**My Entry for AMLKoski's Give Back Contest: Bitter Winter**
Alexandra Winters didn't have a problem --she had a diagnosis. It just so happened that her ADHD made it necessary for her to take amphetamines, and it just so happened that her school...
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With his bare skin flush against hers and his soft snores warming the back of her neck, Alex feels more at home tucked in Matt's arms than she has anywhere else. She has such little motivation to move out of his embrace that it takes a space-launch-style countdown in her head to get her limbs to respond. It's already 4am and she is running out of time before the halls start filling up with sleepy co-eds. When she's dressed and ready to leave, she tip-toes over to his bedside table and does the one thing that makes her stomach knot-up worse than it did on drug-test day. As stealthily as she can manage, she unlocks Matt's phone and scours it's contents. She has done it so often now that it's like muscle memory and she moves quickly through his texts, emails, and even voicemail — anything she can find in regards to the counseling office's next planned drug screening. Matt's access to this confidential information shows how much the Head Counselor trusts him. Alex feels slimy, like she's degrading their relationship with every swipe of her finger. She feels like she's using him.
She can admit that she had considered it when she saw him Freshman year, sitting on the edge of the Head Counselor's desk and laughing at a joke he had shared. She was such a tightly wound bundle of nerves then, knowing what she was doing wrong but unable yet to find a way to avoid it. It was a week into classes, and even though they had seen each other the first day, they hadn't crossed paths since. It was dumb luck that Annabel, a sophomore forced to retake a lower class course that Alex was in, not only wanted to switch roommates like she did, but was already friends with the guy in front of them.
It feels like ages ago that all this started, when in reality, it has only been a little under two years. Matt was so charming and sweet that Alex immediately discarded any notion of using him and worked hard to be able to keep him. The back of her throat burns with the sour taste of bile as she puts the phone back, this is definitely not a good choice when it comes to keeping him. She lamely consoles herself with the idea that if she didn't snoop, she would have been kicked out of school before the end of her first semester and there would have been no keeping him at all. It seems to calm her stomach a little, and she pecks him on the cheek before she creeps back to her room.
Instead of catching up on sleep, nagging worry over the project compels her to have an early start. She's showered, dressed, and dry-swallowing an amphetamine pill on her way out the door within the next 30 minutes. Her plan is to log a few hours in class while she tries to figure out what to do about the new project, and then meet up with everyone at breakfast like normal... It's too bad that it didn't work out that way.
Matt finds her staring at a blank canvas with wide, cloudy eyes. She has a few papers scattered around her workspace, covered in scribbles and chicken-scratch, but the rest of her little area is pristine. After she gave up on brainstorming, she decided that maybe having a clean place to work would help her focus better. She lost track of time washing and conditioning her brushes, clearing out her toolbox, rearranging the paints, and then reorganizing the entire space. When their afternoon class rolls around, Alex is lost in thought and regretting every decision she had made that morning. Matt wraps his arms around her when he gets close and pulls her back against his chest, at least she had had enough sense to text him before breakfast. She would have crumbled to pieces if she had upset him on top of everything else.
"I'm looking forward to when you don't sneak out of my room in the middle of the night," he whispers against her ear.
She turns in his arms and pouts, "you know I have to. We'll get into loads of trouble if we get caught."
Matt's grin is wicked. "All the more exciting."
The room goes silent when Mr. Horton calls out at the front of the room,"Okay class! Today is your last chance to get your supply lists turned in before I have to send them off to the Finance department, so get those done and on my desk asap!"
Alex groans, she still had no idea what direction she was going in, so she has no clue what supplies to request for the project. She'll just have to write down a few generic things and hope for the best.
"You are spelling Violet wrong," Matt says as he hovers over Alex's shoulder. She has to catch herself before she adds a "V" instead of an "X".
"Shut up, this is official paperwork! If I put Violet Winters on it..." and then inspiration does what it always has throughout the ages. It smacks her right in the face. One of the few things that stuck out at her during her brainstorming was the vague idea that she could take advantage of the fact that her last name matches part of the project theme, but she couldn't figure out how to incorporate color theory into it...until now anyway.
"That's it! That's what I'm going to do for the showcase!" She jots down a few more items on her list and runs to turn it in. She skips back to Matt with a wide grin and he matches it with his own.
"See, aren't you glad I dumped violet paint on you and not something like puce?"
Alex scrunches up her nose. "Puce is not that bad of a color."
"No, but I don't think I could date someone with the name Puce."
Alex gives Matt a slow, lingering kiss before she responds. "If that's the case, then consider me very, very glad."
