That Infuriating Feeling: An Academic Rivals to Lovers Novel (Chasing Feelings Book 2)

Chapter 1

June, 2017, The Day Before Move-in Day, Sophomore Year of College

“Stop!” I screamed, ripping the pillow off my bed and throwing it at my closed bedroom door. I rubbed my socks roughly over the shag carpet as I slammed my fists on the mattress, trying to provoke any sensation in my body, anything besides the fury that rippled through my veins. Just as my brain began focusing on the way my lungs expanded and contracted, as my body honed in on my breathing—

“Juni, please. You’re being ridiculous!” my mother called from the hallway.

“Agh!” I grabbed my other pillow and whipped it at the door, the anger that had begun to dissipate sucking right back into my core like iron dust to a magnet.

“Just leave her be for a bit,” my father said quietly to my mother, his voice humming through the thin wood.

“She’s in there talking to herself again like a crazy person!”

I wailed as I grabbed my box—the problem object in this scenario—off the bed. Hugging it into my chest, I sank to the floor and propped my back up against the edge of my mattress. The corners of the wooden box dug into my arms and fingers. I stared down at the intricate carvings on the top of it, tears and snot leaking from my face like I was some sort of hysterical showerhead.

Frantically, I unlatched the box and opened it, taking a deep breath of the sweet vanilla perfume that emanated from the red velvet lining inside, trying to force it past my plugged nose. I stared at its contents. Three Pez dispensers.

Wonder Woman’s head on a red base. Alana purchased that one on our trip to Florida.

A lazy-eyed Garfield. We loved to watch those cartoons growing up.

A jack-o’-lantern. She got that one on October 30, 2013. Her final birthday.

“I can’t do it, Alana,” I said aloud. “I can’t do it. You have to come back. The joke is over. Please come back now. Please. Please. Pleasepleasepleaseplease.” I hugged the box into my chest with my arms and knees, rocking on my tailbone and letting my shoulder blades crash into the bed behind me repeatedly.

“Daya, you talk to her!” my mother said from the hallway. I imagined there was also a light shove on my older sister’s shoulder to accompany that command. My mother’s lips seemed to be perpetually haunted by those five words. Her fingers were programmed to send my sister into the ring every time I broke down.

The doorknob began to turn, and I damned myself for not having any more pillows to throw.

“Go away!” I cried. “I just want to be alone! I just want five seconds to breathe!”

“Ah, and you can’t breathe around us?!” my mother asked just as Daya opened the door fully. All three of my family members stood squished like a picture framed by the jamb. My father’s eyebrows wrinkled with concern, my sister looked at me with a flat, silent apology, and my mother had one hand on her hip, the other flailing through the air angrily. “What, do we take your breath away? Do we use too much oxygen for you?!”

I curled tighter around the box, trying to inhale more of the vanilla perfume that was sprayed inside, but my nose was too stopped up with snot. I always ensured the box smelled like Alana’s old vanilla body spray. It was becoming harder and harder to find as it went out of style, but I always made a point to get more. Each time I smelled it, it transported me right back to 2010, to dancing around my room together wearing feather boas and shutter shades.

“Let her talk to her sister,” my father said, placing a hand on my mother’s shoulder.

“Maybe one day she’ll learn to talk to me,” my mother said. “I birthed her, after all.” Her last few words turned creaky with sobs as my father finally led her away. Of course. Because my meltdown made my mother sad. I couldn’t even have a fucking psychotic break in this house without her somehow making it about herself.

I feel it’s important to mention that my day started off perfectly fine, with no pillows thrown and no snot cascading from my nostrils. My sister, Daya—ten years my senior and ten times more fun than me—came to help me pack for college since she’d be missing move-in day tomorrow for a work meeting. We got my suitcases together, we had a meal as a family, and I was calmly having some tea at the kitchen counter when my mother walked by with my box in her hands. Naturally, at the sight of that, I threw my mug at the sink, shattering the dish entirely. I ripped the box away from her before running upstairs and bawling my eyes out.

Was that too big of a reaction? No. It would’ve been too big a reaction for the first time my mother asked if she should put the box anywhere, and perhaps even the second or third. But after she’d asked me where to put the box seven hundred fucking times today, and after I’d told her each time to leave it put until I said goodbye to it, I thought the mug shattering was a pretty adequate response.

Most people walked on eggshells around me, considering my anger, but half the reason there were pieces of shell at my feet in the first place is because my mother bought full cartons to throw straight at my head. She was just upset that she always seemed to be the one to kick off my episodes, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? Pretend to be okay so she’d feel better about infringing on my boundaries? I didn’t hate her at all. I loved her. She really was a wonderful, caring mother. I just wanted her to listen to me the first fucking time I said something. But she couldn’t seem to tell the difference.

Daya sat down next to me on the floor and handed me a roll of toilet paper, but I refused to let go of the box enough to use it. She unwound a few squares and ripped them off, wiping my nose and face as I sobbed.

After a few moments of silence, my breathing began to even out, the hot air around me began to cool, and I said, “I asked her to stop touching it. I told her to just leave it where it was.”

“I know, June,” Daya said.

I sniffled, my chest shaking with the ghost of my sadness as I thumped my temple down on my sister’s shoulder. “I don’t know where to put it. There’s no safe place for it.”

“You won’t bring it with you this year?”

“I can’t! What if my new roommate tries to steal it and sell it like the last one?!”

Daya clicked her tongue, exhausted with my antics already. “She did not try to steal and sell it. She was just looking at it.”

I couldn’t help the wave of pain that overtook me, forcing me to curl even tighter around the box. Daya reached across herself and rubbed my shoulder.

“You need to make a change this year,” she said quietly. Cautiously. “You need to get out and make some friends. Have some fun. You shut down too much, June. You can’t be angry forever.”

“How could I possibly not be angry?” New hot tears began leaking from my eyes. “I’m supposed to be getting ready for my second year of fun with my best friend, and instead I’m sitting here clutching this box and crying.”

“Okay.” She nodded. “You can be angry. But you’re also allowed to have fun even though she’s gone.”

My sobs returned to full fervor, my head throbbing with heat and my eyes forcing themselves shut as I leaned heavily into my sister. Daya was the closest person I had, which really wasn’t saying much at all. I couldn’t list a single friend. At least not one from the last three years since the only person worthy enough to hold such a title passed away. I’d never replace her, and I was glad to let all my other relationships fall away into the shadows of the past after she left. I could never let myself have fun without her for fear she’d be overwritten somehow. Life would always be a little bit worse from now on, and for her, I could accept that. The best years were behind me, and that was that.

Daya remained in silence until my tears ran out once again, at which point she stood to retrieve a hairbrush from my desk and sat back down with me. She brushed through my hair softly, giving my head extra scratches with the bristles to calm me down further.

“So,” she said as she slid the brush over the side of my head. “Next time we talk, I want to hear some stories about how much fun you’re having. I don’t want to hear about the building with the tallest arches or your favorite class.” The only things I could think to tell my family about last year, given I spent almost all my time burying my head in schoolwork or crying in the bathroom. “I want to hear about parties. And penises.”

I set the box down on the rug and reached to try and flick her forehead, but she dodged it.

“Or vaginas,” she added casually.

“Great segway,” I mumbled.

Despite being a decade older than me and utterly adult in terms of accomplishments and merit, my sister tended to act like a twenty-one-year-old at their first nightclub whenever no one important was watching. I didn’t mind it, I just wished I didn’t feel like our grandmother in comparison.

“Just have some fun, June. Do something stupid. Make a horrible decision and then tell me all about it. You’re twenty years old, for fuck’s sake.”

“I’ve made plenty of horrible decisions.”

“Yeah, I’m not talking about yelling at your roommate or choosing calculus over trig.”

I rolled my eyes, propping my elbow on my crossed leg and slumping my cheek into my palm. “I also went on that date with that guy, Liam, from the library.”

Daya chuckled. “See? We need more stories like that.”

My lips stretched into a slight curve, a snort forcing its way through my slowly unclogging nose. “Daya, you should’ve been there. It was like a scene out of American Graffiti. He wore a leather jacket, took me to the overlook where we fell asleep, and then brought me to the diner the next morning.”

She giggled behind me, separating my hair into sections. “I’m just glad you didn’t get fucking murdered.”

My shoulders bounced with soft laughter as she began braiding. “I will never again accept dick from a self-proclaimed old soul.”

Daya and I shared a short moment of reprieve as her impressively fast fingers weaved my waist-length hair, tossed a band at the end to secure it, and threw it over my shoulder. My braid landed in front of me, and I was feeling significantly calmer than I had been twenty minutes ago.

“Hey, I’ll put your box in the safe at my apartment this year, okay?” Daya said. “It’s fireproof and everything.”

“What if someone breaks in and steals the whole safe?” I asked nervously, perking up a bit at the thought. I bit into my cheek, ripping out a coppery piece of flesh to chew and swallow as I considered the possibility.

“That won’t happen, June. I promise.” Daya patted my shoulder and stood before approaching one of my two packed suitcases by the door. She jerked it to a rolling position. “I’m going to bring this down to the car.”

I nodded, stood, and picked up my box to say goodbye to it. Daya would likely be leaving soon, the box along with her. I set it on the bed and took one last look inside, one last sniff of vanilla. I ran my finger over the red velvet lining and closed it, leaving it on my bed and walking to my second suitcase. Thankfully, I was able to avoid my parents as I hauled it down the stairs and into the back of my mother’s SUV.

It had been a hot day, though things were cooling down as the sky turned pink. Daya and I sat on the edge of the open trunk, silently looking out at the street on which we’d grown up. Our grass was perfectly green. The tree in the corner of the yard was beautifully wild. Our neighbors’ houses lining the pavement all seemed so happy on the outside.

That didn’t really matter, though. The street felt like an old memory I didn’t want to be in anymore. Like a snow globe. I was trapped inside, banging on the glass while everyone outside moved on with their lives. Except there were no cute snowmen or cookie shops or ice rinks. Just grass and houses and the crushing stall of normalcy.