{18+ COMPLETED • COLLEGE ROMANCE}
When a college freshman with a learning disability and a reputation collides with a straight-A, straight-laced girl in the dorm kitchen one night, he sees the darkest parts of himself reflected in her. But the two o...
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B R E N
My hand hovered over the message I'd written ten minutes ago.
She told me to text her if I was going to tutoring. I don't know why I was hesitating. It had nothing to do with whether or not I wanted to see Madie. In fact, when I'd gone to my first session, I half hoped that she would show up. Even after our awkward encounters from last week, I wanted to see her.
I kept telling myself I shouldn't. It wasn't just that Madie was hopelessly unattainable in the way that I wanted her, it was also that I was afraid. Terror reigned when I thought of the look on her face when I'd raised my hand to touch her hair.
I was scared of that moment—that moment when she'd so obviously thought the action was going to be dangerously different.
No one flinched like that unless at some point they'd had a real reason to or still did have a reason to. If the latter was true for Madie, I wasn't sure I was ready to be involved in that again.
I tried to be a hero once—a liberator for a woman. I failed. And now I had too many of my own demons to be anyone's savior.
But Madie Lenertz wasn't just anyone.
"Who's winning?"
Sitting on his bed, Beau didn't even lift his head from whatever he was looking at on his MacBook.
"What?" I never knew what Beau was talking about half the time.
"Who is winning that staring contest you're having over there? You or your phone?" His brows raised even as he continued to type, hunched over his keyboard.
I threw him a scowl, and he smirked, forever amused by annoying me. "Oh, shut up."
"Waiting for a text from Nessa?" he probed, drawing her name out like the intrigued gossiper he was.
"Yeah," I lied while simultaneously pressing send on my text to Madie.
I wasn't sure why I lied. I wasn't sure why I texted her.
Beau wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, and by the time I looked back down, Madie had replied, saying she'd meet me later. I flung myself back on my bed and waited for later to come.
****
Madie walked into the tutoring center at three o'clock, and I was already getting a lecture from Mrs. White about executive functioning. This was apparently something that I didn't have—organization, planning, memory, attention.
I certainly wasn't paying attention to Mrs. White anymore, not with Madie's sudden appearance. Even though I knew she was coming, she still somehow stunned me. Today, another Oakland State football sweatshirt swallowed her whole, and I tried to ignore the irritation that ran through me at seeing it.
