For the first few seconds after I woke up, I felt peaceful, well-rested. It was going to be a good day, I decided. Then, as though my brain had taken a minute to properly load, my thoughts from last night came rushing back. How I'd been texting Carter and realised that I liked him. A lot.
Unlike normal, I didn't check my phone. The chances of a text from Carter waiting for me were far too high when I was this stressed about my feelings. That could wait.
Alice had returned from her boyfriend Sam's early that morning, so I figured I'd update her about Carter, then tell both the girls about my revelation. I was prepared to suck it up and admit that Maya was totally right, after I'd snapped at her when she suggested it. So I got up and headed to the kitchen, but it was empty, despite it being our usual conversation spot. I crossed the hall and knocked on their bedroom door, wondering if Alice just wasn't back yet.
As it turned out, both of them were in Alice's bed, tucked up under the covers. Alice's eyes were red-rimmed, and her cheeks were blotchy as though she'd been crying. She looked up when I came in and managed a weak smile.
"Sydney, I'm so glad you're up," she said, sniffling. "Join us."
I did, managing to squash in next to Maya in the bed that was certainly not designed for three people. I reached out a hand and laid it on Alice's. "What's going on?"
"I got in a huge fight with Sam," Alice mumbled, tears leaking from her eyes.
My heart sank. I'd only met him briefly, but Alice and Sam seemed perfect together, and anyone could see how deeply in love with him she was. It was hard to imagine them on bad terms, much less to the extent that their relationship was in jeopardy.
"Apparently he was acting weird all weekend," Maya explained. "Then just as she was leaving she saw a notification on his phone of a snapchat from someone called Tara."
"Do you know anyone called Tara that it could be?" I asked Alice gently, although the way she was acting made me think this was about more than just a snapchat from any random girl.
"Yeah, his ex, who he claims to have not seen in two years," Alice replied, voice a heart-breaking mixture of anger and sadness. "When I tried to take his phone, saying I wanted a selfie together before I left, he wouldn't let me hold it until he'd cleared the notification. So, I tried to question him about it, but he got all defensive and it turned into this big argument and I never even found out what was going on with Tara. My bus was about to leave so I had to go, which meant leaving us on such bad terms."
I desperately wanted to believe that Sam was a good guy because I would hate to see Alice heartbroken, but it wasn't looking too good for him right now. She explained that he was at work now and she wouldn't be speaking to him until their daily FaceTime in the evening, so until then there wasn't much to do but wallow in it.
"You need a distraction," Maya said firmly, then glanced across at me. "And I think Sydney has the perfect one."
She gave me a suggestive look and I knew exactly what she meant. Only I'd come in to explain how I actually felt about Carter – which was definitely not exciting news when it came to someone as opposed to commitment as he was. But looking at Alice's tear-streaked but hopeful face, I knew I couldn't talk about my own issues. She needed to hear something positive; besides, my crush on Carter was nothing on her boyfriend of two years potentially cheating. So, I just smiled and told her the same thing I'd told Maya the day before.
At the end of it, Alice was even smiling a little. "I can't believe it! You're actually together!"
"Only very casually together," I reminded her, trying to ignore how my heart ached at how badly I wished I didn't have to correct her.
She might have been in a relationship crisis herself, but I knew Alice was too much of a romantic to not speculate over Carter's and my bidding romance.
"So, no feelings?"
I shook my head and put on what I hoped was a casual smile. "Nope, none. Just two friends who are attracted to each other and having some fun, that's all."
Alice tilted her head slightly, looking at me intently. I could tell she was doubting me, but I couldn't tell her the truth, that I was veering dangerously close to becoming a lovesick fool for him. She needed a good distraction, so that's what I'd give.
"You're okay with that? 'Cause the way you talked about him on that first night we were here, it seemed like you would have leapt at the chance to be with him again, like, as a proper couple."
"We're just totally different people now," I insisted, in an effort to convince myself as much as her. "There's nothing like that between us anymore. I'm happy with the arrangement we've got."
"Then that's so great! I'm so glad that at least one of us is happy in their relationship!" Alice said, smiling and squeezing my hand.
Involuntarily, I flinched. "I wouldn't call it a relationship."
In my mind, I heard Carter insisting that he didn't want a relationship, with me or anyone else. It just served as a painful reminder of the fact that whatever my newfound feelings were, they wouldn't ever be reciprocated.
"You know what I mean," she replied. "Plus, you never know what might happen!"
Unfortunately, I knew Carter and I knew exactly what would happen. All I had to decide was whether what we had now was worth potentially getting my heart broken by him all over again.
The sound of knocking on my bedroom door woke me abruptly. I groggily mumbled that it was open, shoving myself upright. Without intending to or even realising, I'd fallen asleep at my desk, and a sheet of paper was now stuck to my face. I glanced across to see Alice step inside dressed in her running clothes.
"You alright there, Sydney?" she asked, lips quirking into a small smile.
"I'm good, just tired," I replied, omitting that the reason was the hours I spent awake last night with thoughts of Carter racing through my mind. "You okay?"
Alice nodded, moving across the small room to sit on my bed. Her hair was pulled into an elaborate braid and her eyes were no longer red rimmed, which was a marked improvement on this morning. "Sam said he'd explain later tonight, so I'm just waiting and trying not to overthink it."
"How's that going?"
"Terribly," she admitted. "It took me like an hour to watch one episode of Friends because I couldn't focus. So, I'm gonna go for a run."
This was nothing surprising; Alice was on the track team and went running near enough every day, so I wasn't sure why she was announcing it to me.
"That should help clear your mind," I replied, rubbing at where my neck had gone stiff from my poorly positioned nap.
"Wanna come with me?"
At the suggestion, I almost laughed. In the months I'd known both my roommates, I'd done the least exercise of the three of us, by far. As in, I'd not done any. It was entirely beyond me why Alice thought this was the ideal moment to suggest joining her for the first time.
"I don't think it's for me."
"But I want company." She pouted. I was about to suggest asking Maya, who did workout at least, when she casually added, "Plus, I thought we could discuss the fact you're in love with Carter."
Hearing those words aloud was enough to make my heart jolt in panic. "What? Wh- why would you say that?"
"So, it's true?"
"No!" I blurted out, then composed myself. "I'm not in love with him... but maybe there are some teeny, tiny, inconsequential feelings there."
I expected Alice to grin, maybe celebrate a little at my confession – after all, she was a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic and she'd been rooting for my love story with Carter since the start. Instead, she chewed on her bottom lip and her expression softened, sympathetic.
"Do you have anything you can wear to run in, or do you want to borrow something of mine?" she asked; apparently, I had no say in the decision to take up running.
"Uh, I've got some trainers and I'm pretty sure there's a sports bra somewhere in my wardrobe," I said, standing to rummage through my small built-in closet. "You better go easy on me, though."
Alice laughed. "Don't worry, we'll go slow. I mean, I want to know all the details and you can't talk if you're too out of breath."
"Shouldn't we invite Maya, too?"
"She's out – hot date. So it's just us tonight."
I managed to find some clothes that were acceptable to exercise in and quickly changed into them. Alice stood up, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. I couldn't quite muster her energy, but I did half-heartedly copy when she began doing warm-up stretches.
The cold evening air was stung my face the moment we stepped outside the building, making my eyes well up. Alice started forward in a casual jog and I managed to keep up, although without her effortlessness.
"You never told me how you guessed about my feelings for Carter."
"I didn't need to guess," Alice told me. "It was written all over your face. I didn't want to push you to say more than you were comfortable with, but then afterwards I figured maybe you were only holding back because you were trying to cheer me up."
"Yeah, it's just not exactly something to be excited about. He has no interest in a real relationship, much less being in love. I don't even think he'd be capable of it," I explained, voice reflecting my sombre mood.
"Everyone is capable of love," Alice countered, looking over at me like I was mad. "Some people just take a little more time, or someone extra special."
I didn't say anything in response to this because I didn't know what there was to say. Instead, I focused on jogging alongside Alice and controlling my increasingly jagged breathing. Of course, my running partner was yet to show even the slightest sign of exertion. We continued on in silence for a couple of minutes, accompanied by nothing but the rhythmic sound of our feet slamming against the ground. I followed her as she adeptly led us along small footpaths and around buildings.
When our pace slowed slightly, I found enough breath to speak. "What if I'm not that someone extra special, though?"
This was it, this was my biggest fear about all this. Carter was bound to fall for someone at some point, I couldn't deny that, but what if that person he fell for wasn't me? No matter how strong I tried to be, the thought was unbearable. I spent six years with this tiny, hopeful thought that if be some crazy chance we were able to, we could be together. Now that felt so close to actually happening, it would only be even more painful when he rejected me.
"Give yourself some credit, Sydney. You're gorgeous and smart and – if you ask me – out of his league," Alice replied. She flashed a smile at me, and I felt a sudden rush of gratitude towards her.
I laughed and shook my head. "About half the girls on campus are after him."
"But he's actually hooking up with you."
"Yeah, and about half the girls on campus."
It may not have made me feel great about myself, but there was no kidding myself that I was special because of my current fling with Carter.
Suddenly, Alice stopped still in her tracks. "You're the only one with history with him. Those other girls – sure, he thinks they're hot, but he likes you. I'm not saying in what way, but he liked you six years ago and he likes you now. The two of you go further than just sex; he can't just ignore the feelings he used to have."
I slowed to a halt too, making up the few paces behind her I had been. She was saying all the right things, but it just wouldn't ring true, for one reason. "But if his feelings back then were as strong as mine, if he loved me like I loved him, then he wouldn't have left like he did. He would have called, or written, or something. That's what I would have done, because I couldn't let him go that easily. But he didn't. He just... left."
Alice's wide eyes were watching me intently, glinting more gold than blue under the glow of the streetlights. I could sense her sympathy. It was only now, after saying it aloud, that I realised just how deep my issues with Carter were. This was more than just my current feelings and his aversion to commitment. Underneath all that, I was still angry with him. Six years' worth of anger and insecurity all built up inside of me.
Without warning, I felt my face crumple as tears brimmed in my eyes. Helpless, I blinked and let them fall down my cheeks. Alice stepped towards me, gently placing a hand on my arm. Then, she pulled her phone out and started typing something on it.
"Texting Maya," she informed me, eyes fixed on the screen. Moments later, she grinned and looked back up at me. "She's on her way back from her date now anyway so she's gonna pick up ice cream."
Even with my cheeks damp with tears, I smiled. The first time my heart had been broken by Carter Pearson, I'd felt entirely alone. But if it were to happen again, at least this time I knew I had these two girls by my side.
Half an hour later, following a dejected jog back to our apartment, I was sandwiched between Maya and Alice on the sofa with two tubs of ice cream in my lap and a spoon each. I couldn't help but remember when Carter and I had sat on this same sofa on Thanksgiving and tucked into our own shared tub of Ben and Jerry's. Had it really only been two weeks? Everything between us seemed to have become so much more intense and it felt like we'd been hooking up far longer than that. It scared me a little to think of how hard and fast I'd fallen for him in that time.
"You know what you need," Maya announced. If I didn't know her better, I'd think she was a tipsy. When I wasn't having a minor crisis of my own, I'd have to inquire further into what seemed to have been a very positive first date. "Sex."
I laughed. "Sex is pretty much what got me into this mess. Well, a seriously good kiss with a ton of sexual chemistry was."
"No, I mean rebound sex."
"I don't think that's quite the solution," Alice said, but Maya shook her head fervently.
"The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else," she insisted. "There's a reason it's a saying."
I thought about it for a moment; a rebound did seem somewhat logical, but realistically I knew I was making an exception with the whole no-strings-attached thing I had with Carter. Right now for me it was him or no one.
"I think it's more complicated than that," I said, causing Maya to roll her eyes. "I mean, he was my first love, and I don't even think I ever really got over him. So now there's just these new feelings on top of that."
Beside me, Alice sighed heavily. She was looking down at her phone with a troubled expression. "Sam's calling me, so I need to take this."
"Good luck, babe," Maya said gently, a total shift from her enthusiasm a moment ago at the prospect of my rebound hook up.
"Let us know what happens," I added. "We're here if you need."
She stood up and headed for the door, then turned to tell me, "Don't do anything you'll regret."
The door swung shut behind her and, on cue, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to see a new Snapchat message from Carter himself.
"Speak of the devil," I murmured as I clicked to open the message.
Are you busy?
Then, while I read the first, a second popped up beneath it.
Like, right now?
I tilted my phone to show Maya, who gave me a cautionary look and told me to respond that I was busy. It was the right advice, the same advice I'd give her if the situation was reversed. But there was something about Carter that made me throw caution to the wind, so I typed out a different reply.
Are you booty calling me?
His reply was instant. When you put it like that it sounds bad.
Aware of Maya's careful gaze watching me, but unable to resist, I wrote back again. Why don't you ask Grace instead?
I hated how my heart lurched in my chest as I read his response.
Grace and I aren't a thing any more. Plus, the only person I want in my bed right now is you.
Then, as though I wasn't already putty in his hands, he sent a picture. I opened it and couldn't help the small, smug smile that crept onto my face. He was lying in bed, topless, staring directly at the camera, hint of a smirk on his lips. Again, I showed Maya the screen. This time, though, her reaction was a little different.
"I may be completely gay, but damn, even I can appreciate that his body looks like it was handcrafted by God himself."
"I know," I groaned, shutting my eyes and holding the phone against my chest for a moment. "I also know that I should be getting over him but, like, maybe I should just sleep with him. Get him out my system."
Maya knew as well as I did that it was flimsy reasoning, but to her credit she didn't try to stop me. I knew the risks of continuing whatever it was Carter and I were, but I didn't care. I wanted to be with him – as a friend, as a fling, as a girlfriend – it didn't matter, as long as I didn't lose him.
I sent back a reply. I'm not busy but only if you come over here.
I'll be there in ten.
Carter arrive exactly eight minutes later, notifying me with a text: here. I grabbed a bottle of perfume from where it had been left on my overly cluttered desk, spritzing myself with it then bounding to the front door. His cheeks were flushed, and he seemed a little out of breath as he stepped into the apartment.
"You got here quick," I commented, leading him to my bedroom and locking the door behind us. For the hundredth time that fortnight, I mentally thanked my should-have-been-roommate for dropping out and leaving the room to me alone.
"I may have run here," he replied simply, too confident to show any self-consciousness over it.
"Someone's eager," I said, trying to conceal just how happy it made me. Maybe it was only a physical thing, but there was no denying that Carter was into me.
I glanced across at my reflection in the mirror on my wall, checking I didn't look too bad after my brief run earlier that night. When I turned back towards Carter, he'd already taken his shirt off. I allowed myself the pleasure of letting my eyes skim over his torso before speaking. "You're not one for playing hard to get, are you?"
He shrugged. "I tried that once, when I was fourteen, and it meant I only got to kiss you once before we moved away. So now, if I want something, I don't waste any time. I'm more one for living in the moment, you see."
"I do see."
I took a couple of steps towards him, close enough to place my hands on his chest, close enough for him to take my shirt off. Was it really true that I was a part of the reason for the huge change in him over the five years we'd been apart?
Still, neither of us had touched the other. Unexpectedly, Carter pulled his phone out.
"Music?" he asked.
I nodded, and, after a few seconds, music started pulsing from the phone. He placed it on my desk, on top of a stack of journal articles I needed to read before my seminar tomorrow morning. I recognised the song as one from the album Alice had played on repeat recently. The track was breathy, romantic, sexy.
"You like Taylor Swift?" I couldn't hide the surprise in my voice. He seemed too cool, at least to admit to listening to an artist like her.
"Guilty pleasure," he replied with a hint of a smirk. His eyes, which looked midnight blue in the dim lighting of my room, were locked with mine.
It struck me that the more I got to know him all over again, the more I softened towards him. Underneath his impressive exterior, he was the same boy I'd fallen in love with back in England, in our sleepy, gold-lined street. So, before he could reveal any more surprising but endearing facts about himself, I pulled him towards me and kissed him.
Within moments, we'd stumbled onto the bed, clothes strewn across the floor. I slipped off my underwear, watching as he sucked in a sharp breath, eyes skirting up and down my body. Then, slower and gentler than I was used to, he moved on top of me, hands placed either side of my head, holding himself a few inches above me. Gradually he lowered himself down and began kissing me, first my lips then my neck, my chest, my hips. Unlike previous times, we didn't speak at all, communicating through touch alone as I guided him closer.
Absentmindedly, I hoped that Carter's music – which was definitely a playlist curated for moments like this – was loud enough to muffle any noises we were making. But before long, all thoughts of anyone or anything else in the world slipped away. It was just him and I. Him and I, like no one else existed. Like no one else could ever matter more than him.
I woke suddenly, eyes jolting open in the darkness. My hand reached over to my bedside table, grasping at it but not finding my phone. Then, I realised. Of course my phone wasn't there, for the same reason I was lying in bed totally naked. I'd just slept with Carter. I recalled lying side by side, bare skin still touching, lazily talking about nothing in particular. At some point I must have fallen asleep beside him, then at some point, while I'd slept, he'd left.
Reaching up behind me for the light switch, I turned it on and squinted as the room flooded with light. I stood up and grabbed my robe from the back of my chair, tugging it around myself, feeling oddly exposed. My phone was on my desk next to my perfume, where I'd left it upon Carter's arrival.
02:12. Given that he must have got here around eleven o'clock, he couldn't have been gone long.
With a sigh, I put on some pyjamas then brushed my teeth, figuring that there was nothing else to do but go back to sleep. As I climbed back into bed, something on the wall behind the basic wooden headboard caught my eye. Tucked in a corner, barely visible, was a small slip of paper, stuck on with blu-tac. I pulled it off, feeling a smile creep onto my lips as I recognised Carter's handwriting, the same messy scrawl as always.
Thank god the universe brought you back into my life.
My cheeks flushed pink, eyes scanning the words over and over. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but those felt like the kind of words that someone with real, genuine feelings would write. He was thanking the universe, for god's sake; it was scarcely a step away from saying we were fated to come back to each other.
One thing was for certain, though: I hadn't got Carter out of my system and I never would. Whatever happened, a part of my heart had always and would always belong to him.