Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
CALLUM
Je veux une café.
Or is it un café?
The internet says it’s un café.
Whatever. I need a coffee, but I don’t know how to say that in French yet, so I’m stuck with wanting one, in addition to wanting this lecture to finally be over. We’re learning about the weather, and while I’m trying my best to pay attention, I’m way too tired.
One thing I found out in the month since I got here is that I could probably stay asleep for five days straight. Now that nobody’s policing me, I’m getting a solid nine hours a night, and sometimes, it still isn’t enough.
Okay, shoot. I need to focus.
Froid. That means cold, not fraud.
I feel like a fraud in this class. The drop deadline came and went last week, and I only got my first disastrous test back on Monday.
Sure, sixty-seven percent isn’t terrible, but it’s still worse than what I hoped for.
Oh well.
Class finally ends, I make a mental note to review the content that I didn’t absorb, and I head out for a much-needed coffee.
I don’t know what I’d do without my meal plan.
It works across campus, and it’s a lifesaver for my rapidly snowballing appreciation for coffee.
It tastes so much better when it’s made with grounds, not the powder that my parents restricted me to.
First, I stop by the too-short bubbler for some water. I bend over, kicking myself for forgetting the sturdy water bottle Ian gave me the first time we gymmed together.
“Hey, Callum?” a voice calls out behind me.
I cut my sip short and turn around to see one of the girls who was at Ian’s place last week, trying not to dwell on the fact that my butt was poking out for everyone, including her, to see.
“Yeah.” What’s her name? “Laura, right?”
“Yup! Good memory.” She narrows her eyes a little. “Did you just get out of French 107?”
I nod.
“Nice, I thought I recognized you in there.”
“That’s cool. What do you think of the class?”
Laura’s face sours. “I’m dying, and I regret my choices. Anyway, do you wanna grab a coffee or something? I’m done with classes for today.”
“Did you read my mind?” I ask, and I cross my fingers, praying for my joke to land.
“Maybe.” She smiles and flicks her eyes to the coffee stand nearby. “Let’s go.”
We place our orders, and without thinking, I scan my ID at the register to pay for both of our drinks.
“Oh, this one can be on me,” I say. “I have a ton of credit on my dining plan, anyway.” It’s not like I’ll ever run out, not with how basic my orders usually are.
Laura’s face lights up. “Thanks. That’s so sweet of you. No wonder you and Ian are friends.”
I tilt my head, and my face must be giving everything away because Laura snickers.
“That means you’re nice,” she supplies, sitting down at a free table. “Like, Ian-nice. You have met him, right?”
“I have.” Pausing, I join her at the table. I take a sip of coffee and burn my tongue, but I’m beyond caring. “He gave me this jacket out of nowhere, after all.”
“Believe me, that’s normal for him,” Laura says. “Sabrina even gave me a heads-up before she introduced me to him, and then he gave me a four-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne as a housewarming gift.”
Wait. Ian is with Sabrina, Sabrina introduced Laura to him, then he gave Laura a four-hundred-dollar gift, while being with Sabrina…
“Are you both…friends with Ian?” I ask.
Laura opens a packet of sugar and dumps the contents into her cup. “Yeah. Sabrina more than me—she and Ian were friends before we started dating.”
Wait, so are Ian and Sabrina and Laura—
“Right, Sabrina and I are dating, just in case that wasn’t clear,” she adds quickly. “Ian is single.”
Oh. They’re…okay. And all this time, I thought Ian and Sabrina were a thing. Whoops.
“That’s cool,” I say. “He’s a nice guy.”
“He is. Kinda hard to find one of those, so keep him around…” Laura squints and peers behind me. “Speak of the devil.”
I swivel my head and make direct eye contact with none other than Ian, who saunters over with a smile on his face and a pair of flattering light gray jeans on his legs. He lifts his chin in a nod, and I do the same to get those killer thighs out of my over-appreciative vision.
Ian fist-bumps Laura and gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze. My body goes all hot just from that. What isn’t helping is Ian standing right next to me, allowing me to feel the warmth radiating off his body and making heated arousal expand from my chest.
“Hey, guys, what’s up?” he asks.
My stupid dick. Unfortunately.
“Nothing much. We’re chatting and bitching about French class,” Laura says.
“Cool, cool.” Ian thankfully steps back, giving me room to breathe air that isn’t filled with his clean, seductive scent.
But it lingers. My god, it lingers, that fresh, musky bliss that invades my senses and makes my stomach twist with guilty longing.
Jesus. Ian is innocent in all this, and it's me who's way out of line.
“And what's good, Cal?” he asks, turning his handsome face to me. Then he frowns. “You’re a little red. Is everything okay?”
Crap. “Yeah. I burnt my tongue on coffee.”
“Ah, shit. Sorry to hear that.” Ian drops it, but when I flick my eyes over to Laura, I can't help but think she doesn’t believe me. It’s subtle, but her eyes are slightly narrowed, and unless my mind is playing tricks, there’s a near-imperceptible smile tugging at her lips.
“Ouch,” I add, for effect.
Ian stays quiet for a second. “Anyway, I have to get to my next class, but I saw you guys and thought I’d say hi. See ya!”
As quickly as he got here, he’s gone, which leaves a strange, inconvenient vacancy in my stomach.
I miss him.
Ian said maybe twenty words to me in two minutes, and I miss him after that? I’m worse than I thought.
“You two seem to be on the same wavelength,” Laura says. She stays quiet for a second, twisting a strand of her black hair between her fingers. “Ian notices a lot about you. It's cute.”
I sputter. “Cute?”
Crap, crap, crap. Laura can't think I like him.
“Yeah,” she continues. “A lot of guys keep massive walls up and hold themselves back from being proper friends. It's always nice when that isn't the case.”
Digging my fingernails into my forearm under the table, I take a deep breath. “Oh. Okay.”
“Yeah. You're still quieter, but I can tell. You like him, right? In a bro kind of way.”
Oh, god. I'll only spill my forbidden secrets if I stay here.
Grabbing my coffee, I stand up and push my chair in. “He’s a good friend. I should, uh, head out too. Got a paper to write.”
That isn't a lie.
“Okay, we should study together sometime, though,” Laura says. “Let’s grab each other’s numbers.”
Sounds like a plan.
Holy hell, this college is hard. My fingers hover over the keyboard as I will something to materialize.
Whose idea was it to transfer here?
Oh, right. My own.
I blink a few times and refocus on the essay prompt.
This course explores energy transitions, including those occurring now. Given this context, outline the principal obstacles to overcome, as well as the response of at least two levels of government to these obstacles.
I don't know about the government, but my response to this transition of energy, from my body to this paper that isn't going anywhere, is to shut my laptop.
And then I open it again because my scholarship isn’t gonna renew itself—I need to maintain the grades that got me the money in the first place.
But seriously, I thought I was studying kinesiology. How is it that only two out of my five classes this semester are related to my major? At least I’m doing well in our Human Movement course, thanks to the project that Ian, Nick, and I are acing so far.
Sighing, I open my class notes and flip to the start, scanning the pages and winging some kind of outline as I go.
If I have to give my parents any credit at all, it’ll be for choosing one of the few extremely religious homeschool providers that also had some kind of academic rigor. Writing essays and papers is one of my strong suits, to the point where I did assignments for cash back in community college.
I can credit a certain young, attractive online Language Arts teacher for those skills. Mr. Crofton made it super easy to pay attention in class, and those sculpted biceps under tight polos were a bright spot in an otherwise dark time of my life.
It isn’t long before I lose myself in a decent writing flow. If I keep this up, I’ll finish this draft with time to spare…
And then the lights cut out, leaving my room illuminated only by the fading dusky sunlight.
I grumble before increasing the brightness on my laptop and continuing to work on my paper. I get a few hundred words closer to the minimum, feeling good about making the deadline, when a loud knock on my door makes my body jolt and tense up.
After a few deep breaths to calm myself down, I walk over and turn the knob to reveal a firefighter standing in the frigid, humid hallway.
An insanely hot firefighter. There’s some truth to stereotypes, I guess.
Jesus, Callum. Get it together.
“Look, I’ll make this quick,” he says. “A tree fell on the building, and the whole structure might be compromised. You need to evacuate, so grab a jacket and head to the dining hall next door for a briefing.”
“A-alright,” I say, forcing myself not to get lost in his smoky brown eyes like a total creep. “You said the dining hall?”
“Yeah. Turn left and use the stairwell at that end of the building. We’ve closed the other one for safety.” The firefighter has a voice deeper than my repression, and I have to forcibly haul myself back to reality again.
Then he’s gone, off to summon more residents.
Uncertainty floods my brain as I make the quick walk over to the dining hall.
Evacuate the building. For how long?
Damn it, and I was just settling in.