"Be sure to lock the door and close down the main lights once you're done, you two," Ms. Darian points out as she's walking towards the exit.

"Yes, Ms. Darian. We understand and promise that we won't forget," I reply with a sweet smile. "Thank you for letting us stay late."

"You two are working so hard. Why would I want to break that concentration by telling you to get out? That would not be cool at all." She has a point. "I will see both of you on Monday. Bye!"

"Bye!" Will and I say simultaneously and Ms. Darian shuts the locked door behind her, leaving Will and me by ourselves again.

"Okay, enough of that fiasco. Solve this last problem and we'll be on our way back home. Come on," I encourage as I tap the paper with my finger.

He groans and runs his fingers through his dirty-blonde hair. He then shifts in his seat that's right next to mine. "It's so hard," he whines as he grabs the paper and starts writing on it fervently.

"The only way you'll get better is to practice every single day until when you look at the first word of the question on the test, you'll exactly know what the answer is. That's when you know you've succeeded."

Will snorts as he's trying to solve the problem. "Sounds promising," he finally says in his unforgettable British accent.

"I won't distract you anymore. Just solve the problem and once you're done, let me know." He nods and I shift my whole attention back to my outline for European History. Although this outline isn't due until two weeks from now, it's better to get a head start than be crying on the last day because your hand is dying.

Five minutes have passed and Will still hasn't figured out the problem that I assigned him. This has me worried as I peer at him periodically and all he's doing is just staring at the textbook. He then groans in frustration and puts his forehead on my textbook. "I give up," he says. "This is way too hard. How do you even do it?"

"A lot of practice. Too much to count, to be honest with you. It's almost like when you're playing basketball. When you have to keep shooting until you make it and then practice that perfected shot over and over again until you've mastered it. And once you've mastered it, you keep on shooting because you need to retain muscle memory."

Will turns his head toward me, as he is still on my textbook, and furrows his eyebrows at me in confusion. I realize that I spoke too much as my eyes widen. Dammit. I should really watch what I am saying in front of other people, especially Will. "You're actually right. It seems like you know some things about basketball," he says as he smiles at me.

"I-I really don't. I mean, my dad watches it a lot and it seems like it's caught on to me, but I never really played the sport, you know? I think it's a little over-aggressive and I've tried shooting the ball a couple of times, but it's very hard to consistently shoot it into the basket," I lie as I avoid his gaze and place a clump of brown hair behind my ear.

He takes his head off of my textbook. "Really? Well, you're not wrong. Most sports require aggressive moves, but I see where you're coming from."

"Stop procrastinating and get this problem done," I tell him.

"You were the one that brought in the example of basketball. What was I supposed to do? Ignore you?"

"Yes," I say with a confident smile.

"You gotta be kidding me," he mutters as he takes a look at the paper once again. "I can't do this anymore. You have to explain it to me again."

Will pushes the piece of paper toward me and I sigh. "I already explained this to you. You have to make all conic equations equal to one. You can't just leave it equaled to forty-two, then your life will be even more miserable. Divide both sides of the equation by forty-two and you have your standard equation. Now, the question is asking you to find the equations of the asymptotes. Do you remember how to find that?" I ask as I use my pencil to explain.

He hesitates a little before shaking his head "no". I continue, "Remember, after you get your standard equation, you have two numbers under the 'x' and 'y-squared'. The one that's in front of the minus sign, is always going to be your 'a' variable because it's always going to be greater than the 'b' variable as that is after the minus sign." I gaze at Will for a while to see if he understands where I am going with this and he ends up nodding slowly.

"Now, since the 'a' and 'b' variables are squared in the standard equation, you must square root it to find the actual variable value. Once you figure that out, then the equation of finding the asymptotes is plus or minus 'b' divided by 'a'. Then by using the slope of the hyperbola, you can figure out what the y-intercept is, leaving you with the answer to the question." I circle my answer on the paper and set my pencil down.

Will rubs his eyes as he is trying to process all of this information. "So you have to square-root the 'b' and 'a' variables that's under the standard equation first than you can use them to plug it into the asymptote equation?" he asks as he traces his finger along the paper.

"Yes. You have to or else your answer will be wrong if you don't."

He nods his head and yawns. "I'm so hungry," he mutters. "I didn't bring anything to eat for the afternoon. I was too busy worrying about other things."

"Well, I guess you should go home then," I conclude as I put my pencil into my pencil case.

"I was actually thinking that we could go out to eat somewhere cause it's a Friday night and maybe help you get out of your house for once." My ears ring loud as he says this. I gulp as I turn my body away from him. What does he mean by this? Don't overthink it. He's just being polite and just happened to want to invite me as he is hungry. He is not asking you out on a date. I repeat, he is not asking you out on a date.