ꜱᴛᴀʏ ꜱᴇʀɪᴇꜱ • ʙᴏᴏᴋ ᴏɴᴇ
Follows the lives of six self-proclaimed adults: a witty procrastinator, a smart-mouth with a drinking problem, a crybaby, an overdramatic playboy, a social-recluse workaholic, and an intellectual charmer, as they learn to en...
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The moment Veronica realized she had an irrational crush on Allen Ford was when she was eighteen. She had known him far before that; when he and Bilal came to their house along with few others. They were nineteen, and she was barely fifteen at the time and dismissed her feelings as nothing more than an effect his effortless charm created.
After properly meeting them again when she moved in with Ethan at the age of sixteen, she had grown used to their presence and felt a sort of pride to be friends (1) with college guys. It all went downhill on Allen's graduation when she was eighteen. The moment he personally asked her if she was coming to the ceremony, and she started to feel inevitably flustered, a sharp contrast to her usual carefree attitude. She labeled her feelings for him as a horrifying crush she needed to tamper.
By nineteen, it started to get worse. Not only were her feelings maturing, but he was becoming even more irresistible as time went by. She was aware of how she acted around him, avoiding him at all costs to avoid making a fool out of herself, and to prevent her feelings from further amplifying into something she'll no longer be able to control.
To her, it was just a crush.
To her, it was a mere admiration that would quickly vanish if she got to talk to him past the layer of friendly teasing.
He was nothing more than an idea in her mind. The fantasies she had about him surely didn't help ease the overgrowing infatuation. And when he came on New Year's Eve that year, he had already managed to hijack her brain in such ease that it terrified her. That night Veronica was convinced her family made a complete joke out of her. They had been all ecstatic when her mother slipped the scoop like she was the host in a morning news program broadcast. It wasn't every day that Veronica would have a crush on someone (2), and each rushed to prove they were a bigger jerk than the other by topping the embarrassing situation with a worse one.
Looking back, she hated everything about that night. Each and every bit of it. She felt utterly stupid and naïve.
And now, the feelings came rushing back to crush her self-esteem.
It was the third day of Hell Week when Veronica stepped inside the living room wearing Ethan's pajama set, the top unbuttoned where she wore a tight black tank top underneath.
Ethan's eyes narrowed pointedly. "Can't you wear your own PJs now?"
After her surgery, her mother took all of Ethan's old pajamas for her to be able to slip on smoothly. And even now that she was able to move her arm often - as long as she didn't put pressure on it - she wouldn't give up the comfort.
