Page 80 of Under Pressure

I jog the quick distance to the library and take the stairs to an upper floor, where it’s certain to be dead silent. At home, I can’t trust Tom to stay quiet enough out in the living room playing his video games, as I’ve learned during previous midterms and finals week.

I stop short as I enter the third-floor study area, spying Mia at one of the front study carrels, her wild, brown hair piled up on top of her head in a haphazard bun. There’s a pencil stuck through it, along with another one she’s gnawing on as she intensely focuses on her open textbook.

She brings the page up closer to her face and I see that it’s the Motivation of Psychology book, the same one I’m studying from tonight. The same one we’ve studied together multiple times. The same one she apparently doesn’t want to study with me anymore.

I watch for a minute, the way her neck elegantly turns as she checks something in another notebook next to her. I’ve kissed that neck, pursed my lips and blown cool breath over it to make her giggle in delight as goose bumps raced over her skin.

The way her mouth moves on the end of her pencil, delicately nibbling at it. I’ve kissed that mouth, felt those delicious nibbles as she worked her way across my whole body, using her lips and teeth and tongue to drive me wild.

The way her eyes focus on the page, the gray of them lightening when she’s happy, darkening when she’s turned on. If I could do it over again, I’d spend a day making those eyes shift in color, wanting to see the entire range of them.

Wait, what am I talking about? If I could do it over again, I wouldn’t have started anything with her to begin with. Saved both of us a lot of unnecessary heartache. Not that that’s what I’m feeling. It’s not.

Besides, she won’t even look at me now. I can barely get her to acknowledge my presence in the lab. In the stairwell last week was the first time she’d actually looked at me in…

My mouth goes dry as she glances up, her eyes meeting mine. I’m a zebra caught in the gaze of a lion, unable to move for fear it will signal her advance. Somewhere along the way, our roles switched, with her now the predator. Did it start that night she tied me up? Or much earlier?

The door opens behind me, a group of girls jostling their way past me, annoyed I’m in their path. Our eye contact breaks and I use the opportunity to slip to the side and back out the door, watching her still through the glass from an indirect angle.

She peers around in confusion, letting the pencil in her mouth drop to the desk. I can’t tell if she wants to actually see me or keep an eye on me to avoid me. Based on our interactions lately, probably the latter. I turn toward the stairwell, intending to go up a floor to find a place to study, but glance back one more time, seeing her head down again, focused on her textbook.

That’s how it should be.

She’s better off without me.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Mia

Thank God I’m finished.Midterms are never fun, but today’s seemed especially brutal, first with Statistical Reasoning this morning and Classical Mythology right now. I thought humanities classes normally had you write papers as a midterm, but apparently Dr. Vasquez likes seven-page papersanda multiple-choice midterm to really feel that you understand the material. Thanks for that.

But at least I’m done, a whole week of spring break ahead of me to look forward to. Not that I have any plans, but it’ll be nice to relax.

I head out of the humanities building and toward the nearest parking lot where my car is, but pause when I spot a familiar tall form in front of me on the sidewalk.

“Mia,” Ethan says good-naturedly, smiling wide enough to show off remarkably effective orthodontic work. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen teeth so straight. Or white. It’s dazzling really. “Do you have a class in here?”

I finally focus on the words coming out of his mouth rather than the teeth speaking them, answering, “Yeah, but my class is usually at eleven. I had an exam today.”

He smiles wider and I nervously tuck my hair back behind my ears before I remember I wore it up today. “How have you been?” he asks, crossing his arms like he’s ready to dig into some serious small talk.

“Um, fine.” Is it okay to chat with him? This somehow feels like a betrayal of Tyler. His best friend and… whatever I am.

“Good, good. But you know who’s not doing so good?”

“Uh…”

“Tyler.” He nods, like I was about to say that. “Alternately mopey or ragey. Well, more ragey than usual. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s PMSing.”

A laugh escapes me and I quickly cover my mouth with my hand. Tyler PMSing. Oh God, if he heard Ethan say that— Wait. “Why is he PMSing?”

He tilts his head, looking at me quizzically. “I think you know why.”

Well, that’s cryptic. “No, I don’t.”

“It started right around the time a few weeks ago when I asked about you and he nearly bit my head off, spouting off about how you and him weren’t dating, so why the hell should he know how you were doing and I should mind my own business. Figured there’s only one reason he’d go off like that.”

“What’s that?” I ask, hanging on his every word now, despite that I’ve been doing my absolute hardest to banish Tyler from my thoughts, practicing meditation daily, to the point where my inner critic is rarely even showing up. If nothing else, it’s been amazing for my anxiety.

---