Page 15 of Faking It with the Bad Boy

He left, the door closing behind him with a finality that felt like punctuation. Through the window, I watched him cross the quad, students parting before him like water. His shoulders weretight with tension, none of his usual performative swagger in sight.

The library seemed too quiet now. Too empty. The stack of Victorian literature on our table looked accusatory, especially his copy of "Wuthering Heights" with its careful annotations about social class and identity.

The rest of the week passed in a blur of awkward silence and rigid professionalism. Jack showed up exactly on time to our sessions, answered questions perfectly, and maintained exact rule-mandated distance. It was horrible.

By Friday night, I couldn't take it anymore. I found myself at the campus bookstore, hovering near the classics section like a Victorian ghost haunting its former library. Jack was shelving books, steadfastly ignoring me. The store was empty except for us and a bored-looking cashier who was too engrossed in her phone to notice the tension crackling through the aisles.

"I saw you," I said finally, breaking the silence that hung heavy between shelves of leather-bound classics. "Last Saturday. Through the window."

He paused, a copy of "Paradise Lost" in his hands. Fitting. The lamplight caught the gold lettering on its spine, matching the flecks in his eyes that he quickly turned away.

"You were reorganizing the rare books section," I continued. My voice sounded too loud in the quiet store. "Color-coding the reference system. At 2 AM."

The only response was the soft thud of books being shelved, methodically, precisely, with none of the carelessness his reputation would suggest.

"Maybe I was drunk." His voice was flat, but his hands betrayed him, treating each volume with careful reverence.

"You were wearing reading glasses and had three different colors of sticky notes."

He finally looked at me. He looked younger in the warm bookstore lighting, without his usual performative smirk. More real. "Are you going somewhere with this?"

"I'm trying to say I was wrong," I said quietly. The words echoed slightly in the empty store. "About you. About a lot of things."

A customer wandered into our aisle, took one look at the tension between us, and promptly found somewhere else to be.

"Careful," his voice was rough. "You're dangerously close to violating Rule 335."

"Maybe some rules need to be broken."

He stared at me for a long moment, then turned back to his shelving. "You should go."

"Jack—"

"Please."

I left, but not before seeing him pull out his reading glasses and a pack of sticky notes. I watched him work through the window - methodically organizing, carefully labeling, completely at odds with the chaos he was supposed to represent.

The next day, the Victorian literature section had a new organizational system cross-referenced by theme and historical context. Each book bore a small sticky note with reading notes, cross-references, and suggested companion texts. The handwriting was familiar - the same careful script I'd seen in the margins of his "Wuthering Heights."

That night, I pulled out my phone and typed a simple message:

"The Victorian literature section looks better organized than most doctoral dissertations. I have questions about your classification system for the Gothic novels."

Three minutes passed. Four. Five. The typing indicator appeared and disappeared several times, like someone starting and stopping a confession.

Finally: "Rule 335. No personal discussions."

I looked at his response for a long moment, then typed:

"This is purely academic. Besides, I thought you were a rule breaker."

The response came faster this time:

"Tomorrow. 2 AM. Bring coffee."

The campus rumor mill was already buzzing with a new story: Jack Morrison, spotted in the library at midnight, reorganizing the entire Victorian literature section. Some said he was plotting something. Others whispered about a lost bet. A few suggested he'd finally cracked under academic pressure.

But I knew better now.

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