The Friend Zone (Game On, #2)(9)

Gray full-on smiles. “Just like watching you enjoy the hell out of that chicken.”

“You make that sound illicit.”

He chuckles. “You’re making it look illicit.”

I’m about to tell him to piss off, in the nicest possible way of course, when he pushes his sleeves up to his elbows and something on his inner forearm catches my eye.

“Hey, what’s this?” I grab his wrist and gently turn it to fully see the tattoos gracing his skin from wrist to inner elbow. They’re mathematic symbols done in indigo ink.

Gray stiffens a bit, taking a sharp breath. But he lets it out easily and answers with a light voice. “That one there”—he gestures with his chin to the bit I’m tracing with my fingertips at his wrist—“is called Euler’s Identity.” His blue eyes meet mine. “How well do you know mathematics?”

I grimace. “I got up to calculus because it was a major requirement. But I passed on sheer will and short term memory devices. You might as well be speaking in tongues with this stuff.”

Gray gives me a quick, understanding smile. “Okay, then in the shortest sense, mathematicians often refer to Euler’s Identity as the most beautiful mathematical equation in the world because of its elegant simplicity and because it links what we call the five fundamental constants, or fields, of mathematics.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” I stroke a finger along the equation, then trail up to another tattoo—a long number sequence full of fractions and letters and a bunch of things that look like gobbledygook to me. “And this?”

“Ah, that’s a basic proof for Euler’s Formula.” He eyes me with amusement. “I could explain it but—”

“That’s okay,” I say quickly, and he chuckles. Slowly I stroke the tattoos. They’re well done, the script elegant, almost feminine in some way. And though the proofs and equations are thrown down in a haphazard fashion, there’s a surety to them, as if the whole thing was written free-flow without pause. “I didn’t know you were into math.”

Gray’s skin prickles, the fine golden hairs on his forearm lifting as I reach his inner elbow. “It’s just something that comes easily to me,” he says with a shrug. “For my mom too. She could have gone into any field—physics, engineering. But she loved history and theoretical study so she ended being a math historian. Euler was an eighteenth-century mathematician and physicist, a genius. Mom kind of had a thing for him.”

I grin. “That’s cute.”

Gray leans closer to me. Our heads nearly touch as both of us look at his tattoos. His voice is almost a whisper it’s so soft. “She, uh… She died.”

My breath slows. “When?” The idea of him hurting over the loss of his mom, and me not being there for him, makes my stomach hollow out.

“When I was sixteen. Breast cancer.” His throat works on a swallow. “She was in a lot of pain toward the end. I’d sit with her, hold her hand.”

His thick lashes lower, hiding his eyes from me. “She needed that physical contact. But she was in so much pain. She needed more of a distraction than holding my hand.”

Gray’s broad chest lifts and falls as he slows his breathing, gets control. He swallows hard, and I rest my hand on his arm, holding steady.

“One day, I took a pen and told her to give me a lecture. She used to do that with me, expound on the beauty of mathematical theory through proofs, functions, and equations.” He laughs, unsteady. “My bedtime stories.”

Gray’s hand curls into a fist, and the muscles in his arm bunch. “She drew on my arm. Every time. I’d clean it off, and she’d start all over again. These tattoos. They were her last… I had someone ink over her writing. To keep it.”

“It’s beautiful.” I don’t think, just lift his arm and press a gentle kiss to his soft skin.

His forearm tenses, and I find him staring at me with wide eyes. Pain resides there, and a sort of longing too. I recognize it in myself—that need to have someone understand how empty life can feel, as if you’re the only one in your universe.

Gray holds my gaze for another second then clears his throat. “Shit, Mac, you’re going to have me bawling like a baby soon.” He gives me a lopsided smile.

Returning his smile, I let him go and lean back in my seat. “So, crazy complex math is easy for you, huh? You never told me your major.” I’m thinking it’s not what I was expecting.

Gray’s gaze slides away and he takes an extra-big bite of chicken. “Mechanical engineering and nanotechnology,” he mutters around a mouthful.

And I choke on my drink. “Holy shit,” I say when I can breathe again.

Gray just shrugs.

“How the hell did you have time to double major in those fields and still excel at football?”

He slouches down further in his seat. “Added nano to keep things interesting.”

“Because you were breezing through mechanical engineering?” I squeak.

And he fiddles with his napkin. “Yeah, well… Like I said, it’s kind of easy for me. And I really wanted to learn more about nanotechnology. Do you know the cool shit that’s coming out of that field? When you get into the hierarchical architectures of nanostructures—” He stops abruptly, his face a little flushed as if he’s afraid he’s rambling. He is, but I love it.