Liona spent the next few days trying to wrap her head around a math problem that was bothering her. However, it wasn't a homework problem that had her stumped. It was how Erik fit all of his work in a day and have anywhere near enough time to sleep and do his schoolwork as well.
Glancing up, she turned her head just enough to catch the long line of customers waiting for their food orders. Erik was not in sight, but she knew he was behind the counter working the register today.
"Liona, focus!" Alli called out to her.
Reluctantly, Liona looked back down at her homework. It was history and Alli was good at this subject, so she was her tutor for now. Chloe just slurped noisily on her near empty soda cup as she lounged half in and half out of the booth, squishing Alli.
"Chloe, I swear, if you don't cut out that slurping, I will dump your next soda all over you!" Alli griped as she glared at her best friend.
"Fine!" Chloe sighed.
Liona just giggled at her best friends. This was an argument that had been happening a lot over the last few days. So far, the threat of upending a soda cup never seemed to happen even though Chloe had been doing it constantly every chance she got. She knew it bothered Alli, but Alli was humoring her while they studied. She probably wouldn't ever make good on that threat, but it still lingered over her head, just in case.
History wasn't exactly a hard subject, but it had a lot of complicated issues that her teacher would always make the class do essays on. Currently, the era at hand was around the time her great-grandparents would have been alive. The late 1900s was such a weird era history wise. It was just on the cusp of a huge technological boom that had grown exponentially throughout the early 2000s.
"Alli, how come the book refers to the 2000s as only being the period between the year 2000 and 2010?" Liona was curious since she was reading about the events that shook the world in the 2020s.
Allison sighed. Liona knew she was reading ahead again while she should be focused on the previous century; she couldn't help but be fascinated by the particular era.
"Because, according to my Mom; our great grandparents were raised in that era and they only looked at the world in macro generations. So every ten years or so, was a milestone in any given Macro generation. The generation called millennials were born around that time and were considered the beginning of the freedom of bodily autonomy movement."
"Okay, so what does that have to do with them calling it the 2000s if the 2000s is a whole century and not just a decade?" Liona watched as Allison banged her head against the table while Chloe giggled at their best friend.
Like this, Liona plowed through each subject after school while she waited for Erik to go on break so that he could tutor her in her least favorite subject. As her two friends switched back and forth with each subject, their banter and playful arguments raised a few eyebrows from fellow patrons, but no one interrupted them until Erik walked over for his break.
"Lia, you look exhausted. How is it you look more tired than I am?" Liona looked up from her position with head face down on the table at the sound of Erik's voice. She grinned and reached out a hand as she scooted over to make room for him to sit.
"Because this is the last week before prom, and my progress reports are teetering on the edge of passing. I'm seeing historical figures in my sleep, numbers dance in my head as I try to relax, and all I hear when my siblings are talking over dinner is how much better they are at everything!" She knew she was whining, but it was Erik so he knew that was just her exaggerating.
"Ah, so translation is you think you're going to fail and your worries are keeping you up." Nodding, Liona sat up as she felt Erik's arm slide around her and give her a hug. She leaned on his shoulder as he embraced her. Letting out a sigh, she resisted the urge to bury her nose in his shoulder. The blending scents of French fry oil, grilled meat and his herbal pheromones should clash, but they always soothed her.
"Erik, please talk some sense into Liona. She's questioning her questions now!" Chloe sounded exasperated as she pushed the notebook she had been reviewing for her back across the table.
"But how do I know they are good questions?! I mean, the teacher always talks in circles and none of it makes sense!" Liona shook her head to clear the mental image of her math teacher talking in riddles and making today's homework extra onerous. Today they had to come up with twenty questions you would ask to solve a problem that, as far as she was concerned, was convoluted. Why were there questions instead of numbers today? At least with numbers, they eventually made sense if she could put it into a perspective that she could understand.
"Let me see." Erik picked up her notebook and read through her questions. There were a few that were excellent when he considered the way his beautiful mate processed math, but the rest looked like she was struggling to come up with anything that would get her out of the assignment as quickly as possible. If her math teacher read these, it was almost a guaranteed insta-fail since they would probably think she was just looking in her math book for the questions.
"Okay, I see a few really good ones, but these here," Erik gestured to the last half of her notebook; "These are going to need to be reworked."
"Ugh! I knew they were no good!" Liona wailed.
"It's alright, Lia, I'll help you. Let me see what you wrote about the assignment so that I can see if my strategy will be of any help to you." Erik flipped her notebook over to her notes from today's class. She had been more diligent in her note-taking ever since Erik started helping her more. It helped him figure out where she was struggling with her assignments.
Liona was always amazed at how quickly Erik could absorb information, then formulate a plan of attack to help her understand it better. It didn't take long for him to get right to the heart of the matter. In no time, he was already getting her to think about the problem from a different angle that she hadn't considered before.
"Okay, so say that this is one of those recipes you like to browse. What kind of questions do you think about when you read through one?"
"Well, I would ask myself how many people can this feed, how many ingredients I'll need, the overall cost to food ratio, since you always complain I make too many expensive dishes…"
"Right, so now apply some of those questions to this problem."
Liona thought long and hard about the problem she had been assigned before writing out a few more questions that could solve and describe it. Eventually, she got through her most hated subject and heaved a sigh of relief. Now that she was done with her homework, she could savor the few minutes left of Erik's break with him by her side.
"Er?" Liona lifted her head from Erik's shoulder, where she had rested it after finishing her homework.
"What's up, Lia?" Erik turned slightly to look at her.
"How do you do so much in so little time?"
"I just do. I don't really think about it…" Liona got the feeling that Erik was avoiding telling her the truth. She wouldn't outright call it a lie, but he was certainly evading the question directly.
The rest of the day seemed to be over in the blink of an eye. When Liona got home, she was greeted with the lively atmosphere of her family gathered in the living room. It wasn't just her siblings and her dad home, but her mom was having an animated conversation with her great aunt Ra-Ra. When she realized her aunt was here, she lit up. It could mean only one of two things; either her prom dress was ready, or she was finally going to get to design the new school uniforms.
"Auntie Ra-Ra!" Liona greeted her with a big smile before she greeted the rest of her family.
"How's my favorite niece?" Her aunt opened her arms for a hug. The slightly plump figure and the greying streaks in her hair seemed a bit more prominent to her than the last time she had seen her. It hadn't been very long, but maybe it was because her aunt was a beta that she worried that these signs of aging seemed more noticeable to her.