The Knockout

by Sajni Patel

  “I get why you did it. It’s just hard to open up about very personal things, to trust people, and when they let you down, it’s not easy to completely erase that. Maybe if we’d been casual friends, but—” I stopped myself.

  “But what?”

  I froze. I couldn’t handle how intensely he watched me. I couldn’t handle how my chest ached from him going to bat for Papa. “But we both know where things were heading and how we feel about each other.”

  “I still feel that way. I can’t get you out of my head.”

  “Apparently there’s not enough room in there for both me and work, though, right?” I probed, trying to get him to admit what he’d done.

  He pulled his notebook from the backpack dangling off his shoulder. “You gave me everything about you. Your passion, your problems, your past, and I barely gave you anything.”

  “So you’re offering your journal of fledgling program chunks?”

  “I’m offering you the thing that no one knows about me.”

  I slowly took the book, not quite understanding. “So what? This is part of your work project. You’re smart with programming. I’m sure every comp-sci teacher you’ve ever had knows, not to mention your parents.”

  “I’m not just smart. I’m a genius.”

  “Uh, okay ego-inflated boy with his foot in my door.”

  “My uncle is CEO of his company, true, but he’s also a programmer for medical stuff for the government. He noticed some of my program fragments and asked me to take an IQ test administered by his department. My score is one hundred and sixty. That’s what Stephen Hawking was, and Einstein. Then they gave me all these programs to decode and had me write the most complex thing I could think of. It was more complex and efficient than their top programmers.”

  “So why is a genius struggling to keep valedictorian status with simplistic theorems?”

  “Because . . . I did it on purpose.”

  “What?” I fumed. I’d really, really hoped that Amit had gotten tripped up by small stuff instead of having lied about needing a tutor.

  He replied slowly, like he was tired and winded, “All the pressure and expectations of being the best, doing the best. And anything less is unforgiveable. You keep thinking I’m some perfect guy, when I’m only running a race to keep up with what everyone wants me to be. I gotta get top grades, be friends with everyone, have everyone’s respect, never make a mistake, be dependable, be devout, do all the things at mandir, do all the things at school, do all the things at home, do all the things at work.

  “Anything less is unacceptable. You’re so lucky to have the support that you get. My parents never once congratulated me on valedictorian status. They never once helped with homework. They thought everything should be natural if I worked hard enough. Which is contradictory, I know. I know they’re proud, but they don’t show it.”

  He scratched the back of his head. “That’s dumb, right? Here you are dealing with your dad’s health and helping your mom and going to the Open and raising funds, being totally badass and independent and just hustling to do whatever it takes. I’m feeling sorry for myself because of parental pressure. Then this job came along and my parents don’t know what the program does. They’re just . . . annoyed that I’m not good enough to fix it. I just need to know if you believe me when I say that I’m sorry for freaking out and being a dick and hurting you.”

  I twisted my lips. I didn’t want to forgive that easily, just because a boy batted his pretty eyelashes and said stuff like how much he needed me in his life.

  I flipped through the journal instead, noting where he’d taken my simplistic advice. “You fail quizzes in class on purpose, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. But they didn’t add up to enough to lose my spot as valedictorian. Mrs. Callihan thought they might, but I knew exactly what I was doing. Just enough to not feel the pressure of having to be perfect. I tried to argue with her about needing a tutor, but she insisted, or she’d talk to my parents to make me see reason.”

  “You didn’t need a tutor, did you?”

  “No.”

  “You wasted my time,” I bit out.

  “I know. If you’re mad at me for that—”

  “I am.”

  “Then it was worth it.”

  “I could’ve been spending time with friends during my last semester in high school.”

  “But you were spending time with a friend.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “If I hadn’t gone along with the tutoring, we probably would’ve never talked to each other more than we had to. And now look at us.” He leaned against the doorframe, taking up the entire space.

  “Yeah, look at us. A nonsensical dude who almost reached Travis-level doucheness by lying to me several times.”

  “And a girl who wants to be mad at him but isn’t.”

  I took a few deep breaths and exhaled. In and out. In and out. “I can’t hold on to any excess negativity.”

  “And I don’t want to be the source of negativity. Ever.” He reached out and took my hand. I didn’t pull away. Not even when he stroked the back of my hand, sending butterflies through my belly and melting my anger.

  I had the right to be upset with him, even though I understood why he did what he did. Even though not being there these past few days wasn’t a regular thing for him. Even though he lied about his parents to spare my feelings. Even though his problems affected him the way my problems affected me. They weren’t any less. Even though his messing up in comp-sci on purpose wasted my time but led to there being an us.

  Because there was an us. And that was worth more than any residual anger. I had to let it go. There could be no room for negativity. Karma and all . . .

  I sternly warned, “Then don’t bring that crap around me again.”

  “Promise.”

  I leaned my right shoulder against the wall, touching his shoulder against the doorframe. He still held my hand in a way that I never wanted him to let go. “Now what, strange boy at my house at ten o’clock at night? Anything else you wanna confess?”

  He glanced down at me. “Are you still mad at me?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  “Okay. Well, then . . .” He snatched me up by the waist into a giant bear hug. I yelped and caught my breath. “First of all, I really missed you,” he said into my hair.

  I hugged him back, my arms around his shoulders and my forehead pressed into his chest. Being this close to Amit was really amazing. And I had missed him too. So much.

  “Second, I’m truly sorry for hurting you. For lying. Third, I’m so proud of you for hustling and getting the funds you needed.”

  “You helped a lot. Thanks for going out of your way without me ever having to ask.”

  “It’s what I do.” Apparently!

  I laughed. And I loved him for it. Wait . . . I didn’t mean it like that. Did I?

  Amit let me go and I instantly missed him. “Are you tired?” he asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.

  “I don’t sleep much these days. I honestly can’t do another kick or math problem. My head might actually implode.”

  He grinned. “I got something to take your mind off the regular.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Like what?”

  He tapped the top of his notebook. “Maybe you can help me while I provide the shoulder that should’ve been here the past few days.”

  “Sounds like you’re getting me to do homework for you.”

  “I’ll tell Mrs. Callihan you tutored me the rest of the semester and prove it by acing all my quizzes and tests.”

  “You, friend, were going to do that anyway.” I poked his chest.

  He kept my hand there. “True,” he said and bent down to pick something up from beyond my sight of the front porch.

  I gasped and took the bou
quet of dark red roses. They smelled like Mama, like the rose-based perfumes she loved so much. “Are these for me?”

  “No,” he said. “They’re for your dad. There’s a card in there. And a gift certificate for your mom.”

  “Oh,” I breathed, and realized how big my smile had grown. “That’s very sweet.”

  Then he pulled a single yellow rose from behind his back and tapped it against my forehead. “This is for you.”

  I took the flower and smelled it. “I haven’t seen a yellow rose in forever.”

  He dragged in a long breath. “Will you help me get the chaos out of my head?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Aside from getting your mind off all the things that need to get done and filling time until you fall asleep, it might actually put you to sleep.”

  “Try harder.”

  “I’d be in your debt.”

  “How much debt?”

  He pressed my palm flat against his chest. “You’d have the keys to my soul.”

  “That’s so corny, it hurt my stomach.”

  His hand fell to my stomach as he took a step inside and closed the door. Yep. The butterfly horde exploded. As soon as he realized how he’d touched me, he backed away and scratched his neck. “Maybe you can tell me about your dad.”

  “He’s better.”

  “Is that all?”

  I quirked a brow as I slid the roses into a water-filled vase and placed it on the table. We took a seat on the couch. Was he trying to get me to tell him about the foundation when I was trying to get him to tell me about it?

  I let out a deep breath and flipped through the notebook. His intense stare bore a hole right through the side of my face. “What are you looking at?”

  “Watching that beautiful brain work its magic. Maybe I can learn something.”

  “Still corny.” I shook my head and nudged him away with my shoulder, but not too hard. The rowing machine killed it today. After five minutes of skimming through the pages, I noticed that the fragments were in order and the whole program started to come together.

  Amit’s phone rang, piercing the silence. I diligently read on. He had been right. This took my mind off things and at the same time, it made me terribly sleepy.

  “Hello?” he said, not even bothering to get up. Instead, he slid his arm over the back of the couch, above my shoulders.

  He muttered some things into his phone, but I could hear the high-pitched woman’s voice on the other end. His mother.

  “Where are you?” she asked in Gujarati.

  “Work.”

  “Beta! Your Masa said you’re not there. Just like you weren’t there last Thursday night. What have you been doing all evening? Why are you lying to your poor mother?”

  I stiffened beside him, but he didn’t tense.

  “I’m doing the work with a friend. She’s helping me.”

  “She? Is it Kareena? Ay, Ma . . . sharam nathyi?”

  I bit my lip, remembering how he’d proudly told his parents about my helpful comments to his work and now his mom was questioning if he had any shame.

  “Yes.”

  “What did we tell you about her? She is not proper for you.”

  “Hah, hah,” he grunted the sounds of a “yes, yes.” He jumped up and went into the foyer, his voice farther away but not completely silent to my astute hearing . . . and the thin walls he didn’t know about.

  “I know, and I also know you’ve been speaking ill of her. Why would you do that? You’ve always been so kind and open. You’re always talking about karma and kismet and whatever, and you’re so devout, but the first teachings are to forgive and embrace. There’s nothing about her to forgive, but there’s everything to embrace.”

  Silence.

  “And Saanvi . . . that’s another problem. You don’t even know how malicious and hurtful she is.”

  Another pause.

  In a rough tone, he ended, “Yeah, we’ll definitely talk about this when I get home. But it won’t be tonight.”

  He returned to the couch and dropped down beside me, his arm draped over the back of the couch. I pretended to be engrossed in this spectacular program, in this fantasy program that seemed to take in a million variables and output medical jargon.

  He thumped my lower lip, the one I was still biting on in the rising tension of his conversation. “Sorry about that,” he muttered.

  “Don’t flick my lip then,” I countered.

  “I meant . . . I know you heard some of that.”

  “I don’t want to be the source of conflict between you and your parents.”

  He leaned his back against the couch and slouched. “You’re not. The source is their viewpoint, their attitude.”

  “You’re going to be in so much trouble.”

  “They’ll get over it.”

  “Rebel rising.” I dug out a pencil and scribbled some alterations as he inched closer and read over my shoulder. His breath warmed my neck and, at the same time, chilled my skin. I shivered.

  “Are you cold?” He pulled down the throw blanket from the corner of the couch and draped it over us.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  After some time, he asked, “Are you mad about my mom?”

  “No,” I muttered.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He cringed. “You seem a little mad.”

  “I’m not. I’d tell you if I were. Just trying to run through this program. It’s a gigantic mess.”

  He poked my side. “Chaos usually is.”

  “Like you had numerical diarrhea splatter on the page.”

  “What the heck?” He laughed.

  “Like this right here? It’s gibberish. Seriously, did a baby monkey steal your pencil and go to town, or what?”

  He went for the notebook. “If you’re going to demean me . . .”

  I pulled away and held the notebook up. “No, you’re going to listen. Did you write down every random fragment that came to mind? You don’t need to use all of these.”

  “Fine.” He got to his knees to retrieve the notebook, but I climbed to mine too.

  “It’s like fighting. You have an arsenal of amazing moves, but you don’t have to use them all in one fight.”

  “Yeah, this was a mistake.”

  I grinned as he tried to snatch the journal, but I was way faster. “You can’t cram everything into one program. This beast is novel-length, and I’m talking Game of Thrones length.”

  “You’re about to get into trouble.”

  “You want help or not?”

  “Without the degrading, preferably.” He shot toward me and I leaned way back, the notebook out of reach. But now Amit had me cornered against the arm of the couch. He gripped the arm on either side of my waist, his biceps flexing beneath his green T-shirt.

  “Where you gonna go now?” he asked, his voice ever deeper, a sound that rumbled through my gut in explosive bursts.

  Oh, crap.

  He leaned in and ever so softly kissed me. My stomach did a million flips as I kissed him back. My body relaxed into his. His chest softened into an unimaginably welcoming weight against mine.

  My fingers ached to climb through his hair. My back wanted to arch into him. My tongue begged to taste his.

  But nope.

  Nope.

  Nope.

  I pulled back and gasped. “Can you type this program out?” I squeezed the notebook in between us, to have something preventing our bodies from crushing one another.

  His chest spasmed with heavy breaths as he took the notebook. “I have it programmed, ready to test.”

  “Can you add the changes? Then run it. See if it works now.”

  He swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

  Amit sat back and pulled h
is laptop from his backpack. He pulled up the program as I brought my knees to my chest and covered myself from neck to toe with the throw blanket.

  His face and neck were a deep shade of red as he focused on the screen.

  “We can’t do that,” I said softly.

  “I know,” he replied just as softly. A smirk turned his lips. “But it’s always fun.”

  I smiled. “Do my simplistic changes work?”

  “Yeah,” he breathed, as if he’d discovered something life altering.

  I scrambled over to the computer to view a short glimpse of a working miracle program. The input algorithms had everything from symptoms to test results, and the program arranged them down to the cellular level. I couldn’t keep up. It was . . . a diagnostic program.

  Amit closed the laptop.

  “Is the chaos gone?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “I should go.” He suddenly looked at me, all seriousness.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Um, you fixed it.”

  “But why do you have to leave?” I frowned.

  He glanced at the computer then back at me. “Do you want me to stay? It’s getting late.”

  “Aren’t you already in trouble with your parents?”

  “Are you asking me to spend the night?”

  Heat rose to my cheeks and my neck. “On the couch. By yourself.”

  “Kareena, you removed the giant mass of unfixable programming taking up brain space.”

  I nodded, but not understanding.

  “All that space these relentless fragments took up is empty. Leaving my brain totally defenseless to be consumed by you.”

  My breath hitched. Words did not come out of my mouth. My brain cells couldn’t even come up with a response.

  “I’m completely under your spell, and I know you don’t want this, not yet. But if I stay . . .”

  “Then what?”

  He pushed the laptop across the couch behind him and scooted toward me, his hands on my hips. “Then there will definitely be an us.”

  Still not understanding, I asked, “Did you just come here to get me to help you? Or to get somewhere with me?”