Zara
Deny Deny Deny
Cass’ text pops up the second I unlock my phone.
Cass:
Hurry the fuck up, Sunshine. Car’s running.
Cass:
If you’re not down here in 5, I’m leaving your ass.
Cass:
and then turning around because my mother would kill me if I didn’t bring you with me.
I snort.
Zara:
Calm your tits, I’m literally locking the door.
Cass:
You’ve been “literally locking the door” for ten minutes. Move it.
I shove my phone in my back pocket and grab my duffel, doing one last scan of the room. Laptop? Packed. Pill case? Packed. Headphones? Around my neck.
“Where are you headed?” Riley pipes from her bed, aimlessly scrolling on her phone.
I smile a little too wide as I explain, flinging the duffel over my shoulder. “Off to Cass’. It’s tradition.”
“Uh-huh,” she sits up, eyeing me like she’s seeing something I won’t admit. “And you’re sure you’re not dating?”
A weak little laugh leaves me, something between “oh shit you caught me liking him” and “oh my gosh, no way.”
“Yes, I’m sure. We’re just friends.”
She shrugs and lays back down, phone back in her field of vision. “Whatever you say. Tell the grump I say hi.”
I nod, wave, and head for the door. Week one of college has been a lot.
Not necessarily hard, which is weird. Everyone acts like freshman year is this academic boot camp, but the classes so far are basically High School: DLC Edition.
If I do the reading and pay attention, I’m fine.
I’m actually a little bored, but you can’t say that out loud without sounding like an asshole, or so Riley has informed me.
Between classes and wandering campus, I’ve spent more time people-watching than studying, if I’m honest. I’ve tried to observe Riley whenever we’re in a room together, but she notices almost immediately and asks what I’m doing.
She’s actually really nice, and super insightful, so I really don’t mind rooming with her.
I’m just grateful she hasn’t been one of those nightmare roommates I hear about.
College has been fun and loud. Exactly my kind of vibe. But still, by Friday afternoon, my brain feels like mush, and the idea of going home—of pizza and games and Mama Lori’s hugs—sounds like heaven.
Friday game and pizza night is sacred. It got me through half of high school and all of Cass’ first year here. We’re not stopping just because we’re in college.
I lock the door for real this time and haul my bag down the hall, headphones on but not playing anything. I like being able to pretend I can’t hear people while still hearing everything.
By the time I make it outside, Cass is leaning against his car like a broody Pinterest mood board. Arms crossed, wearing a black T-shirt, black combat boots, and ripped jeans. You know, the whole bad-boy-going-to-ruin-you vibe.
Asshole.
“Four minutes, thirty seconds,” I announce as I approach. “You owe me an apology.”
“I owe you jack shit.” He pushes off the car. “Gimme that.”
He takes my duffel out of my hand like it weighs nothing and tosses it in the backseat. I roll my eyes at the action.
“I had it,” I grumble.
“Now I have it.”
He gives me a look that says don’t argue and opens my door. “Get in.”
“Wow. What a charmer,” I tease, climbing in.
“Shut up,” he mutters, circling around to the driver’s side.
He slides in and shuts his door a little too hard. The car smells of cheap air freshener, and something that is very specifically Cass. I buckle up and immediately grab the AUX cord.
“My turn.”
“Absolutely not,” he argues, starting the engine. “Last time you hijacked the playlist, I had sea turtle documentaries playing through my speakers.”
“It was educational.” I plug in anyway. “And you loved them. Don’t lie.”
He sighs, defeated already. “One song. Then I’m putting on something decent.”
“One song,” I promise.
I scroll my library, thumb hovering for a second before hitting play on Paladin Strait by Twenty One Pilots.
I grin, sinking deeper into the seat. “There we go.”
Cass pulls out of the lot, the late afternoon sun slanting across his face, turning the edge of his jaw gold. He taps the wheel in time with the beat, even as he pretends to hate it.
“You are such a liar,” I say over the music.
“What?” he deadpans.
“You like this song.”
“It’s fine. It’s not sea turtles.”
“Nothing will ever beat sea turtles,” I agree dramatically. “They’re majestic.”
He side-eyes me. “You’re obsessed with animals that can’t regulate their own temperature. Explains a lot.”
“Wow. Rude. Bold words from someone whose emotional range is ‘grunt’ and ‘fuck you.’”
He snorts, but the corner of his mouth twitches.
Score one for me.
We breeze past the last of the campus, trees blurring into the highway. College is cool and all, but the moment the buildings disappear in the rearview, it hits me how tightly I’ve been wound.
Cass must see it, because his hand leaves the wheel for a second to nudge my knee. “You good?”
“Thriving. Classes are easier than I expected. Professor Rogers talks like he’s on double speed, but it’s kind of helping my ADHD.”
“You’re not ADHD,” he corrects automatically.
“You don’t know that,” I counter. “Maybe I just haven’t been properly evaluated, Cassius.”
He winces. “You don’t get to use my birth name on me.”
“I absolutely do. I’m your person. I get special rights.”
He snorts. “Nope.”
“Yup.” I squint at him. “But anyway, how about you? First week as a big bad sophomore. Did you survive?”
“Barely,” he grumbles. “My mechanics professor already hates me. And some freshman tried to drop in on our skate line and almost took my ankles out.”
I gasp. “Not the ankles. How will you dramatically walk away from your problems now?”
“You’re a menace.”
“And you love me for it,” I sing-song, turning back to the window.
His fingers tighten on the wheel for half a second, which I pretend not to notice. We let the music fill the quiet for a while, the lyrics sliding over us. When the song ends, I switch to another track because he doesn’t stop me, but I keep the volume a little lower.
We fall into easy conversation, complaining about the lack of decent coffee on campus, ranking our professors by how murderable they seem, and at times arguing over whether my philosophy professor is hot or just beautifully symmetrical.
By the time we pull off the highway toward his neighborhood, my chest is light and buzzy. Like every cell in my body knows we’re almost there.
“Pizza or home first?” he asks at the light.
I love that he calls it home. That he thinks of it as my home too.
“Pizza,” I answer immediately. “I don’t want to leave once we get to your house.”
“Shocking.”
“Don’t act like you’re not going to eat half the box,” I shoot back. “We both know Friday Night Cass turns into a black hole with a mouth.”
He just shakes his head and turns into the familiar little strip where our favorite pizza place lives. We run in, grab the two large pies the employees basically have memorized by now—pepperoni & jalapeno, sausage & mushrooms—and rush back out before my stomach decides to eat itself.
Ten minutes later, we’re pulling into his mom’s driveway. We haul the pizza inside, the familiar creak of the front door greeting us.
“Mama Lori?” I call, toeing off my shoes. “Your favorite child is home!”
“Bold claim,” Cass mutters.
She appears in the doorway, wiping her hands on a dish towel, face already lighting up.
“There she is!” she crows, completely ignoring her own son to pull me into a hug. I melt into her without hesitation, breathing in that faint smell of whatever she cooked earlier.
“You good, sweet girl?” she asks over my shoulder.
“Better now,” I respond honestly. “Campus is wild.”
“I bet.” She pulls back to cup my cheeks, eyes shiny like they might start leaking any second. “I’m proud of you, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I grin all cute like.
“Hi, Ma,” Cass greets from behind us.
She waves a hand in his direction without looking. “You I see all the time. Go put that pizza down before you drop it.”
I snicker. “She loves me more.”
“She does not,” he insists.
“She absolutely does,” Mama Lori says at the same time, but I know she’s only teasing him too.
He groans. “I’m disowning both of you.”
We don’t stay downstairs long. Friday night tradition has a schedule: hug Mama Lori, deposit pizza, grab Mountain Dew from the fridge, and retreat to Cass’ cave.
“Love you, Mama Lori,” I say, kissing her cheek as I snag a bottle.
“Love you too, baby.” She swats Cass with the towel when he walks by. “Be nice to her.”
“I’m always nice,” he lies.
I snort so hard I almost choke.
We thunder up the stairs, balancing pizza boxes and drinks. His room hits me like a nostalgia bomb—dark comforter, band posters, faint smell of cologne and whatever soap he uses.
“God, I missed this room.” I drop my duffel by the wall as usual.
“You were literally here a week ago,” he points out.
“Yeah, but that was pre-college. This is my first official emotional support visit. It’s different.”
He just shakes his head and grabs the controllers. “You still down for Baldur’s Gate?”
“Is that even a question?” I plop down on the floor with my back against the foot of his bed, legs stretched out toward the TV. “I have to romance Bear Man again. It’s my civic duty.”
He snorts. “Halsin is a druid, not a bear.”
“He turns into a bear,” I point out. “He’s hot and he can maul people. That’s, like, top-tier boyfriend material.”
“You need therapy.”
“Who do you think the pills come from?” I arch a brow, reminding him the amount of therapy I’ve already had. “You just need better taste,” I counter, grabbing my controller. “Now hush. I gotta fix my character’s hair. She deserves to look hot when she’s begging Tree Daddy for attention.”
He groans. “You’re the worst.”
We fall into our usual rhythm—me on the left, him on the right, both of us half-leaning, half-slumping against the bed. The glow from the TV paints the room in blues and golds. The pizza box between us disappears steadily as we hack, loot, and flirt our way across Faer?n.
Hours slide by like that, easy and comfortable. And then, of course, the romance scene finally triggers.