With a great sigh of contentment, I inhaled the delicious scent of the black hoodie my nose was buried in. I was currently enjoying a piggyback ride, courtesy of Nolan and his tireless legs.

It was the best ride ever, and that included every amusement park ride I’d ever been on. Or maybe I felt this way because he was the one carrying me.

“Your nose is tickling me,” he commented, strolling as if he weren’t currently carrying someone on his back.

“Sorry,” I said, before taking in another deep sniff.

He shook his head slightly. “Yeah, right. As if you’re sorry.”

“Hey, I can hear you rolling your eyes from here,” I complained.

“And I can hear the insincerity in your apology, but I forgive you anyway.”

“I can’t help it,” I said. “You smell so nice. And I’m feeling sleepy.”

“What does being sleepy have to do with anything?”

“It makes me want to smell nice things even more!”

“Does it really?”

“Shh!” I removed one hand from his upper chest to wag a finger in front of his face. “Just let me have this one moment!”

“You have this ‘one’ moment every day…” But he didn’t say anything else as he continued walking down the trail we were on.

I’d already expected it, but once the sun had set, the park was too dark for me to really take a good look around. Of course, this wasn’t a problem for Nolan, but he had gone silent after my commentary on our darkened surroundings.

After multiple reassurances on my part that I didn’t mind at all, and that I cared more about spending time with him than where we were, he finally admitted that he wished we could’ve come here during the day.

“But I really don’t mind,” I had said, squeezing his hand again. “Besides, if we’d come here in the afternoon, the sun would’ve been unbearably hot. Just feel how cool the air is now!”

“I guess,” he’d said.

“And since you can see in the dark, I don’t have to worry about stumbling over some branch or tree root or anything!”

Slowly, almost hesitantly, he had squeezed my hand back.

“Although I am kind of tired now,” I had added, “and if you wanted to give me a piggyback ride, I wouldn’t turn you down!”

Despite his snort, Nolan had stepped in front of me and lowered his back so that I could climb on. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll carry you for as long as you want.”

“Oh, is that an offer to be my noble steed for the rest of the day?”

“You’re so weird—”

“Hey! That’s rude—”

“—but yeah, if that’s what you want.”

In that split-second that I’d caught a tiny, reluctant smile tugging at his lips, relief had washed over me.

Now, I managed to extract my nose from his hoodie long enough to say, “By the way, Ash wants to meet up with us next week. When will you be free?”

After a few seconds, he replied, “I can make it on Tuesday night. What’s the occasion?”

“She just misses hanging out with everyone,” I said. “Cody’s coming, too.”

“Okay. What are we going to be doing?”

Somewhere above us in the trees, a bird called out a shrill, sharp cry.

“We were thinking of, I don’t know, just playing board games or card games in her dorm room. Just chilling, you know.”

“Sure.”

“Sometimes it just feels weird, us being at college now.”

I was just glad that we were both attending the same one. Being unable to see Melissa and Derek in person whenever I wanted already made me feel like I was missing something. I couldn’t imagine being that far apart from Nolan, too.

“Yeah. But I don’t miss being lectured to stay awake in class.”

Smiling, I buried my nose into the nape of his neck. “Fair. Your schedule’s way better now.”

With a slight jolt, Nolan started twisting his head around.

“Chelsea, it’s really ticklish.”

“Sorry.”

Despite finding his reaction adorable, I exerted my utmost efforts not to repeat the action. After all, he did say that it was ticklish.

He did say it.

But as I stared at him from behind, having suddenly lost all interest in the park’s natural beauty, the urge to do it again built up in me like a giant wave towering over the shore.

The way he’d helplessly shaken his head was too cute to resist.

Before I knew it, I found myself nuzzling against his neck again. This time, it wasn’t to sniff at his shower gel scent.

Nolan jerked sideways.

“Chelsea!”

“Sorry, for real this time! I won’t do it again, my noble steed!”

It was finally over.

As I returned to my seat, I let out a small sigh. The presentation my group had just given to the class would take up a large percentage of our overall course grade. Now that it was over and done with, it felt like a heavy load had been rolled off my chest.

Our professor was already summarizing the main points of our presentation to the class.

Lucas, one of my group mates, who was also one of the several course mates I interacted with regularly, took his seat beside me. Since we were taking the same major, we saw each other a lot in our common courses.

When I returned his smile, he whispered, “Nice job.”

“Thanks,” I whispered back. “You too.”

Rachel, another group mate who was sitting on my other side, said quietly, “I think I messed up. She smiled at you guys, but when it was my turn, she was just staring at me the whole time.”

I shook my head. “I think you did really well. She was probably just paying attention to what you were saying.”

Lucas nodded. “Yeah, I agree with Chelsea.”

She merely gave us a tight smile and refocused on Professor Avery, who was standing in the front of the classroom.

I wanted to offer her a few more words of comfort, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I felt like she was being overly paranoid—the presentation had gone well, in my honest opinion.

I was tuning back into what Professor Avery was saying when Lucas abruptly spoke again, startling me in the process.

“Do you have a class after this? Want to grab lunch?”

I blinked.

We ate lunch together with a few others quite often, so it wasn’t the invitation itself that gave me pause.

Why, I wondered, is he asking me right in the middle of class?

“Sure,” I whispered back. “I have a two-hour break after this.”

“Cool.” He flashed me a quick grin.

Shaking off the vague sense of confusion that had wound itself around my mind, I turned my attention back on our professor.

When class was over, and everyone was starting to leave, I waved at Jenna, another Linguistics major, who was at the other end of the classroom. She was the one of the first friends I’d made here, as well as one of the ‘regulars’ at our group lunches. The electric blue highlights in her black hair had a striking effect, and she was impossible to miss in a crowd.

“Hey, Chelsea,” I heard Lucas say, and I glanced at him quizzically.

“Yeah?”

“I thought we were going to have lunch together?” he asked, following me as I made a beeline for Jenna.

“We are,” I said, my eyebrows drawing together. “Don’t worry, I’m just going to ask Jen if she’s joining us—”

“Uh,” Lucas said, cutting me off, “actually, I was hoping it would just be the two of us today.”

My stomach dropped as a cold dread crept through my body.

“Huh?”

Unfortunately, autopilot had taken my feet right to Jenna before my brain could register what he was saying.

Jenna, who hadn’t budged from standing beside her seat since I’d signaled for her to wait for me, smiled when we approached her. “Good job on the presentation today, guys.”

We all walked to the open doorway together.

I smiled. “Thanks! I’m just glad it’s over.”

“I still have to wait two weeks for mine,” she moaned.

“Two weeks will fly by before you know it,” I said.

She checked her watch. “I have a project meeting now, so I’ll see you later!”

I waved back at her as she strode away.

“I guess she wasn’t free,” I said lightly, checking my phone for texts.

I had one from Ashley, confirming that Tuesday night was fine with both her and Cody. Nolan hadn’t responded to my text yet, which meant that he was probably still asleep.

As he shrugged, Lucas put his hand on the back of his neck. “Looks like it worked out for me, though.”

I squinted at him. “What do you mean?”

I had to be reading him wrong, right? Why was I feeling so uneasy?

He pushed his curly brown hair back with his hand and shot me a tentative grin.

“Well, I was thinking we could go to a Collegetown café, just you and me.”

“So, like, because you’re craving café food, right?” I said slowly, not wanting to make a fool out of myself if I jumped to conclusions too quickly. “Like, only because you’re … tired of dining room food?”

My stomach lurched at the sideway glance he gave me.

“Would it be bad if I said that it’s not about the café, but I just wanted to spend some time with you without the others?”

My eyes were beginning to tire from squinting, but I just couldn’t seem to stop.

“Like, as friends, right?”

I had to be overthinking this.

“Actually, I think you’re really cute,” he said finally. “I’d like to get to know you better, if you’re interested too.”

Suddenly struck with an overpowering desire to be anywhere else but here, I winced. Okay, I guess I wasn’t overthinking it after all.

“Um, I have a boyfriend. Sorry.”

His smile faltered. “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t know. I never saw you with anyone, and you always eat with us at lunch, so I thought—sorry. Long-distance relationship?”

I wasn’t the kind of person who had to insert my relationship status into every conversation ever—there were a couple of girls I’d encountered who did that, and it was annoying—but I hadn’t realized that people would just assume that I was single because I rarely had a reason to mention my boyfriend.

“No.” I checked my phone again, mostly because the awkwardness made it difficult to look at him. “He’s a Computer Science major, so you probably haven’t seen him around before.”

“Oh. Cool.”

Silence engulfed us, dulling even the surrounding buzz of students’ chatter to my ears. It thickened with each passing second, and I tightened my grip on the plastic handle of my water bottle.

“Do you still want to get lunch? I’m not going off campus, though,” I said.

“Yeah, of course,” he said, but just like me, he was barely making eye contact.

Through sheer willpower on both of our parts, we kept up a forced conversation about the rainy weather right up until we arrived at the food court. By then, I was ready to hit my head with the water bottle in my left hand.

Maybe I should walk around on campus with Nolan more often. We seldom met in the afternoons, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to do it occasionally.

The thought of parading him around for the sake of showing how very not single I was brought a wry smile to my face.

I wondered if his friendly acquaintances thought that he was single, too.

My stomach, which had only just settled down, flipped again.

LotteStarburst

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