Page 45 of Falling

I mean, technically, I should be able to go and see her when I want since she’s my girlfriend, but I have more self-control than that. I’m delusional enough to think she must be thinking of me too because the second the song finishes, my phone lights up with a text from her.

Wren

Campus library. Study sesh. Now.

Not even a ‘please???’

Wren

I’m asking you to come study, not to go to prom with me.

I don’t think I want to study with you and that attitude.

The bubbles appear,but they disappear again, and I laugh to myself for getting under her skin. I can’t help it sometimes. She’s just too easy to wind up, and lucky for her, I like it when she gets mad at me.

Wren

Miles, would you please come study with me so I don’t fail my exam? Not to be dramatic, but you’re my last hope.

That’s my girl.

Wait. What is that supposed to mean? I’m supposed to be your first choice.

Wren

Just get tothe library.

I can counton one hand how many times I’ve been to the campus library, which says a lot about how much I care about my studies. Choosing sports sciences was the easy way out, but actually having to study sucks. Kinesiology sounded fun when I was applying for colleges, but I’m already a lost cause. I’ve been attending classes per Miss Hackerly’s request, but Wren hasn’t been keeping up with her side of the deal to tutor me. She just sends me links and hopes that it helps. Besides, she’s way too busy to try to get my pea brain to focus.

I walk through the large doors, scanning my NU card onto the machine to go through the security gates, and I’m in the middle of unknown territory. There are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled with deep-brown paperbacks and textbooks. I know it’s a library, but it’s too quiet here. So quiet that the second I accidentally step on the wrong piece of wood, the few people that are in here snap out of their study focus and give me a death glare. But it also draws my attention to the one person I wanted to see.

Wren is sitting at a table tucked in the back of the study zones, the only person in her section. She has a pile of books on the right side of her, and her laptop is on the table.

She looks different in this setting. She’s not sweaty and panting from skating or working out. Instead, she’s wearing the cutest owl frame glasses, her hair is tied into a high ponytail, and she’s wearing a white tank top and shorts, her knee pulled up to her chin.

I walk over to her with the biggest grin on my face, and I step on another wrong plank of wood. You’d think that they’d try to make the floors as soundless as possible, but no. Wren shakes her head at me, pulling up her glasses to rest on the top of her head.

“Could you be any louder?”

“Hello to you too, girlfriend.” I reach over to tap her glasses and pull them over her eyes. “These are cute.”

Her nose crinkles as she rolls her eyes. “Thanks,” she mutters, looking down to her laptop and then back to me. “I need you to test me with these questions.” I raise my eyebrows at her lack of manners, and she whispers, “Please.”

She turns the laptop toward me, and I see the list of questions she has in her Word doc about a book called “Atonement.” I have no idea what that is, but the questions seem interesting. Well, interesting if you’re into literature.

“Is this all you need me for?” I ask, scrolling through the endless list. She nods, scribbling something down into a notebook. “Couldn’t Kennedy and Scarlett do this? As much as I know I’m going to enjoy asking these questions, I know I wasn’t your first choice.”

“Do you have any volume control?” she whispers, pinning me with a look. “Scarlett has an exam today, and Ken’s working.”

“And you don’t have any friends from your class?”

She shakes her head. “Just ask me the questions, Milesy.”

And I do.

I learn all about the cultural and social setting of the novel and a bunch of other random shit that I don’t need to know. I don’t know how she’s worried about passing this exam when she answers every question immediately and exactly with the answers that she’s written down.

When I finally get to the last question, I turn the laptop back around to her. “What’s next?”

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