“Look, I don’t know him, but you said he’s nice.” Sabrinapauses, picking at a chip in her blue nail polish. “You could try being friends with him,normalfriends, and then you can nip that crush in the bud.”
“Yeah, Iknowhow to stop a straight crush. I'll, uh, bro it up with him.”
“Like what you did with Nick?”
“Exactly. Completely foolproof.” I cringe internally at how stupid I was for having a little crush on Nick when I was a freshman. Still, I got over him super quickly, and the fact that we’re teammates was more than enough to overpower him being tall, dark-haired, and?—
Yup, I have a type, that’s for sure.
I just need to find someone who fits that typeandis available for me. I haven’t had much success so far.
Whatever. I have time to deal with that.
Callum’s video was low-key shot in potato quality, so color grading it and applying filters to make the feed less grainy takes a while. I’m almost done and ready to move on to fine-tuning the audio, when a group, I’m assuming freshmen, annoys the whole library with obnoxious chattering.
I roll my eyes, and I’m about to make a whispered complaint to Sabrina when someone tells them to take their noise elsewhere.
Thank god?—
Wait. That’s the same voice as the one in my earbuds.
I glance up, and sure enough, it’s Callum. The offending group is fleeing the library, and Callum turns around, depositing a stack of books on a cart before heading in our direction.
“Hey, that’s him, isn’t it?” Sabrina whispers.
I nod.
“Oh damn, he's so fucking tall.”
“Yeah, I know.”I’mnot very fucking tall at five-seven, so I stand up and wave at Callum to say hi.
“Hey, man, what’s good?” I ask, reaching over to dap him up after he walks over.
He freezes for a second before giving me a stiff kind of sideways high-five. It’s gentle, but I still feel how soft those big hands are.
“Are you studying too?” I continue.
He shakes his head. “No, I work here.”
Wait, he works in the library? What are they making him do to give him guns like that, move all the shelves across the building by hand?
“Mostly shelving and telling people to be quiet,” he adds.
That makes sense. That group of freshmen are nowhere to be seen, and peace has been restored, thanks to Callum’s bouncer-like intimidation skills.
“Cool, cool,” I say, shifting from one foot to the other. “Well, I’ll let you get back to work, but it was nice to see you.”
“Yeah, nice seeing you too.” He leaves.
“You could have fooled me,” Sabrina says, and I turn to face her, raising an eyebrow and prompting her to clarify. “Total bro moment. No crushy vibes at all.”
My stomach settles. “Really?”
“Ha, no.”
Shit.
“Your voice didn’t give anything away, but your eyes?” She makes a dramatic, wistful sigh. “It was like you caught the first glimpse of your husband coming back after a decade at sea.”
