𝐆𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐑𝐮𝐬𝐡 | 𝟏𝟖+

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧

Once Mia and I go to bed, I go on my phone. The screen lights up my face when I open Instagram. As I'm scrolling, I remember my plan of stalking Alex. I recall trying to find his Instagram after the wedding and I had no luck whatsoever. At least, now that I have his name I can easily find him.

I actually don't know why I haven't stalked him yet because I'm a pretty curious person in general. I want to see what everyone is up to. It's not that Alex was irrelevant to me, but I think it's just me wanting to forget everything that happened. Avoiding any reminder of Alex was the best way to do that, but now I can't. I'd also like to forget the time I was extremely close to being taken advantage of by an older man. An ugly, older man. I didn't say that there was anything wrong with hot, older men.

Plan A. I find Cameron's account and find Daniela's through his. She's posted a few new things including many wedding highlights. I look through her followers, searching for Alex's name, but I come up with nothing. Really? He doesn't follow his own family. No wonder I couldn't find his socials that night either.

Plan B. I find UCLA's official Instagram and tap on their followers. Another fail. Only they can search through their followers meaning if I wanted to find Alex, I'd have to look through all 300K+ followers of theirs.

Plan C. It surprisingly takes me a while to come up with this one, but I find the UCLA Men's Soccer account and when I search through the followers, the same thing happens as before. I scroll through the account anyway because I could potentially find a post of him and to my luck I finally do.

'Alejandro Santos' is written in large bold letters under a picture of him kicking a ball. In the caption, it says he's an attacking midfielder. To my luck, they tag their players. Alas, the Instagram account of Alejandro Santos.

It's private. The bio simply has the UCLA Men's Soccer account tagged. Great. Give me nothing.

***

It's my third day of school and I have biology again. That means I have to talk to Nick. It's been on my mind since last night and simply building up the courage to even stand up and say something to him makes me unsettled. If he had the balls to come up to me at the dining hall a week ago, I should be able to walk up to him today.

On my walk to class, my mind generates countless scenarios of how things would play out based on how I approached him and what I say to him. If I make one wrong move I could fuck something up. What if he just doesn't like me anymore? He would've at least DMed me if he wanted to talk to me. What if he thought I was not interested anymore so he didn't bother?

I could just hide every class and avoid talking to him. The class is big enough to do that, but it would be really inconvenient for the next few months. I already have Alex to deal with and I don't want to deal with Nick as well. Also, I could potentially run into Nick in the hallway or dining hall. I conclude that I need to be on not weird terms with Nick.

I enter the classroom after my overthinking episode and see Amir already sitting. I walk over to where he is and sit down next to him.

"Hey!" I greet Amir.

"Hey, Cami," he moves his backpack over, making room for me to sit.

"Amir, I'm totally freaking the fuck out right now and I feel like I'm going to have an anxiety attack."

"What, why? What's wrong?"

"I'm gonna talk to Nick today after class."

"I thought you were going to avoid him."

"I was, but I'd rather set things straight before I awkwardly run into him in class or at my dorm."

"You're right. Hey, it's no big deal. You're gonna do fine," Amir comforts.