cigarette ends | ✎

iii.

"You're never going to let that go, are you?"

"Nope." I crossed my arms over my chest, and he tracked the movement.

"Looks like the pants ended up fitting."

"Yeah."

We were quiet, and staring at each other, until he said, "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Aren't you going to say thanks?"

"For what?" I asked innocently. No way in hell was I going to say thank you to Augustus Casen, especially because he was the one that got us into this mess. If he hadn't dumped my suitcase back at Harvard, I could be wearing my own clothes right now.

He rolled his eyes and grabbed his keys. "Stubborn ass."

"At least I have one," I replied sweetly.

He didn't respond, only walked out the door. I followed behind after grabbing my backpack and placing my textbooks and essentials inside.

The elevator was fairly quick. I checked my watch. 8:59am, it read, as soon as we stepped into the eating hall. Augustus and I were never late.

As soon as I realized that I put the both of us in a sentence together, I shuddered. Never doing that again.

The buffet was full of other college students. A few of them waved to me and I smiled back, even though I didn't know them.

As I slid through the line, I only grabbed a piece of toast. I'm not hungry, is what I told myself, even though my stomach grumbled in protest.

When I sat down at a table across from Augustus, he stared at my plate. "That's all you're eating?"

"Not hungry," came the automated reply as I took a bite out of the toast.

He was quiet. "You barely ate yesterday. How can you not be hungry?"

"I'm fine, Casen. Drop it." The words were harsher than I intended, but it worked. His brows rose and he stopped mentioning it.

I didn't even finish my toast. I just threw it away and mumbled to Augustus that I would be waiting in the room. He reminded me that the buses were going to come to pick us up at 10am, and it was only 9:15. I just brushed him off.

As soon as I got into the room, I pulled out The Love Hypothesis.

Augustus was back 35 minutes later, and I was well into the book. It was getting so good; I couldn't put it down.

"Hey, bookworm." He threw an apple at me. "Eat."

"I told you I wasn't hungry."

"Just in case." He tugged off his shoes and collapsed in the bed beside me. We were both too afraid to go near the spider bed. "We need to go soon. The buses are picking us up in 10 minutes."

I nodded, my eyes not straying from the page.

"Reading smut?" he asked, leaning over me to read the page.

I quickly covered it up and jumped away from him. "Nope. We should go."

He smirked. "Whatever you say."

I rolled my eyes and slipped on my shoes. I grabbed my backpack and we headed out the door, straight down to the buses.

✦✧✦✧

We got to the university campus at around 10:30am. They signed us in by last name and then herded us to the auditorium in the university's main building, where they would announce the rules and groups.