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Chapter Text

I swallow thickly and lick my lips as the hints of thirst start setting in.

Chapter Text

The wind blowed past her as she walked to the theater. She needed to get tickets for "The Diviners" so she could do her assignment, but as she saw at the moment, the box office was closed.

'What to do, what to do,' she wondered as she looked around. The she saw him: Plaid Shirt.

She wasn't going to say she had a crush. Oh no, that's a time full of annoying, unrequited love. No, she was infatuated. He was very handsome, very charismatic, and very smart after all.

She smiled a little, remembering what she had just texted her best friend: 'Damn it! The one day I actually look cute, and I dont even have the lady balls to talk to him >.<'

She could feel a blush growing as she kept walking, determined to grow a pair and thinking of what she could say. But once she got close, she lost her nerve. She went to the box office to see if there were any times posted, or a number to ask when it'd be open, but she found none.

'I guess this is a good excuse,' she reasoned as she turned.

"I'm sorry to bother," she started nervously once close enough.

He looked up from his phone, with a slightly startled expression, then gave an incredulous smile. It made her heart skip a beat.

She continued immediately: "I was wondering, do you happen to know when the box office is open?"

He laughed a little before saying, "Pssh! 'Bothering'" jokingly.

"It's usually open around noon until... Actually, I don't know why it's not open right now."

He glanced around for a moment, and she nervously followed his lead.

'I hope they sell tickets the day of,' she thought worriedly.

"You know what," he said after a moment, "you can actually buy the tickets online. Just look up 'Mt. SAC' 'box office' 'tickets' and it should come up."

"Really?" she asked, her brows lifting in surprise.

"Definitely," he responded with a smile.

"Actually," he said slowly, "I'll text it to you. What's your number?"

That question completely caught her off guard, and a blush immediately burned her cheeks.

"Uh... 626," she started.

He was already busy saving her number to his phone, but her surprise was evident by her long pause.

'Oh yeah, my number! My number... Oh my god, what's my number???'

It felt like an eternity before she remembered, and finally she rushed out "626, 506, 03, 20"

Her sudden reaction made him chuckle under his breath a bit, then said, "I get out from class around 10 so I'm sorry if I text you late."

Her eyes widened in shock as she asked in wonder, "How many classes do you have?"

"Oh, just 18 units," he replied casually.

She was so in shock, she didn't even think to stop herself from stupidly saying: "How in the world do you manage to do that many hours?!"

"I just don't go on some days," he responded and laughed a loud goofy laugh that made her giggle.

"Oh! What's your name?" he asked, remembering her number.

"Alex," she responded shyly.

"I'm Rafael," he said as he outstretched his arm to shake her hand.

She smiled & shook his hand, but her heart sank a little. Not only did they have a have a class together, but they also had introduced themselves to each other before.

'He did say he had a lot of classes,' she reasoned. It made sense that he would have forgotten since he had so much on his plate as it was.

'Well, maybe him having my number will  help him remember me,' she thought mischievously to herself.

She felt a phantom vibration right at that moment and saw the time.

"Ah! I have to get home!" she accidentally said aloud.

She looked up at Rafael, and immediately she felt like putty again, but she quickly thanked him and [tried to] casually mention a "see you on Wednesday."

He just chuckled and shook his head as he said good bye and headed into his class.

Once she was out of his visual range, she immediately took out her phone and sent her best friend an excited text.

'He may not have remembered me, but AH! He asked for my number!' she thought gleefully to herself.

That day was a perfect day. 

Chapter Text

"Oh, hey! Hi," he tells her as he runs one hand through his hair.

She wasn't expecting him to be in class this early, so she's caught off guard.

“Oh, uh, um.. Hi," she responds shyly, her hand trying to decide between a wave hello and a greeting hand shake.

He just laughs as he wraps his arms around her and gives her a quick hug.

Again, she's caught off guard and she only gets to hug him back for the quickest of seconds. Still, this is enough to make her happy for the rest of the day.

But she has a test. And she realizes after going through the questions that maybe she should have studied a bit more than she did...

She does a quick prayer to calm her nerves, then dives head first into the test.

She does the best she can, and once she can no long figure out what to say, she decides there's nothing more she can do; still she wants to finish around the same time as him, so she stalls for a bit. But seeing the test, going over her answers, it's beginning to give her a panic attack & she just has to leave.

She turns in her test slowly, and leaves slightly disappointed.

Still, her good mood can't be completely killed since she did get another hug after all...

She goes downstairs to review her answers, and after some 20 minutes or so, she hears the familiar voices of Plaid Shirt, Smart Girl, and Chill Guy.

'They're probably discussing the test!' she thinks happily to herself and heads toward the stairs.

Right as she's about to take her first step, she thinks 'They might think I'm being weird though...' and hesitates.

She walks around the bottom floor, goes to the back and down some halls, but she can't bring herself to go up. Finally, she just does it.

There's something about him that just makes her so gutsy, and she kind of likes it.

She goes up, and when she gets to the top, she sees him glance at her from the corner of his eye.

"Hey, um... Sorry to bother, but are you guys talking about the test?" she questions nervously.

"Hi," he tells her coolly with a smile as the other two ask if they weren't supposed to.

A blush dusts her cheeks as she looks down and says, "Oh no, we can. I just was wondering how you guys felt about the test..."

She peeks from under her lashes at him, and like usual he has that heart stopping smile of his.

Smart Girl starts talking about how she didn't feel comfortable with it, and Chill Guy agreed.

Plaid Shirt mentions that he didn't think anyone felt comfortable with the test. From there they talk about how they wish they knew what the professor was looking for among other things.

Soon, Smart Girl begins to dominate the conversation and the girl gets slightly annoyed that she can't talk to Plaid Shirt.

'Well, I finally get to talk to her a bit, so there's the bright side. But she's pretty hard to follow...'

She's left nodding and giving slight mhmm's and oh's since most of what Smart Girl's saying is just going over her head.

After a while, Plaid Shirt asks where they parked. Everyone's cars are in the same general area, but she doesn't have one.

"Luckies," she says with a slight pout then says, "I have to take the bus."

And again, Smart Girl dominates the conversation and she's left unable to make small talk with him.

Then she sees him hide behind a wall and jump at a girl walking down the stairs. She looks a lot like Lorde. "Lorde" gets obviously startled but laughs, then hugs him.

At that instant, her heart breaks a little...

'I did ask for a gentle sign to know if I should pursue him or not,' she thinks sadly to herself.

He comes back to the group to say bye, and does the usual guy, hand clap, should hug with Chill Guy, then shakes Smart Girl's hand. But when he comes to her, it's different... She planned on shaking his hand like Smart Girl, but he grabs her's and holds it instead.

Only a few seconds pass, but it feels like an eternity—an eternity of happiness that is.

And just like that, thoughts of that "gentle let-down" are blown away.

Chapter Text

'He's so much taller than me,' she thinks to herself with surprise as she looks up at Long Hair.

She knew he was tall, but never realized by how much until she talked to him face to face.

She had come to the fair since there were always cool events happening, but this week's fair was about sex. Normally, she could talk about sex like she talked about the weather; but considering who was here, she felt rather uncomfortable.

She had walked by the stalls trying to see what it was about, but most of them had already started packing up. Then she had seen what looked like an information booth. She was glad to spot a familiar face as she walked over, and had been happily surprised when he rushed over to her.

"Hey, what did you get on the test?" he asked after a moment.

The sudden question startled her and she worked to try to remember her score. High 90s was all she could think, so she said, "I don't remember... But it was ok. What about you?"

He looked away when he answered "Oh, a C," but kept his happy go lucky grin.

"That's still good," she responded. For her, C's were unacceptable; but when it came to others, she thought C's were fine.

At least they passed.

He just shrugged so she tried to think of something else to say.

"So, uh... What's this fair about?" she had asked as she spotted one stall that really had her shocked.

"Oh well, this week is sex week. We're trying to promote healthy sex practices."

He continued telling her about what was going to happen this week and what each stall did.

He also mentioned that one stall was having a raffle—for naughty toys...

And then he mentioned the stall she noticed earlier: Lube Lab.

She looked at him in confusion.

"What's lube?"

She had an idea about what it was, but she couldn't let him know that!

He blushed a bit and rubbed the back of his head, and after a moment he finally had an explanation: "It's a liquid people put on their body when they have intercourse. And with how popular oral sex has become, they're flavored now!"

This was all fascinating to her, but she was at a loss on how to respond. The matter was made worse when he offered to take her to test it out...

Images of her on her knees with him staring at her from above flooded her head, and others getting that idea if she went with him to the surveyors worried her as well. It's not that he wasn't attractive. Far from that. He was actually pretty hot...

But her heart belonged to someone else already; although, this was a secret only she and her friends knew. And on top of that, how was she supposed to try it out?! It's not like they wanted her to put it on some orifice, did they?

Luckily she was saved by the fact that they had already started packing up.

Despite this awkward conversation maker, she was actually having some fun with him.

This was way more than she ever interacted with Plaid Shirt, that's for sure.

She continued talking with Long Hair for some time, but since he had to do some club activities, she wandered around the area for a bit.

Then she saw her friend Edith.

"Eedee!" she exclaimed with glee.

"Hey~!" her friend responded, though not as enthusiastically.  She seemed tired. But they still talked. Eedee needed help deciding on a subject to debate on, so she helped her.

Then they talked about boys. Eedee mentioned a freckled boy she was infatuated with, yet how she wanted to punch him in the face because of his "verbal spam."

Both the girl and Long Hair laughed at that (which surprised the girl since she thought they were out of ear shot).

She glanced at him with a curious smile, and he smiled back.

Little flutters started to play against her tummy...

The girl mentioned the "cute guy over there" and Eedee couldn't help but tease her.

"Is he your lover?" and "Look at that eye candy," were just some of the things she said aloud to tease the poor girl.

Blood rushed to her face any time Eedee mentioned things like that, but all she did was glance to see if he reacted. Every time, nothing.

Eventually Eedee had to leave, so she invited the girl to come. 

She glanced back hesitantly, then said an awkward goodbye to Long Hair.

He gave her an odd look then laughed and waved goodbye as well.

She felt guilty for thinking this, but if things didn't pan out how she hoped with Plaid Shirt, maybe Long Hair might be interested...

Chapter Text

"Kevin, lights please," the teacher says.

She's ready to take notes but then she feels something push against the bottom of her shoes all of a sudden.

She flinches at the contact, and realizes a second later that it's the person sitting in back of her.

She scoots her feet forward to avoid touching him, but there's nothing she can do about his knees against her back.

This continues throughout the period, and then every time the class meets.

As the semester goes, she slowly gets used to it and finds herself no longer flinching. Sometimes, she just doesn't even move her feet at all. Regardless of whether she moves or not though, there's always physical contact.

Then one day this silent interaction is broken.

"Hey, what grade did you get on the mid-term?"

This is the first they talk; even look each other in the face.

'He's not that bad looking...'

"I did," she started. She didn't want to sound like she was bragging so she finished with, "pretty good," then asked, "How about you?"

"Forty-one," he said with disappointment.

He explains how he misread the prompt, and she tries to make him feel better.

They chat quietly until class starts, then their silent interaction is brought back.

He stretches his legs all the way forward, so once again they're touching the bottoms of her shoes.

However, this time she only moves one foot. She doesn't very much mind his foot against the bottom of hers, or his knee against her back anymore.

It's still a bit odd for her, this constant contact; but it's not like they're flirting or anything, right?

Chapter Text

"You guys should go all out and have a banquet too!" she tells the group from across the room.

That garners a laugh from them, and she notices that Long Hair continues looking at her while he laughs from his seat directly across from her.

'He has a great smile,' she finds herself thinking as she bashfully looks down.

"Alejandra, would you like to join in?" he says with just a hint of something she can't quite identify—but it definitely makes her blush deeply.

She starts shaking her hand and her head as she says, "Pssh~! Ttt! Ttt! Yeah I-I... Yeah, I... I'm fine..."

He just laughs at her reaction.

And this all came up because they started joking about sleeping with the professor for an A.

Chapter Text

Oh, I remember the day I first met Plaid Shirt.

On my first day in college, and I was lost and excited and nervous and scared and just, there was so much going on. My last class of the day was my Roman History class, which I had trouble finding.

A week later, and I was still having trouble finding it. That day, I had come in late.

I was busy trying to put away my map in my bag so I wouldn't look like a tourist in school, so I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking as I opened the door.

I was looking down, towards the floor, and barely caught a glimpse of shoes and stopped just in time from crashing into someone with my first step in.

I looked up in surprise, an apology already on my lips.

The person in front of me was just finishing drinking milk, his head was up as he chugged the carton down.

He bowed his head down, looking straight ahead towards me, and that's when it happened.

A pair of glorious brown eyes that shone with kindness and laughter.

Wavy hair that radiated out, almost like a halo.

Broad shoulders that looked like those of a strong warrior.

And a chest that clearly showed all the tight muscles and definition hidden underneath that sexy white v-neck.

"Sorry about that," he said as he tossed his carton in the trashcan and turned away.

I was in such shock, I immediately stepped outside.

'Oh my god, how embarrassing!' I thought to myself. It wasn't because of the fact that I nearly crashed into that fine ass dude.

No, it was because I was absolutely positive I walked into the wrong class.

'There's no one that hot in any of my classes,' I thought assuredly as I looked to see how off I was wrong.

I looked at my schedule, then back up the number on the door. Then back down at my schedule, and up once more toward the door.

'Holy hell! How did I never see him before???'

Chapter Text

'Oh Plaid Shirt,' she thinks to herself when she sees him out of the corner of her eye.

She decides to sneak a peek and while everyone is looking the student talking besides him, she looks at him for a total of 3 seconds before blushing like mad.

'He wears glasses? Oh my god, he wears glasses!!!' her excited mind keeps repeating.

They were so cute too. Thin gold circles perfectly surrounding his sexy eyes.

'He kind of looks like Usui,' she muses to herself when suddenly images of Usui when he was hurt and Misaki nursing him back to health come to her mind. Before she knows it, that episode is morphed to herself nursing him back to health since he is sick after all.

The class continues and it takes her everything she has to focus on the class and not too look back at him.

After some time, the professor asks a question that Long Hair knows the answer to. She glances at him to make sure she recognized the right voice when she notices gray out of the corner of her eye.

Without thinking about it, she turns to see what this mysterious figure is.

All that processes in her mind is that she just saw the beautiful and powerful angel of death.

'I swear! He's trying to fucking kill me with his sexiness!'

Her heart was pounding, her mouth ran dry, and a powerful sensation in the pit of her stomach and the apex of her thighs made her wish she was alone at home at the moment.

She'd never had such a powerful reaction to an act as simple as seeing someone take off a sweater.

But hot damn~! That man had a body that, just... Well, "If you had been there, if you had you'd have seen it! How could you tell me I was wrong?!"

The way he took off that sweater. The way his shirt looked on his perfectly built arms. Everything about him... It's too much!

Her blush still burns brightly and she can't look back anymore. Her physical response was too powerful and now she can't escape the image of (or desire for) him to take her bent over a table, or for her to bounce up and down on him while touching every inch of his perfect body...

'Focus Alice, focus!' she keeps repeating to herself.

She fiddles with her pen, she taps her foot, she bites on the sleeve of her sweater, all to try to calm her over excited body, but nothing works.

She still sees the images.

She still wants to look at him.

She still wants to talk.

It feels like an eternity before class finally ends, but when it does, she puts her things away slowly and walks at a pretty slow pace. He's packing his things up as well, but she doesn't want to come off as desperate, so she walks outside.

Holding the door for her is Long Hair.

"Thank you," she tells him lightly before taking hold of the door herself so it won't slam on people.

Four people come out right away but no Plaid Shirt...

She wrinkles her nose in disappointment and heads to the stairs.

Surprisingly, Long is still pretty close.

She doesn't think anything of it though since she's so focused on listening for Plaid.

She really wants to talk to him...

Long turns and glances at her curiously, so she smiles. He smiles back, and they both keep walking.

With disappointment, she accepts that she won't get to talk to him today, but she feels awkward walking directly in back of Long without saying anything.

"So... did you go to SOS today?" she finally says.

He explains that no, since his classes were at those times, but he already provided most of the things to help make a profit anyways.

They talk for a few minutes as they head down the stairs, then there's a lull in the conversation.

"So, are you heading home right now?" he asks.

"Yeah, need to take care of my sisters," she responds with a light 'egh' shrug, then asks, "what about you?"

He says he needs to go to some group... All she catches is letters, but has no clue what the club is.

She does realize it's like tutoring though since he mentions he needs to go so he won't fail a class.

After that, they say their goodbyes and go their separate ways.

For some reason, she feels like maybe she needs to look at how they interact because something is telling her she may be giving the wrong message, but she pushes that thought out of her head very quickly.

‘No one would get a signal like that from me,' she thinks to herself as she rolls her eyes.

Yet still, she wishes she had gotten a chance at least to say hello to that heart throb of hers...

Chapter Text

She walks with a confident stride as she heads to the stairs. She's ready for her test, and that's all that matters right now.

'Hey! There's Long Hair!' she finds herself thinking.

A slight smile creeps onto her lips, and her heart beats just a little bit faster.

She becomes very conscience of her bangs and messes with her hair.

Memories of the last time she had her hair like this come back and immediately she gets nervous.

"You look like Snoop Dog!" her dad had once told her when she had her hair braided as it was now.

Her earlier confidence is now gone so she rushes to the stairs!

'Oh god, no!' she thinks to herself as the possibility that she may have a new crush hits her.

'No, no, no, no, no no no!'

She doesn't want to believe it and fears that she may have a problem if it's true.

She glances out the window and sees him walking with a cool grace similar to Plaid Shirt's.

'What is it about these two that has me so head over— NO! I DON'T LIKE THEM! '

And with that, she stalks up the the stairs in frustration.

Chapter Text

1 minute. 60 seconds... Ok, I can do this.

All I have to do is move, & that's it.

It'll be over before I know it.

"Woo!" I hear someone in the back cheer.

"You can do it mom," my 'daughter' tells me as I inhale nervously.

I glance at my 'seat' but immediately feel a blush over take me.

Fuck...

"Just, tell me when it's over," I call out to the time keeper. She just nods, an amused smirk on her face.

She doesn't seem to think I'll go through with this all the way, or if I do, I'll fail. But I do know what I'm doing. I've just never actually... done it... to a real person before...

I step toward my 'seat,' turn, and slowly lower myself.

"Wait!" Brandon calls before I sit all the way.

I freeze my body as it is and turn to look at him.

He's busy clacking away at his laptop when suddenly, "I~ Like~ big, butts and I cannot lie!" starts blaring out from the speakers.

Oh God, why did I think a lap dance would be better than water running down my back?!

I feel my cheeks burn brighter, and hotter still when the group starts cheering again.

I slump my head forward, trying to hide my face with my hair, arms stiff and holding the sides of the chair with all my might.

I can't bear to do an ACTUAL dance, so I hover over Clint's knees.

I hear the timer say "start already," so after a quick glance at the clock, I do.

I slowly lift my hips to the right and, after a beat, swiftly dip my hips down (brushing Clint's knees) and to the other side. I follow the beat of the music when I suddenly realize how quiet it is except for the music. I open my eyes (which I hadn't even realized I closed) and take a quick glance around.

10 seconds down

Jaws dropped

A pair of hungry eyes

Suddenly a cheer

"Oh my god!"  I hear my cousin exclaim.

"Dude!" Leenalee says after her.

"Damn~," I hear a male (definitely not Clint) drawl out behind me...

Clint just laughs and I feel him lift his arms from his sides and up to do God knows what.

As he does so, he leans back, making his knees come forward but he spreads them a bit to
(I assume) avoid making me fall.

I stop my movements, the blush that had since disappeared coming back full force.

"How much time?" I call out shakily.

"30 more seconds, mom!" my friend Arlene reassures.

I take a deep breath, shift back a little, then continue—counting down meanwhile in my head.

The room is noisy, but I focus on the beat of the music.

When it's quick, I move my hips quickly side to side; when it's longer then a beat, I move my hips in circle.

"Five! Four!" the room says, beginning the end of the countdown.

At one, I buck my hips forward as I jump up.

"Done.  That's it, I'm done!" I blurt out rapidly as I rush my usual seat.

'I'm never playing Spoons again.'

Chapter Text

The girl looked at the computer dismally, dissatisfaction coming over her as she looked at the code before her.

“I stole a chair from the other side. Hopefully no one needs it,” the lanky male now sitting beside her says. A soft smile spreads over her face as she nods her head in agreement.

‘Maybe if I move this segment out of the switch statement?’ she thinks to herself. She does so, and once the guy finishes plugging in all the connections to their new pet, she hits play to see what it’ll do. She grins happily and perks up in her seat as she sees her little Evee look around. The smile promptly fades away when she sees that Evee doesn’t move her head back forward.

He lets out a soft sigh of disappointment before suggesting, “Maybe it needs to move another -90 degrees.” She attaches an orange tab after the segment for the scanning segment. After a few minutes of trial and error, they find that not only did they need an extra tab telling Evee to move her head around (it needed to move 90 degrees instead of negative 90), and they added a pause following each movement so that Evee wouldn’t pop her head out again. When her head first popped off, they both reacted like concerned parents as one exclaimed, “Oh no!” and the other said, “Ah! Don’t worry. This should be an easy fix.”

After another 20 minutes, they then successfully were able to work out how to get the wheels to move as well. She decided to move everything out of the switch case statement because, like he said, it was probably registering the void statement instead of the move statement. She was glad to see that a loop statement worked much more effectively. But both the girl and her group member were ecstatic when Evee looked around and then took her first run forward. They laughed good-naturedly when Evee ran forward and turned, crashing into the keyboard of the computer. The girl found it very adorable for some reason, and by the way the lanky male was acting, it seemed he thought so too.

But this is what then made them come to another road block: Evee had one slow engine, so that made her keep moving to her left when she was supposed to move straight. They tried changing multiple alternatives and modifying the current loop so as to get Evee to go straight, but nothing worked. The other sweet member of the group came to try to help, but he couldn’t figure think of a reason why Evee was acting this way. They spent another 20 minutes trying to solve this dilemma, even going to ask their professor about this, before their final group member even noticed. When this member, their team leader, came over (after spending this entire time watching videos with his friends instead of helping with the project), he immediately tried to take charge and showed his “I’ll fix it!” male ego. It greatly annoyed the girl, as did his earlier comment about how he was going to make his wife sign a prenup because “These hoes are just thirsty for my money.” He was just such a stereotypical guy, and an annoying one at that.

Instead of going to talk to the professor discreetly, he all but yelled across the room that their engines weren’t working, and that she needed to change their faulty engine. Just like she told the girl earlier, she told him he needed to compare the motors to other group’s motors. After a slight pause, she added, “Like I told your group members already… Have you done that yet?” The quiet member of the group earlier stayed quiet and looked down at the pieces left over from Evee’s box. The girl and the lanky male involuntarily scooted closer to each other, the girl blushing while they each leaned their heads down towards their respective hands to avoid their professor’s pointed stare. When no one seemed willing to say anything, Lanky Dude took charge and said, “We were trying to see if we could alter the coding first to help. We were about to check right now.” This made the professor smile, and then go back to working on her computer. Once her eyes were off of the group, Lanky Dude turned to the “leader” and harshly whispered, “We were just telling you it wasn’t working; not to tell her. We already did that.”

After some work—and getting a working replacement for Evee’s left wheel—they went back to editing the code. As class was ending, Lanky Dude and the girl watched over Evee as she moved forward rockily (her new wheel jumped around a bit. But at least it wasn’t significantly slower).

“Look at it. It’s wonderful to see something we made together start to move along on its own like this.”

The comment struck the girl. She avoided looking at the male, but her stomach did a funny flip as she tried to ignore the image her brain was conjuring. The image of a baby as it was learning how to walk. A baby with probably very curly hair like his, and maybe full cheeks like hers. Would the baby have his nose? Hopefully it wouldn’t have her build though.

She inhaled deeply as she saved the program and they began to clean. She didn’t need these random, weird thoughts. It didn’t help when he reached across her to unplug the usb cable attached to the computer though. She never realized how long his fingers were, and the metal ring around his middle finger could easily pass as a wedding ring if she didn’t see exactly where it was placed.

As he unplugged the cable attached to the head portion of Evee, she saved the code and went to dropbox so she could save it there.

“Oh no… No! Oh gosh, I’m going to cry,” she said with a note of panic bleeding through.

He stopped his motions and said, “Oh, come on now. Don’t cry. What’s wrong?”

That’s when she told him how the code they spent the entire class time working on wasn’t showing up in the files. “I lost all our work for today,” she mumbled, barely containing her terror. But, he calmed her down. He pointed out that today they spent most of their time trying to fix small portions of the code rather than actually making and adding large segments that were absolutely necessary. She moved her head slightly side to side as she realized he had a point. This really helped her calm down, and in no time, they updated the code from the prior week so it could be just like the code she had accidentally lost.

When they left, they talked a bit, and that’s when she finally got a good look at him. He was wearing a gray muscle shirt with a plaid blue shirt above it. He also had dark gray jeans, and had a thin chain necklace around his neck, plus the ring she had noticed earlier. The colors all complimented him very well. ‘He’s not all that bad looking,’ she realized.

Most of the time, she kept getting too distracted by the bearded cool guy who sat before her to notice anyone else in class. That guy could be irritating, but equally as charming. However, Lanky Dude seemed to have his merits as well. It wasn’t often after all that a male could calm her down so easily. Even rarer was it that a male would go to the trouble of helping her the way he did today. 

Chapter Text

What did she care if she was fat? It’s not like it mattered. She liked food. She liked the way it made her feel. She liked having something she could appreciate, and love. And she liked the warm fluttery feeling it gave her whenever it tasted especially good.

But then, she liked how her clothes fit her…

She liked being able to go and buy clothes, and it actually go past her thighs or not get stuck on her arms. She liked being able to find a lot of clothes that she could actually squeeze into. She liked how jeans hugged her, but didn’t leave marks after an hour of wearing them.

She liked wearing heels, and not having to take them off after an hour because of how much pressure she felt on her ankles.

She liked shirts that, even if there was a roll or two on her tummy, it’s not like they were bigger than her boobs. Heck, she liked being able to wear belts and not have a hard time just making it to the first hole!

She liked how she looked. She didn’t look like before.

But she was still fat…

But what did it matter if she was fat. No one paid attention to her anyways.

As she grabs a handful of popcorn, her stomach twisting in knots from how stuffed it was, her tongue aching in pain from all the food continually scraping over it, all she can think is, “At least I’d have an excuse to why he doesn’t like me…”

Because guys never liked her before. She was too fat. So now that she was a lot skinnier, that clothes fit her a lot better, and even random dudes would stop besides her car to try to get her attention, why couldn’t that one pay attention too?

She fights the urge to throw up. She’s already been told she’s toeing the lines of an eating disorder. She’s binged on foods for most of her life. No need to start purging and prove anyone right.

To eat a little more? To drink another cup…? What does it matter?

She’s already fat. She’s already there. Who cares? It’s not like it matters.

It really doesn’t matter. Not to her. Not to him. Not to them.

Either she’s starving herself, or she’s eating too much.

It’s not like it matters!

It really doesn’t matter. Not at all. Not one bit. It doesn’t matter…

…Right?