"Shit," I mumble when I spot the car on the side of the road.

Jasper follows my gaze to the side of the road.

"Is that—" he doesn't finish asking the question before I confirm his suspicions.

"I thought Ferraris weren't supposed to break down," he jokes.

I laugh, but I cringe inwardly.

"Pull over," I say reluctantly.

I went to Jasper's tonight aiming to avoid Kyle after practice, and yet, here we are.

"Seriously?" Jasper asks incredulously, but he flips his blinker on, and he pulls his pickup truck up behind Kyle's Ferrari.

"Give me a minute," I tell Jasper before climbing out of the car and walking over to Kyle.

Kyle looks strangely panicked when his eyes land on me. The reaction is over the top even for him.

"Hey," I say, as I approach him.

I aim for my tone to sound friendly even when I'm feeling anything but. I've been extra shitty were he's concerned for the past couple of days, and I figure this is my way of making it up to him.

"Hey," he says, jerking his gaze back to his flat tire without any further acknowledgement of my presence.

I'm abruptly reminded of why I hate the fucker. I hear Jasper's door to his truck swing shut, and I watch as he walks over to us.

"Everything alright?" he asks, keeping his distance from Kyle.

I'm not the only one who hates spoiled rich asshats here.

"Everything's fine," Kyle snaps at Jasper.

"He's trying to help you, prick," I snap.

Kyle glares at me.

"I didn't ask for help," he snaps.

"Alright then," I snap back, walking back towards Jaspers truck.

My anger over the spoiled rich dick is suddenly trumping my urge to set things right with said spoiled rich dick. Jasper follows me towards his truck. He stopped for me. He wouldn't have even considered helping Kyle otherwise. I'm climbing into the truck again when Kyle's voice halts me.

"Wait," he calls out.

Jasper chuckles, and he rolls his eyes. He's already climbed back into the truck, and he's sitting behind the wheel.

"You help, I'll wait here. Otherwise I might punch him, and that'd be slightly counterproductive right?" Jasper jokes.

I laugh, and despite wanting him to stick around so I don't have to be alone with Kyle, I also know it'd be a waste of his time, and I don't want to waste it.

"It's fine, I'll throw his spare on, and he can drive us home. Thanks, man," I tell him.

I climb out of the truck, and shut the door, and Jasper pulls his truck back onto the road before pulling away.

"Where's he going?" Kyle asks, sounding somewhat worried.

"Home I presume," I say, barely holding it together after his attitude with Jasper.

"What?! There's no service here!" Kyle blurts, full on panicking now.

I narrow my eyes at him, and I shake my head in disbelief. Is he serious right now?

"Pop your trunk," I tell him.

He looks confused, but he does what I tell him to. If he hadn't, I'd probably have walked home instead of helping him change his fucking tire. Honestly? How do you get to eighteen without changing a tire?

I open the trunk, and I grab his spare, jack and lug wrench.

"You've seriously never changed a tire?" I snap at him, despite my best efforts to make this a peaceful exchange.

What if I hadn't driven by when I had?

"I have Triple A," he tells me.

Incredible. This. This right here, is why I have issues with money.

"And how's that working out for you?" I snap at him loosening his lug nuts.

He watches me closely, and he has the good grace to look embarrassed.

"I don't have service," he mumbles.

Why it pisses me off so bad, I have no idea.

"Can you show me?" he asks hesitantly.

Something strange happens in my stomach when he asks. Why would he even want to know how to do this? He's right. His privileged lifestyle doesn't offer him a whole lot of a chance for something like this to happen. In fact, it wouldn't have happened had he not ran over a nail. The tread on his tires is perfect. Why do I find him wanting to learn oddly endearing?

"Sure, come here," I instruct.

He's already hovering over me, but he needs to be closer to feel where the jack goes when the time comes to place it. He crouches down beside me, and I can hear every breath he takes in this proximity.

"This is a cover. You take that off first, then these, they're your hub caps, need to be loosened with this," I tell him, demonstrating while I remove his hubcaps.

"So you want to do that first, then apply the jack. If you jack it up first, it'll be harder, possibly not possible, to loosen the hubcaps, okay?" I ask.

He nods his head. I'm sure he follows. It's a simple task, and he's at the top of our class, so I move on.

"K, then feel for the metal part, most cars have a piece exposed specifically for a jack. Feel it?" I ask guiding his hand, ignoring the tingle in my fingertips where they touch his forearm.

He nods. I release my hold on his forearm, and he pulls his arm back. His eyes remain glued to my demonstration.

"Then you jack up the car," I tell him, while demonstrating.

"Replace the tire," I tell him before doing it.

"put the car back on the ground, and put on the lug nuts and cover," I tell him.

When the tire's in place, I'm slightly sweaty. I push to my feet, and glance at him.

"That's it?" he asks, sounding ridiculously awed by how simple it is.

"It's changing a tire, not rocket science," I snap at him.

He bites his lip and averts his eyes. He's embarrassed, and I feel like an asshole. It's not his fault he never learned how to do this, but I still feel resentful as hell. I remember learning how to change a tire from my mom's boyfriend when I was ten. The guy had been driving when the tire had gone flat. My mom's car, unlike Kyle's pristine Ferrari, had four bald tires, and it was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened. When it did, my mom's boyfriend ordered me to change it. When I said I didn't know how, he used the opportunity to dress me down for being useless.

"Thanks for your help," Kyle tells me sincerely as he walks around the car and climbs inside.

Some of my bitterness melts. He sounds sincerely appreciative. I climb into the passenger side of his car.

"No problem," I tell him.

We drive back to the house in silence. I start to go a normal speed, but he tells me there's a max speed with donut tires. If he didn't say everything like I'm the dumbest person on the face of the Earth, I might be able to really appreciate his help.

Right now, I'm wishing just about anyone else would have found me on the side of the road with a flat. He actually seems pissed at me for not knowing how to change the tire. It's not logical, but it's Bryant Caruthers logic.

If he's pissed at me for not knowing how to change a tire, maybe I'm pissed at him for dropping so many damn passes at practice. I'd been sitting in my car for three hours hoping someone would drive by and offer to help when Bryant showed up. During most of that time, I was trying to figure out why Bryant couldn't catch a ball to save his life today at practice, and you'd think, now that we're on the road, my thoughts would be somewhere else, but I'm distracted still when my phone rings.

"Hello," I answer despite the warning sounds telling me not to talk to her with Bryant right next to me.

"Hey, babe," she says through the Bluetooth in my phone.

I quickly turn my Bluetooth off so Bryant can't hear her side of the conversation.

"What's up?" I ask, trying to keep my tone casual.

Talking to her in front of him always seems to end badly.

"Eric says Coach ran you after practice?" she asks.

Of course, she'd pick the absolute worst topic of conversation.

"Um, yeah, but it wasn't too bad," I tell her.

"I've been trying to call," she says.

"Sorry, I had a flat tire and no signal where it went flat," I tell her.

"And no common sense to change the flat," Bryant adds in the background.

I cringe. I'll never understand what it is that makes him hate me so much. I've gone out of my way to be nice to him.

"Hey, babe, I'll call you back," I say.

Ellie isn't thrilled about my cutting the conversation short, complaining that she just got ahold of me in the first place, but I don't care, my anger is getting the best of me right now. I hang up on her before we fully wrap up the conversation.

"Why can't you help someone out without being a dick about it?" I snap at him as soon as I've hung up.

"I can help people without being a dick, but you have to admit, it's a pretty sheltered thing never to have been taught how to change a tire," he goads me.

I cringed the second he pulled up earlier because I knew this was inevitable. I knew he'd know how to do it, and I knew he'd rub it in my face.

"It's no more my fault that I didn't grow up with people teaching me how to change a tire than it is your fault you didn't grow up with money," I snap at him.

"You could have asked someone to show you. You know what you get when you ask someone for money? Laughed at, unless you work your ass off for it or you're born into it," he tells me.

"Who would I have asked? My father?" I ask.

"You have friends! I'm so tired of your self-pitying bullshit, Amerson! I've lived in your house for over a year. If you really wanted to take the miniscule step of figuring out how to do one fucking thing on your own, you could have at any point during that year," he tells me.

"Because you make it so easy to ask you for help," I say sarcastically.

"I'm sorry, was I an asshole earlier when you asked me to show you how?" he asks.

He has a point. He was surprisingly nice about showing me how, but that hasn't stopped him from rubbing it in my face since.

"You were making fun of me for not knowing how not five minutes ago," I shout at him as I pull the car into our driveway.

"That has nothing to do with your aversion to asking me for help, dick, but if you really think I had a problem with showing you how to do that, let me be perfectly clear with you.

I will gladly show you how to do anything you want me to show you how to do. I will gladly teach you how to change your tire, or check your oil, or any of your fluids, I'll teach you how to jump start your fucking car and how to change your windshield wiper blades. That doesn't piss me off. Your asking me for my help won't piss me off.

What pisses me off is you going about your life like you don't need to know how to do those things until you're stuck on the side of the road broke down with no cell service. That's when I have an attitude about it because that's you skating on your privilege and not taking the time to figure shit out on your own for the soul reason you know you'll likely get away with it," he says, then he climbs out of my car and slams the door.