The Gallagher kitchen smelled faintly of burnt toast and cigarette smoke, the sound of Debbie yelling at Carl somewhere in the background. Lip sat across from you, hunched over the table with a pencil between his teeth, flipping through a beat-up algebra textbook that looked older than both of you.

“This problem’s easy,” he said, sliding the paper toward you. “x minus four equals ten. What’s x?”

You stared at it a second longer than you needed to, mostly because Lip’s knee had brushed against yours under the table and stayed there. “Fourteen,” you said, glancing up at him.

He smirked. “See? You’re not totally hopeless.” He tapped the eraser against your paper, leaning in just enough that his voice dropped a notch. “Though you do have this habit of overthinking… everything.”

You chuckled. “You sure that’s a bad thing?”

“Not when it’s aimed at math,” he said, “but if you’re thinking this hard about me, you’re wasting your brain cells.” His tone was teasing, but his eyes stayed locked on yours.

Outside, you could hear Fiona yelling something at Ian about school, but Lip didn’t look away. He leaned forward, his arm brushing yours as he corrected a scribble in your work. “Here—carry the two. Unless you wanna keep coming back here for me to fix your mistakes.”