Page 125 of Notes of Attraction

Or it’s old! He’s been famous for years now. There must be thousands of photographs of him with women, taken over years, sitting in some archive waiting for a slow news week, and this one could be from any point in the last⁠—

Leucine. Lysine.

Methionine.

And seriously—what did I expect? He is twenty-three years old. He is famous. He is, objectively, the most attractive person I have ever been within six feet of, and there is a photograph of him leaning across a table toward a woman who sings to stadiums, and I am a person he slept with once.

Once.

While it might have been the best sex of my life, maybe it was just another day for him. Another day, another woman. I feel sick.

But we’re in college. This is what people do, right? You’re not exclusive until you actually talk about it? God, it makes my head spin. Nobody has said the word exclusive. That’s the actual position. We are two adults who got it on once.

But…I don’t want to share him.

I hate it. It’s true, and I’d like to not think that.

This is ridiculous.

Whoever decided on the pre-med workload clearly did consider we are humans who deserve to have lives too. The exam covers protein structure, metabolic pathways and approximately eight thousand biological processes that all appear to have been named by men who hated students.

I’m still staring at the same six amino acids when Sydney’s voice carries up the stairs.

“Everyone in Hive House, emergency announcement!”

A door opens somewhere down the hall.

“What kind of emergency?” Gianna calls.

“The attractive kind! Drew is bringing two members of Atlas Falling over in forty-five minutes!”

My stomach flips.

I look down at myself. Leggings. Old UMS sweatshirt. Hair twisted into a knot.

I’m reaching for my phone before I think otherwise.

Bea