{18+ COMPLETED • COLLEGE ROMANCE}
When a college freshman with a learning disability and a reputation collides with a straight-A, straight-laced girl in the dorm kitchen one night, he sees the darkest parts of himself reflected in her. But the two o...
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M A D I E
November Twenty-Third
Five
I think you were taught to hate
the parts of you that felt the most real.
So you hid those parts.
And no one missed them.
No one missed you.
Until him.
—
The kitchen was a mess. Flour coated the granite countertops, a fine dusting that displayed my cooking ineptitude.
I was a mess, too. I needed to shower, but I had woken up too hungry to care. Curling myself into one of Bren's sweatshirts, I'd thrown the hood over my frizzy hair and padded downstairs to make some food—and a mess.
The heaping spoonful of chocolate chips scattered into the pancake batter as I dumped it in. Then I threw a scoop of batter into a pan, listening to the faint sizzle as it hit the cooking spray. It was five o'clock in the evening, but I'd only been awake for about a half-hour. The obvious decision was to make breakfast for dinner. And to add chocolate—because chocolate.
I didn't think I'd ever taken a six-hour nap before, but apparently, that was what really good sex did to you. I never knew before.
Bren had been propped next to me in bed when I woke, typing away on his MacBook. He had an essay due tomorrow on the Cold War. He also had a quiz he had to finish, which he was doing now on the patio while I made pancakes.
It was problematic, though, because I could see him through the kitchen windows. And he was distracting. I'd thrown away like four burnt pancakes already. I had to whip up more batter. Find more chocolate chips.
He was just so...I didn't know how to describe it. Everything. Bren was everything. Sometimes his face would scrunch up, presumably on questions he didn't know. Or he would tense his jaw and run a hand through his hair, obviously flustered. When he was thinking about something, he'd lift his arms above his head, resting them there. His muscles would flex against the long sleeve shirt he was wearing. He'd bite his lip. Let it go. Bite it again. And even though I felt bad for him, because he was clearly a little stressed, I loved all of it. Every tiny expression, every movement, had me staring.
God, there must be something wrong with me.
I wanted to smooth the worry from his face. I wanted to go out there and kiss him until he carried me back upstairs, back to bed. I wanted to sit on his lap and wrap my arms around his neck. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me, too.
