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

Bonus Chapter

Aaron, Present-day

“Ugh, I just love that story,” Kai said. Her cheeks reached her eyes as she nuzzled into her boyfriend’s side. “Isn’t it adorable, Jojo?”

Adorable. Sickeningly adorable. Both Oliver and June and Kai and Jonah.The latter two had just started dating like a fucking week ago and I already had cavities from how sweet they were together.

“Yeah,” Jonah retorted in his usual tone. “I especially loved hearing the explicit details of their sex life.”

Oliver accidentally caught eyes with Kai and looked off to the side, his nose scrunching in disgust.

Jonah was being sarcastic and, truthfully, I could agree with him. Oliver and June didn’t quite do it for me. Sure, they were beautiful. Sexy, even. But I don’t know. I didn’t have the desire to fuck either of them.

“Oh, really?” Kai asked. “Because I especially liked the parts about you being weirdand constantly pining after me.”

“He was just as much of a lame loser as I expected,” I said to Kai before turning my attention to Jonah. “Cute cameo, by the way.” I grinned, though I was overtly aware of the empty space around me as I sat alone on the living room couch in the apartment the four of them shared. Oliver and June sat stacked on the loveseat to the right, and Kai and Jonah were knotted with each other on the couch to the left.

Usually, sitting here alone wouldn’t have bothered me. Actually, scratch that. The truth is, I’d never even thought about it. I was totally ignorant of it until I met Kai. Then, suddenly, I started noticing how lonely I was. In the mornings when I woke up, after the gym on my way home, out with friends surrounded by people but a buffer of space around me. I didn’t understand why I suddenly started feeling that way, I only knew she had something to do with it.

She insisted I get to know her friends better after meeting them last week at Briggs’ end-of-summer cookout, but I didn’t expect to get Oliver and June’s full fucking relationship history. I’d do it. I’d listen. I’d try. For Kai. Though I wasn’t ecstatic about Briggs’ lame excuse that he couldn’t make it tonight because he was finally going to pull the trigger with Thalia. Ask her out to the movies, my ass. The loser was probably sitting at home, staring at his phone, chickening out like he always did.

“Yeah, guys. Thanks for that,” Jonah said, lowering an angry eyebrow in Oliver and June’s direction.

“Sorry, Jonah,” June said, lifting her shoulders with a very unapologetic grin. “I promised I’d tell her.”

She did, actually. At the cookout. I was there to witness it, much like I was witnessing this conversation though hardly participating. They were all just so close, so happy, so in love. And I was…me. The muscly guy wearing a too-tight T-shirt and ignoring a text from Girl cafe blonde green pants.

“No,” Jonah said sharply, raising a finger in the air and cocking his head. “You promised you’d tell Kai only about the first time you and I met, and I specifically asked you not to.”

He did, yes. That was also true.

“Oh, come on,” Kai said, smacking Jonah’s shoulder. “I love hearing it, you know that.” She was giving him a look I’d learned to recognize. But truth be told, it wasn’t exactly hard to pin. Her gaze trailed directly from his eyes to his lips and she began shifting in her seat, undoubtedly fighting the urge to jump him right in front of us. “I am disgusted by how much I want you, Jonah,” she whispered.

I didn’t know whether to vomit or blow my load at that. She was saucy, that Kai.

“Don’t even think about it, guys,” Oliver warned.

“Yeah, I don’t think I can handle any more love after that story,” I said, leaning up from my seat momentarily to refill my wine glass on the coffee table. “My poor, lonely heart would simply implode.”

“One day it’ll be you, Aar,” Kai said, whipping her head in my direction. “You’ve just gotta find your puzzle piece.”

I pouted. “I’m too big and ripped and perfect. Other puzzle pieces can’t fit around my edges.”

“Then you’ll have to find someone strong enough to coax their way in,” Oliver said, hugging around June’s shoulder and pulling her in for a kiss to the top of her head. That was probably the most words Oliver had ever said to me directly.

Not that I’m complaining. I get it. I’m new here. It hasn’t even been a week, and these people hardly know a thing about me. I just swooped in out of nowhere expecting them to empathize without any real context. But god, it just sucked seeing how perfectly content they were. It made me realize how perfectly content I was not. I might as well have been a fly on the wall; observing, contributing nothing, making no progress.

Kai understood me, of course. Better than anyone on the planet, besides Briggs. And Jonah did too, I think, in his own way, though he was taking some time to warm up to me. But Oliver and June? They were strangers. Well…except for the copious number of inappropriate visuals of them I now possessed after listening to that fucking story.

“Why don’t you two just let me in?” I whined, looking sidelong at Kai and Jonah. If they’d just let me in, I wouldn’t have to put in the effort of getting to know someone new.

Jonah stared at Oliver and June with a flat look, his cheeks rippling from his teeth which were surely grinding as he deliberately ignored my question. God, I fucking loved pissing that guy off.

“You could never handle Jonah’s cock, Aaron.” Kai threw a piece of popcorn at me from the bowl in front of her. “Besides, we don’t share.”

Jonah’s stiff jaw loosened into the faintest of smiles.

I clicked my tongue. Why’d Kai have to go and leave me behind? Single and alone. Why couldn’t she have been lonely and miserable with me forever?

Briggs was caught up with Thalia, whether he grew a pair or not—and I was starting to think he was a bigger pussy than Jonah was—and Kai was blissfully overjoyed in her perfect relationship with her very best friend.

And where did that leave me?

Wishing I could have what Oliver and June had, or what Kai and Jonah had. I’d never met the blonde ones but, hell, from what I’d gathered from Oliver and June’s story, I wouldn’t have minded having that either. I’d carry a fucking bouncy ball around every day if it meant a hot blonde was gonna fight for me and then ask me to practice kissing. Or wait around in a library nook if a horny brunette was gonna show up and tell me she hated me. I’d even get an unlimited data plan and stay on video chat 24/7 with a cute dude with tattoos and long, black hair or a silly girl with a bright, beautiful smile if it meant my horrid, aching heart would finally feel full.

What the hell did I have to do to get there?

Why the hell wasn’t I enough?