those years between us

[23] KARMA

HE'D TEXTED ME and I didn't want to reply.

I'd taken one look at the sender in the notification and put my phone screen down, slowly pushing it away from where I sat on my desk until it was at the very corner. Resisting the urge to look at it, even though I knew I wouldn't reply after reading it. Unless it was something urgent.

(What was I going to define as urgent in this scenario?)

Instead I turned back to the essay on my laptop and continued typing away, trying to shut him and the message out of my memory altogether. Pretending that it had never happened, pretending that everything was okay and that I wasn't dying to glance at it and at least had a sense of why he might be messaging me.

My phone chimed again. This time I let out a loud growl and grabbed it. But the second message hadn't been from Orion—it had been from Jeremiah, someone I'd honestly been neglecting since we'd gotten back. I didn't know why. I almost felt... guilty? Every time I was around him, even though I really shouldn't and didn't need to be. I didn't owe him anything.

Hey :) wanna go grab a coffee together tomorrow afternoon?

I tilted my head. Anyone else going?

Just u and me? Think everyone else is busy.

That was a lie. Even just off the top of my head, neither Eileen nor Cami had any classes tomorrow afternoon. And that wasn't even considering Danielle and Mun-hee, who I hadn't seen much of either. We just weren't really in the same group. Our only real bond was Jeremiah, and even him I'd sort of been... well, not exactly avoiding, but also a bit of avoiding.

I was avoiding a lot of people in my life right now, wasn't I?

Makes me wonder if I ought to reconsider some of my life choices.

This was getting worse by the minute.

Orion's message still unread. And I didn't particularly want to read it right now either, making a great show of covering up the notification as I glanced through my other ones. Mostly just random reminders from random apps I didn't care much about and should probably delete soon.

Where to? I sent to Jeremiah, chewing on my bottom lip. Did I really want to do this? Going out with him alone? I wasn't sure if it was the best idea, considering I was now very certain that it just wasn't going to happen. No matter how cute he was.

I just wasn't into him. The way I wasn't with Francis. And I'd honestly just feel really, really bad if what happened with Francis repeated again. With or without Orion Ip, I just didn't think I liked Jeremiah Park in a romantic way. And there was no point forcing myself in that direction if I didn't feel like it.

And there was no point leading him on either.

Maybe this would be the chance? To make everything directly clear? I mean, he was literally inviting me out at a coffee date at this point. I might as well just lay all my cards down and stop unwittingly torturing the poor guy. Seemed fair to put both of us out of our misery.

It wasn't going to happen. And he seemed like a person who was rational enough to understand.

It was with this mindset I accepted his invitation, and we quickly set the place at a coffee shop not far away from my apartment. His dorm wasn't too far away either.

Only slight issue was that I knew Orion frequented that coffee shop. But if I remembered his schedule correctly, he did have a lecture he had to attend at that time, so he probably wasn't going to be frolicking around Redchester. Hopefully. Otherwise it was going to be really, really awkward.