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

Chapter 22

Oli

My heart cracked as I watched June walk away.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it. I did. Too much. So, so, so, so much.

I didn’t want her to walk away. I didn’t want to act like I hated her. I didn’t want to see the way she practically jumped out of my arms after she finished like she was dying to get as far away from me as possible. I tried to be what she wanted, to be as delicate as I could while still playing the game. But nothing I ever did would be enough to make her feel good around me. She had already decided I was the enemy, and I could see it very clearly in her eyes.

When my fingers were inside her, and she kissed me, and she moaned into my mouth and held me tight, it was like… It was like my entire fucking world. Everything blacked out. There wasn’t a single other thing on my mind. Only her, clinging to me, needing me, connecting with me. I hadn’t felt such peace, such clarity in… Well, I don’t even know how long. But I couldn’t stand the way she stared at me after. Like she didn’t even know me. Like she didn’t even want me. She practically ran out of the library.

I couldn’t put my fingers down as I trudged to my dorm room. I kept looking at them to check that they were still there. The whole thing felt like a damn dream. A dream I so desperately wanted to relive. But how could she look at me that way? How could she react that way? Couldn’t she see that I was trying to make her feel good? And she had initiated it. She wore the fucking dress.

I threw my backpack on the dorm room floor in a flurry of confusion and the slightest bit of anger.

Jonah snapped his head around immediately from where he sat at his desk. “Dude, what the fuck?”

I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t make sense of the thoughts in my head. Did she like me or did she hate me? Did she want me or did she want me to go away? How the fuck was I supposed to know? Her complexity drove me wild, and it’s exactly what reeled me into this shit in the first place.

“Are you okay?” Jonah asked.

No, I wasn’t fucking okay. I somehow couldn’t get my thoughts straight despite spending all my energy on getting my fucking thoughts straight. How was it possible that every scrap of my efforts went toward keeping it together, yet I was still sitting at the bottom of a hole, unable to reach the surface? I had no interest in showing up for classes or completing my work. I only had interest in her, and she was fucking terrified of me.

“That fucking girl…” I grumbled.

“Ah.” I wanted to rip the pleased look right off his face and throw it out the window. I was not in the mood for it. “June?”

“Her name is Juni,” I said coldly as I attempted to hold onto any semblance of control.

“She prefers June.”

“Do not sympathize with her,” I snapped.

He laughed at that.

I tried to make a comment about how much I hated her, doing my very best to convince myself that her behavior just now hadn’t split me in half, but I couldn’t even manage.

“What’s wrong with your hand?” Jonah asked. I glanced to the side. Fuck. I was still holding my two fingers in the air like an idiot.

I ground my teeth as I realized it was time to come clean. I did my best to tell him what had happened, hoping he wouldn’t hate me for keeping such a monumental secret. I finally admitted to him that we’d been getting close in the library, and I even told him about where my fingers had been. It honestly was a personal detail that Jonah did not fucking need to know, but I was in a haze. I couldn’t stop imagining it.

As confused as I was, I needed to do something. I needed to win back some clarity. I told Jonah we were going out tonight, despite his complaints, and fucked off to the bathroom for some privacy, warning him that he better be dressed and ready when I got back. Surely, a wank and some social interaction would take my mind right off all this shit.

But of course, I couldn’t even have five fucking minutes to myself. Two seconds after I walked out of the room, the group chat with Kai, Jonah and me started firing up.

Jonah Alexander:New update. Oli is in love.

I rolled my eyes. For someone who didn’t get excited about much, he really knew how to blow things out of proportion. And if he blew things out of proportion, then…well…there were no words for what Kai did when she got a whiff of scandalous news.

Kai :P the bessst!:Omg! Oli who is it?

Kai :P the bessst!:Tell me all about them. Boy? Girl? N/A? Dinosaur? Hair color? SSN?

Kai :P the bessst!:Details, I need details!

My phone chimed three times in a row with her messages, and by the third chime, I was ready to toss the device into a lake. Not now, I typed back shortly, switching the sound off as I rounded the corner to the dorm bathrooms. By the time I got into a private stall, Jonah had already divulged to Kai that I was off to masturbate.

See why I don’t tell them things?

Me: Jonah Alexander, you are no longer my friend.

I set my phone to airplane mode and shoved it into my pocket. My fingers ripped at my fly aggressively, and then…I paused. I looked around myself. I was in a shared fucking bathroom. Staring at the gray-green wall of the stall, I took a moment to reassess my life choices.

Oli Awad: from straight-A student to bathroom masturbator.

Really, though. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Do it in front of Jonah? Do it in the fucking library with June? Not doing it wasn’t an option, because the sounds of June’s little squeaks and moans would not stop ravaging my brain. It was all I could hear. I grunted in frustration and continued my work on myself.

◆◆◆

Jonah dragged his feet in a way that made my teeth grind as we walked through the quad. I couldn’t stand the sound much more than I could stand my own thoughts.

It was November, and not a single part of my life was any better than it was in September. I was officially defeated, brought to my knees by a girl who couldn’t stand me. My father outed me to her, so my relationship with him was obviously not going well. Kai continued to lie to us and tell us everything was fine, even though I was almost positive she was on the brink of a total fucking meltdown. I spent precious hours searching for my charger, or that shirt I wanted, or my phone, or all kinds of things I never used to lose. And Jonah was…well…Jonah. I had failed at keeping us all together, at moving us forward. I went for something I wanted, I got distracted, and I failed.

My eyes were flat on the dimly lit common space in front of me as Jonah groaned behind me.

“What are we doing?” he asked, dragging out the final word.

I shook my head. “We need to get out, man.”

I walked us in the direction of Max’s campus house where he lived with a group of football players. Max, the kid whose place I did not sleep at a couple of weeks ago, sat next to me in American Lit and offered me party invites almost every other week. I ignored him most of the time, but he was a decently nice guy and he reminded me of our homework assignments when I needed it. Which was something he had needed from me, really. Not vice versa. But given how scatterbrained I was lately, I did actually text him a few times.

So, it only felt right that I took him up on one of his constant invitations. I needed to get out of the room, anyway. I needed to think about anything besides June. There would be something to drink at this stupid party and that might help. If not, I’d pick up food on the way back. Either way, my problems would be patched over for the night.

“It’s been over a year since we got here,” I continued, “and the most interesting thing that’s happened to us is that I hooked up with my project partner in the library.” We had practically wasted our entire college experience so far, complaining and moping, and I was tired of it. I was tired of how much I hated my own life.

“What do you mean, Oli? That’s incredibly interesting. That’s the whole college experience, isn’t it? That’s enough for the both of us, so I say we turn in.”

I sighed. I was not in the mood to deal with his negativity on top of my own. We’d been outside for less than ten minutes and he already wanted to go back to the room. “Jonah, I don’t want to be here any more than you do, but we need to try and have some fun while we are.”

“Oli, man. Honestly, I think we turn in. Not to the dorm. I mean…turn in.”

I sighed again. Of course that’s what he meant. Turn in for good. Leave this place. The scary part was that I was officially enough of a failure to consider it. I couldn’t keep up with this shit anymore. I couldn’t fake it just to have some sort of supposed stability that never seemed to show its face. I had nothing left in the tank. “You want to drop out?”

“Uh, yeah, Oli. I do. You do too. You just never saw it as an option. Our music is good, Oli. You, Noah, and I could make, like, a real band. Everyone’s online these days. Let’s make an official band account and go for it.”

“I’m not leaving June,” I blurted. Then, I remembered who I was talking to. “No,” I corrected. “I mean…our project.”

“That’s your only reason?”

Yes. At this point, yes.

The onlything keeping me here was June which, ironically, was also the very thing that made it all seem so pointless. Why would I give a shit about school and grades when she was so fucking mind-consuming? She was magnificent, worthy of all my attention. And not in a bad way. Not in an I’m-going-to-slack-and-throw-my-life-away way. But in a some-things-are-important-and-other-things-are-not way.

June was important to me. School was not. Music was important to me. School was not. My friends were important to me. School was not. I was important to me. School was not.

I couldn’t keep trying for a corporate life I didn’t even want. You know what I did want? To put my time and energy into June. To put my time and energy into myself. To put my time and energy into the band. I wanted to surround myself with things I actually liked until my life was bursting with joy, not with busy work and unwanted obligations.

Maybe I could drop out, stay close by, and convince her to keep talking to me somehow. I could give her time to warm up to the idea. She’d warm up eventually. She just had to.

“That and the fact that my father would never speak to me again. But he hardly does anyway, I guess,” I answered.

“Finish your project,” Jonah said. “I’ll handle the logistics of the band stuff for now. I figure Noah won’t drop out, but by the time we’re home for the holidays, you and I could be free. We’ll work around his schedule. We can find an apartment in the city and go for it.”

I fiddled with my tongue ring between my teeth, my hands balled in my pockets as I counted down the seconds to my answer. I had no more willpower to pretend it didn’t sound like my greatest dream. No more willpower to cover the fact that I was splitting apart at the seams from stress. I couldn’t tell if I was giving up or taking charge of my life, but I finally agreed. We were out of here.

◆◆◆

Max’s party was a bust. We lasted no longer than twenty minutes there. I stole a bottle of their whiskey and snuck out with Jonah, returning to our dorm to drink and call Kai to tell her the news about dropping out. It was early morning for her, but I don’t think she’d been sleeping for very long when we woke her up with our video call, judging by the half-present tone of her voice. She told us she was overjoyed for us, mumbled something about needing to be up for class in an hour, and promptly plunked her head back down on her pillow, falling asleep on screen. Jonah kept her stacked against a pile of books on his desk and muted us, leaving her there like some sort of weird baby cam.

“That’s creepy, Jonah. Don’t watch her sleep.”

“I’m not! I’m just going to make sure she gets up for class. It’s like having a sleepover.”

“Yeah, when you’re both sleeping.” Which they did from time to time, actually. Or we did, I guess, since I was also in the room. It was fun; I won’t lie. Sometimes we had late-night conversations like we used to, and it really did feel like we were all hanging out together in the darkness. But, still, I’ll admit it was borderline creepy. Whatever. I didn’t care about that right now. I took the first swig of whiskey and passed the bottle to Jonah.

The next morning, I woke up with a blaring headache. There were new lyric pages strewn over Jonah’s desk and a few more in my sheets. I looked across the room to find him rubbing his eyes, smearing black pen ink that was drawn on his cheek. Picking up a few of the papers, I read over some of the absolute worst lyrics I’d ever seen in my life. My gaze then snagged on the empty whiskey bottle still sitting at the corner of my desk.

Ah, yes. That’s right.

Last night, drunk off our asses, we were positive these were hits. But this morning, I wasn’t so sure that Railroad Sitting and Butt Licking would truly serve as our first single.

“Because everyone in town is such an ass-kisser,” Jonah had slurred.

“Right, right.” I had nodded my head exaggeratedly and very, very seriously. “It’s social commentary.”

Jonah had pointed his finger at me in agreement and written down the title. We’d gone from drinking to writing to sitting upright on our beds, blasting the saddest songs we could think of on Jonah’s computer and belting them into the room around us until the neighbors knocked on the wall. It was one of those nights. One of those nights when we felt like teenagers again, when we forgot all that had happened in the last year, when Jonah seemed like his old self.

I smiled and pulled out my phone to text Noah and Tiff, asking them to meet us in the quad so we could share the news. They agreed and said they could be here in thirty, so we began pulling ourselves together.

I didn’t tell Jonah about the pen mark on his face as he rolled out of bed and stretched his bones. If we were dropping out, this was his first lesson in the real world. Had he done things properly, like look at himself in the mirror and wash up like a normal person instead of brushing his teeth out the window with a water bottle so he didn’t have to trek down the hall to the bathrooms, he would’ve seen the ink.

“You’ll never get Kai to love you if you don’t figure out some basic hygiene,” I said as he spit his toothpaste into the breeze.

He grunted, pulling his torso back through the window. “She likes me for who I am. One day she’ll be disgusted by how much she wants me.”

“Mhm.” All talk. Jonah was all talk. If Kai ever did give him the time of day, I was sure of two things. One: he would pussy out. Full stop. Two: he would be the one to fuck it all up. Not that he wouldn’t do literally anything for her. He would. Anything. But he got in his own way more often than not.

I headed to the bathroom to clean up, leaving Jonah to do whatever the hell Jonah did. When I returned, we changed our clothes, chugged the majority of our water stash, and headed out the door.

I momentarily considered texting June to have her come, too. She seemed to like Tiff, after all, but I…I don’t know. After yesterday, seeing the way she looked at me, the last thing I wanted to do was scare her. We weren’t together or anything, and telling her I was dropping out somehow felt like pressure. Not for me, but I was worried she would feel that way, that she would feel like I was telling her because I expected her to keep up with me even after I was gone. Which I did, obviously. But she needed to be able to decide that on her own. She was skittish, and I couldn’t bear to see her reject me. I couldn’t bear to drop the news and for her to say something like, Cool, Oliver. And why exactly do you think I care?

No. Not yet. Not today.

We found Noah and Tiff waiting for us at a picnic table in the quad, chatting with each other nervously. Their heads snapped up as they saw us, and they stood from their seats.

“What’s wrong?” Tiff called out. “You can’t tell us we need to talk and then leave us hanging while we wait for you to get here!”

“Everything’s fine,” I assured them, squinting my eyes to keep the sun from poking me directly in my hangover headache. We reached the table and all four of us sat down. “We just have some news.”

“You look like shit,” Tiff said, glancing between us. “Jonah, what the hell is on your face?”

Jonah clicked his tongue and shoved me on the shoulder, searching for his phone before remembering he’d left it charging in the room. I held mine up with a laugh.

“Give me that.” He snatched the device from my hand and opened the front camera, looking at his cheek and rubbing it vigorously with two fingers until the pen disappeared and his skin turned pink.

“Basic hygiene,” I teased.

“Is hard for some people,” he said with a glare.

I rolled my eyes, knowing that it was true, and buried my judgment for the time being.

“My heart is beating its little butterfly wings, my melodious man-friends,” Noah said, holding a hand to his chest. “Out with it, please.”

I nodded. “We’re, uh…” I looked at Jonah, who placed my phone down on the table.

“We’re dropping out,” Jonah said with a little flat-lipped smile.

“Oh my god.” Noah and Tiff sighed simultaneously, each lowering in their seats with relief as if we’d just told them the tests came back negative.

“You’re always so grave, Oli,” Tiff said, pinching her brows between two fingers. “We woke up this morning to a text that said, We need to talk. We thought something big happened!”

“We did need to talk!” I splayed my hands in front of me, palms to the sky. “And this is huge for us.”

She nodded, pulling in another breath.

“We’re happy for you two.” The twinkle in Noah’s eyes as he draped his arm around Tiff let me know just how genuinely he meant that. “Truly. Congrats on finding your path, my pioneering pals.” He turned his attention to Jonah. “What does your lady friend think?”

Jonah perked up proudly in his seat at the use of your lady friend to refer to Kai. I flicked him on the shoulder, and he hunched back down.

“She’s happy, too,” Jonah mumbled.

“One step closer to your dream life.” Noah gave Jonah a nod, and Jonah cracked a small grin to express his thanks. “You too, Oli.” Noah turned turned to me.

I nodded, though I wasn’t feeling quite as relieved as Jonah. I was about 50% relieved. But there was still that 20% that worried about my future and that 30% that worried about June. Profusely. “I hope so, Noah.”