𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 ; lucas zumann

[5] REAL LIFE

"LORIE, YOU'VE REALLY BLOWN UP," Kaya remarked, as the two girls headed to an English lecture.

The brunette looked down at her stomach critically. "Must be that Nutella I had for breakfast," She grumbled. "I hate my metabolism!"

"No, silly! I'm not calling you fat!" Kaya laughed. "Here, look at this," the girl handed her roommate her phone.

"Oh my god!" Lorie exclaimed, looking down at the phone in awe.

It was her Instagram page, but she had 1,130 followers.

"How did that happen?" She asked Kaya, who merely shrugged.

"You tell me," the girl said, taking her phone back off the dumbfounded girl.

"That's seriously weird," Lorie said. "I swear I don't even know that many people!"

The English lecture would probably have appealed to Lorie a lot more if she wasn't so preoccupied. All the while, she could feel a set of eyes on the back of her neck. It wasn't until the end that she decided to turn around and see who it was. It was Lucas, the boy she shared an English book with. Also he was the reason that she'd had to bring her laptop to class because she said he could have the book first. He was staring at her, a smile on his face.

After class, the girl packed her things and shoved them into her red eastpack backpack and faced up the stairs to reach Lucas before he left. Lorie tapped him on the shoulder, crossing her arms.

"Hey, Lorie," the boy grinned, sending shivers down her spine.

She was about to tell him what had happened, she really was, but then it clicked. She remembered being sixteen and watching some tv show on Netflix. At the time, she'd broken up with one of her horrible boyfriends and was going through a lot. The show was called 'Anne with an E', and it was an adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. The girl had sobbed a little at how nice Gilbert Blythe was, and how she wished she could fall in love with a guy like that for once. When it clicked, the first feeling that Lorie had was queasiness. She felt sick. Lucas, the boy she'd bet in the bookstore, the boy she shared a book with, the boy in a grey Yale sweater was a famous actor that played her fifteen-year-old crush. That's a lot for a girl to take in on her first day of classes in college. That must've been why she'd 'blown up' on instagram. She'd stopped watching the show after her and her horrible boyfriend had got back together, which explained why she hadn't remembered him.

"Lorie?" Lucas asked, looking a little worried.

The girl realised she'd not said anything, and was staring, mouth agape, at the boy.

"I...er.... wondered how you'd found my Instagram account?" The girl attempted to regain the usual tone of self awareness that came naturally to her voice.

"Oh, you're roommate Kaya told me," he smiled. "Hey, do you want to grab a coffee, I don't have another class for two hours."

Lorie gulped, and didn't say anything for a moment, still registering what was going on.

"Sure," She said quickly. "But we can't be long, I'm expecting a van with all my worldly belongings inside it."

***

Lucas took her to a café, and not once along the way did either of them mention what had happened to Lorie's instagram. She'd checked her phone twice, and a scary amount of notifications had popped up on it.

A small bell above the door tinkled after Lucas pushed it open. The place was toasty warm, and it wasn't long before the bitter aroma of coffee had wafted over and reached the pair's noses. In attempt to seem sophisticated, Lorie forced herself not to wrinkle her nose at the unwelcome smell. She'd never liked coffee, the girl very much preferred tea, but said she loved coffee to make herself seem more grown up. She pulled a cigarette out of her pocket and placed it between her lips, fumbling around in her pocket for her lighter. Lucas raised an eyebrow.

"Miss, you're not allowed to smoke in here," a waitress told her.

"But I'm feeling frazzled," Lorie pleaded.

"Rules are rules, ma'am."

After ordering, the two sat down in a secluded booth, far from the door. Unlike the previous day the weather had become more like autumn: cold and a little rainy. The booth was very cosy, and with walls on three sides like they were in a tiny room.

Lorie took a sip of her earl grey, not quite sure what to say to Lucas. After a moment of deciding what to do, the girl came to the conclusion that she would tell him what she knew.

"Lucas." Lorie said calmly, her self-awareness had returned. "I have something to admit."

"Go on," the boy said skeptically, setting down his cup.

"I didn't yesterday, but now I do know and it's changed everything because I'm all blown up," the girl blurted out, aware that she wasn't making any sense.

"Come again?" Lucas chuckled in a confused sort of way, his eyebrows furrowing.

"I know who you are," Lorie said, looking down at her cup mournfully. "I realised it this morning when I got a truckload of followers."

"Great," Lucas sighed, squeezing the bridge of his nose in frustration. "So, What? Do you want my autograph or something?"

Lorie raised an eyebrow, suddenly liking Lucas Zumann a lot less.

"Fucking hell, how conceited can you get?" She exclaimed, standing up quickly. "So you automatically assume that I'm some sort of crazy fangirl? Forget it, you don't know anything about me."

And with that, Lorie stomped off out the door angrily, jamming her earphones into her ears violently and putting on her ultimate song for when she was angry, 'I bust the windows out your car'.

How dare he? How dare Lucas insinuate that she was some sort of obsessed girl who would faint at the sight of him. If there was one thing Lorie knew for certain, it was that she wasn't the sort of girl who would let a guy get away with that. She didn't ask for a thousand followers, much less did she ask to be insulted like that.

When Lorie got back to her dorm, it was almost lunch, and she had Photography in a half hour, so the girl decided to eat the bag of chips she'd neglected to eat on the flight over. If this was the amount of drama that Lorie found herself in on her second day of college, she couldn't imagine what she was getting herself into for the rest of the year...