After I Met You

5

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙵𝚒𝚟𝚎

MY HAIR IS still soaking wet by the time I get to the library. I try to give it one final ring to get all of the water out before I head inside. If there's one thing I hate, it's wet clothes. My crop top has wet spots all over it, and my shorts are almost completely drenched. I definitely should have changed prior to coming here.

It doesn't take long for me to spot him. He's in the far back corner where it's the quietest, the spot he likes the most, and when he hears my wet flip flops squeaking across the carpet he narrows his eyes towards me, trying to piece together where I was coming from. He'd never be able to guess though.

I want to ignore how good that black t-shirt looks on him. I'm just happy he's not wearing his leather jacket. I know that if he's wearing that in the middle of August then he more than likely hurt himself again. Seeing him in a t-shirt is good.

"Hey." I breathe out, taking a seat across from him. He's still staring at me, and it looks like he wants to ask what I was doing, but he finally just lets out a sigh and pushes a piece of paper over to me.

"So, we all got assigned a mental disorder. Ours is post traumatic stress disorder. We have to make a power point on it and present it at the end of the semester. It's kind of like creating our own case study."

"The end of the semester?" I look at him in disbelief because the semester literally just started. I'm sitting here in wet clothes thinking this project was due in a week or something, not months from now. He shoots me a death stare and I quickly send him a reassuring smile. "Okay." I tell him. "Let's just get started. What do you want me to work on first?"

I figure being on his good side is better than being on his bad one. After all, studying was the reason why everything went to shit between us in the first place. If he wants to do this project then we'll go ahead and get it done.

"We're not going to be able to finish it in a day, I was just thinking we could look up the symptoms of it and the types of cures for it just to kind of get a head start."

"Sure. Do you want me to do the symptoms and you do the cures?"

He nods and locks eyes with me for a second before he looks at the paper in front of me. "That's the details and everything about the assignment if you want to look at it."

I glance over it for a couple of seconds before taking my notebook out of my backpack. I almost forgot it in Logan's car before he reminded me to take it.

I'm not sure why we aren't screaming at each other, and I'm not sure why we're not talking about what happened, but even sitting in silence between us feels nice. I know he doesn't want to be here with me, but I'll take whatever I can get at this point. I know that when we do end up discussing everything it'll just result in yelling and anger. I'm not ready for that yet.

We both sit on our phones as we google information about PTSD. The more I'm scrolling though, the more it's dawning on me that this is something that Xavier and I both could really have ourselves. Severe anxiety, mistrust, nightmares, self-destructive behavior. The list goes on and on, and each symptom is something I've experienced at some point in my life.

I glance up at him after I scribble everything down onto the piece of paper, wondering if he's thinking the same thing. He just looks deep in thought as he's scrolling, and he must feel my gaze on him because suddenly his eyes pop up to meet mine.