*FREE WITH PAID BONUS CHAPTER*After being dumped by her boyfriend, Elodie Shepherd resigns herself to loving her older brother's best friend from afar, just like she always has, even though he only sees her as his best friend's immature kid sister.
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Taryn invited me to dinner out with her friend group when I floated into the dorm room after Matthew dropped me off, but I didn't feel like hanging out with my ex boyfriend and his new girlfriend, no matter how sweet she was.
I politely declined, then spent the rest of the night working on homework, getting ahead in classes, pasting a face mask on my skin and catching up on my self care that I'd most likely need in the future, mainly hair removal in sensitive places.
A girl could never be too prepared, especially with someone like Matthew.
So in the morning when classes came, I was fresh faced and dewey skinned and in a better mood than I had been in over a year, and I had no idea how I felt about that, but I wasn't going to question this newfound happiness that spared me from my anxiety and depression that always managed to creep in during the good moments.
I had just slid into the seat at my first class of the day that I shared with Dorian, Lan and Ben when my friends entered and took their spots beside me.
"Hey, what'd you get up to last night?" Dorian asked, dumping his bag down by his feet and handing me a coffee.
"You're a lifesaver, Dory. And nothing much, just went back after swimming," I responded, not wanting to get into the 'Matthew' of it all with him considering his feelings that I knew he still had.
"Oh really? I would've thought you'd have gone home with Matthew..." Lan interrupted, turning Matthew's name high pitched with his voice and giving me fake dreamy eyes like someone head over heels in love.
My cheeks immediately heated, and I didn't say anything for a moment, clearly giving Dorian the wrong idea...or the right idea, actually, but I wasn't ready for anyone to know what we had been doing together.
Ben stumbled into the classroom then, laughing and joking with his football friends as they took their seats directly in the row ahead of us, within perfect earshot of our conversation.
"What does that mean, Elephant?"
I groaned at Dorian's nickname.
"That's officially the worst nickname ever," I complained as the professor entered and took their happy time setting everything up, powering on their computer and the projector so we had a few minutes still of talking before class officially started.
"Too bad, I claimed it. Anyway, what's Lan trying to say? You and Matthew...?"
I was a god awful liar. This was going to be painful.
"Um, it's not really anything."
"What? So something's actually going on?"
Just then, Ben turned his head backwards and blatantly stared at the guys, eyes finally stopping to linger on me and he gave me a strange sort of smile, one that told me he still pitied me for some reason.
