"It wasn't jealousy, just..." I try to start an excuse, but she interrupts me, turning to face me.
"It was a little competition," she states, and I sigh.
"Yeah, maybe. Sorry."
"It's fine, I get it. I put you in a weird situation."
"A little. But it won't happen again, I promise." She watches me closely, seeming to try to find the truth in my words.
"Okay. But if it gets too hard, let me know, all right? The last thing I need right now is more chaos in my life. And I also don't want to mess up your friendship," she asks, and I shake my head no.
"It won't happen. I promised you fun and that's what I'm going to give you. I swear," I assure her, and after a few more seconds staring at me, Charlie finally nods and cracks a small sideways smile.
"All right then, player. Now let's get out of here fast, before our little adventure turns into a getting-caught situation."
I laugh and finally relax again. I take her hand and walk out of there with her, confident about leaving behind whatever craziness had crossed my mind.
Chapter 13
Charlotte
"This isn't going to work out, is it?" I ask Maddie while I stare at the ceiling of her room. I came here after classes and waited for her to get back. I needed to vent to someone, and I dumped everything in her lap practically the second she opened the door.
"Look... I don't know. Do you like being with Ethan?"
"A lot," I admit, because it's true. I felt really comfortable with Ethan and, wow, the guy was hot at everything he did.
"So give him a little more time to get used to it. It might have just been a spur-of-the-moment thing. He wanted to measure dicks with his friend there. Maybe it's something in the DNA of straight men," she says, and I can't resist laughing.
"I hope so."
"You just can't fall for Logan's smooth talk. That's where it could get complicated," she states, and I wave my hand no.
"I'm not falling for anyone's smooth talk. Especially not a player like Logan," I assure her, and my cousin looks at me with a raised eyebrow.
"It'd better be that way. No going looking for trouble, especially over a man, deal?" she asks, and I look at the ceiling, begging God for patience.
But also for a little bit of sense for myself.
"I'm barely managing to handle one guy I'm hooking up with, you think I'm going to want to try two?" I finally answer with my eyebrow raised in her direction. I get up from the bed and my cousin narrows her eyes for a moment, like she's saying "I'm watching you!", and I huff.
Years of friendship give us a lot of these silent conversations.
"Anyway, if it doesn't work out with Ethan, I move on to the next one. The whole goal is exactly not to get attached to anyone!" I say out loud, already leaving Maddie's room. Even at a distance, I can hear her mutter "uh-huh, sure," and I roll my eyes.
In my room, the reality of a stack of books I have to study crashes down on me. The worst of them all is the giant algorithms assignment. I was only at the start of developing my plagiarism detection system using the Rabin-Karp method. I love the topic, but that didn't mean it's easy to implement.
I let out a long sigh as I sit in the chair in front of the desk and turn on my laptop. Really, I didn't have time to get a headache over any man.
I only stop studying when it's already past dinnertime. I shower, put on the most comfortable pajamas I own, which happen to be a really old pair of shorts and a T-shirt Maddie gave me last year, where Peeta Mellark from The Hunger Games is surrounded by a heart and above the photo it says "I love my boyfriend," and I heat up an instant ramen in the microwave of the shared kitchen we have in this building. I sit on my bed and relax against the pillows, ready to just watch random videos until I fall asleep, when a new series of notifications goes off from Instagram.
@loganhayes85_ started following you
@loganhayes85_ liked your photo
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