad always loved the prospect of a new protégé. “I have to say, it’s been years since I’ve come across a student who managed to complete that equation after the first try. You have no idea how thrilled I am for the chance to tutor you.”

“Well, it’s uh, it’s nice to meet you, Mr Anderson,” said Stu, his posture a little stiff and his words awkward. He obviously wasn’t used to professor types like my dad.

“Please, call me Jim,” Dad said, leading Stu into his study.

“I’ll leave you two to get to work,” I called after them. “I’m going to go say hi to Mum.”

“Yes, of course. Are you staying for dinner?” Dad asked.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” I told him fondly.

After a cup of tea and a catch up with Mum, I left her to finish preparing dinner and oddly enough, went to have a look around my old bedroom. It must’ve been Stu’s mentioning it that put the idea in my head. The space was mostly used for storage now. An old exercise bike sat abandoned in the corner. Dad had bought it a few years ago but stopped using it after less than a month. There were also a few boxes of wool that belonged to Mum. Whenever anyone she knew was having a baby, she always knitted something for the newborn—mittens and socks and such.

I sat down on the bed, remembering my teen years when I’d first met Mark and we’d fallen head over heels for one another. I’d lost my virginity on this bed, spent countless nights in his arms while my parents slept just down the hallway, completely oblivious to my overnight guest. Life was so much simpler back then.

I was startled out of the memory when someone knocked lightly on the door. Turning around, Stu stood in the doorway, his hand braced against the wood.

“Oh, hey,” I said, my voice breathy. “How did the tutoring session go?”

He lifted a shoulder, the gesture noncommittal. “Good.”

“Just good?” I asked, seeing a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. He was excited but trying to hide it.

Stu shot me a look. “Fine. It was better than good. You were right. I’ve learned more from your dad in the last hour than I have on my own in thirty years.”

I smiled, delighted. “I’d say that’s a success, then.”

“Yes, Andrea, it’s a success,” said Stu, stepping into the room and approaching the bed. I shifted back a little, my thoughts going fuzzy the closer he got. We were in a bedroom, a bedroom full of memories. It felt too much. Too private. The pores on my forearms drew tight.

“I bet you were a real bookworm as a teenager,” said Stu, running his finger along the shelf that held my old collection. He came to stand before me and I glanced up.

“What makes you say that?”

“You know stuff.”

I let out a chuckle at his comment. “Very true. I do know a lot of stuff.”

“Is that why you decided to become a teacher?” he asked, slicing his teeth over his lower lip as he studied me. I felt conscious of every inch of my skin, the air thickening between us.

“No, actually, believe it or not, when I first graduated from university I had every intention of going into marketing. I got an internship, did it for six months, and decided it wasn’t for me. So, I enrolled in a teacher training course and never looked back.”

Stu’s brows drew together. “I bet if you’d stuck with marketing you’d be on a much better salary.”

I shrugged. “Probably, but it had no soul. I find teaching far more rewarding. I get to make a real change in people’s lives, instead of spending my days trying to figure out ways to make them buy more stuff they don’t need.”

Stu chuckled. “Yeah but, maybe that way you wouldn’t be living in a crapshack basement flat. There’s an upside to everything.”

I shook my head. “Not necessarily. I could own a swanky penthouse but if I was miserable in my heart then it might as well be a hovel. Teaching makes me happy. It feels right, even if I am living in a ‘crapshack basement flat’” I said, throwing his own words back at him. Stu let out a quiet laugh before levelling me with a stare, his expression oddly tender.

“You remind me of my brother, Lee. He’s always putting the rest of us before himself. I didn’t understand it for a long time,” said Stu, running a hand through his hair as he came to sit next to me on the bed. The mattress dipped and my skin tingled when his arm brushed mine.

“But you do now?”

Stu stared out the window. “Yeah, I do now. It was supposed to be Lee, you know. He was supposed to be the one to go to prison. Little bastard was prepared to fall on his sword like always, take the flack for the rest of us. And you know what? In the past I would’ve let him, but something changed in me. I was sick of sitting back and letting him take one for the team. No matter what way you want to spin it, I was a coward, hiding behind my fucking little brother of all people. So I stepped up. I went behind his back and made sure it was me who got sent down instead of him. He was angry at me for a long time. In a way I think he felt powerless. I’d taken away his ability to protect us by putting myself on the chopping block.”

I stared at him, taken aback by his story. “That was a very selfless thing to do.”

He shook his head. “Nah, I was just taking what had been coming to me for a long time. Anyway, I’m out now and that’s all that matters, but my point is, you and Lee are alike. You’d rather live a life for others than for yourselves, and it’s not right. You should live your own life, Andrea. Just because someone you loved got stolen from you too soon doesn’t mean it’s over. There’s so much more out there for you.”

His voice was tender as his gaze dropped to my lips, his eyelids hooded. My lungs felt bereft of air as his meaning sank in. And I hated to admit it, but I was shocked by his sentiment. I knew Stu wasn’t stupid, but I hadn’t thought him capable of seeing so much of me either. Just because someone you loved got stolen from you too soon doesn’t mean it’s over. There’s so much more out there for you. He understood me on a level deeper than I ever could’ve expected and it was sobering.

“I never realised I was so transparent,” I breathed, my cheeks heating under his attention.

“You’re not. I’ve just been looking real close.”