Liam stared at her.

"Clara."

She was standing right there in the middle of the campus plaza like she had always been there, like no time had passed at all.

Long blonde hair falling past her shoulders in loose waves, blue eyes bright and slightly narrowed in his direction. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

She was wearing a pink crop top that sat high on her stomach, the fabric fitted across her chest, her figure filling it out completely.

Light blue jeans hugged her hips and thighs all the way down. White heeled sandals. She had one hand resting on her hip and her head tilted just slightly to the side.

The number floated above her head.

[75/100]

Around them the plaza had already started reacting.

The guys near the fountain had completely abandoned whatever conversation they were having. A group of three at a nearby table had turned in their seats.

"Who is that?"

"I don’t know but she’s fine as hell."

"I would leave my girlfriend for her, no question."

"Look at her though. She has to be a model or something."

The girls were doing their own version of it at a lower volume.

"She’s so pretty it’s actually annoying."

"Those proportions are not natural. I’m sorry."

"I’m not jealous. I’m just saying."

Liam heard none of it properly. He was still staring at her.

"Clara," he said again. Less a question this time.

"Hi," she said. Her voice was the same. Exactly the same.

He stood up from the table. "What are you doing here? I thought you—" He stopped. Recalibrated. "I thought you changed your mind. The last time we talked, after I took Derek to the hospital, you said you weren’t coming. Did something happen? Is he bothering you again?"

Clara’s expression shifted slightly. "No. Nothing like that." She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "I just changed my mind again. About the school. I talked to my parents and they were fine with it so." She shrugged one shoulder. "Here I am."

Liam looked at her for a moment. Then something loosened in his chest. "Okay. That’s actually really good."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He meant it.

Clara looked at him. Then her gaze moved past him to the table, to Kelvin, and then back toward the direction Sofia and Mei had walked off in. Her arms folded across her chest slowly. Her chin came up just slightly. "Who was that girl you were talking to earlier?"

The whispers that had settled started back up immediately from multiple directions. The guys leaned in. The girls exchanged looks.

Liam sighed. "Sit down. I’ll explain."

"I’m fine standing."

Kelvin stood up from the table so fast his chair scraped back against the stone. He extended his hand toward Clara with a grin that was turned up about three settings too high. "Hey. I’m Kelvin. Liam’s best friend. Very important person in his life."

Clara looked at his hand, then at him, and smiled politely. "Clara. Nice to meet you." She shook it briefly and let go.

Kelvin sat back down looking like he had just achieved something.

Liam looked at Clara. "If you’re not going to sit then let’s walk. You can tell me why you look like you want to say something."

Clara’s eyes came back to him. "I don’t look like anything."

"Clara."

A beat of silence. Then she unfolded her arms. "Fine. Okay. Let’s walk."

Liam turned back to the table. Kelvin was already watching him with his burger in his hand and his eyebrows raised approximately to his hairline. Liam grabbed his coffee and started to move.

Kelvin reached out and caught his arm.

Liam stopped and dropped his head slightly, turning back to find Kelvin leaning forward in his seat, his voice dropped to just above a whisper. "Who the hell is that?"

"Childhood friend."

Kelvin turned his head and looked at Clara, who had already started walking a few steps ahead, her heels clicking lightly against the stone, her hips moving with each step. He turned back to Liam. His expression was doing something complicated. "That is your childhood friend."

"Yeah."

Kelvin sat back slowly. He was quiet for a second. "Okay. I need to genuinely reassess my life choices because I think somewhere along the way we switched and you became me and I became you and I don’t know how that happened."

Liam laughed. Short and real. "I’ll be back."

Kelvin waved him off. "Go. Have fun. I’ll be here having a crisis."

"I’ll bring you something."

"Just go."

Liam turned and crossed the space between them, falling into step beside Clara as she moved away from the fountain plaza and onto one of the quieter walkways that ran along the edge of the campus garden.

The noise of the crowd faded behind them. The path was lined with low hedges and the occasional bench, mostly empty this time of day.

They walked in silence for a moment.

Clara’s arms were loose at her sides now, her heels quiet on the smooth path, her hair shifting slightly with her movement. The crop top left her midriff bare between the hem and the waistband of her jeans, the pale skin of her stomach visible with every step.

Liam’s mind started doing things he hadn’t asked it to do.

’Should I just apologize? Get ahead of it. Tell her Sofia is nobody, that it wasn’t what it looked like, that—’

Time stopped.

The garden froze around them. A bird overhead hung in place. Clara mid-step, her hair suspended in the slight movement of walking.

The system appeared.

[Option 1: "I’m so sorry. I know what you might be thinking but we’re just friends, nothing more, I promise." | +0 Lust Points]

[Option 2: "Don’t tell me you’re mad about that. It’s not like we’re dating or anything." | +18 Lust Points]

Liam looked at Option 1 for a moment. Then at Option 2.

’Option one and I’m dead in the water.’

He didn’t hesitate.

Time resumed.

"Don’t tell me you’re actually mad about that," he said, keeping his voice even. "It’s not like we’re dating or anything."

Clara stopped walking.

She turned to look at him and something moved through her expression quickly, surprise first, then something sharper underneath it. "That’s—" She stopped. Started again. Her voice stayed level but her cheeks had gone pink. "Okay but you literally told me you liked me. You said it out loud. So at least have some—" She pressed her lips together. "You can’t just say something like that and then act like it doesn’t matter."

"I meant every part of that," Liam said. "And I also meant part of what I just said."

Clara stared at him. "That doesn’t even make sense."

"It makes complete sense."

"Liam—"

"The reason things are the way they are has nothing to do with me," he said. "I told you how I felt. I’ve always been straight with you. The reason we’re not together isn’t coming from my side and you know that."

Clara looked at him for a long moment. The pink in her cheeks had deepened. She looked away toward the hedges, then back at him. "I never said I had an issue with it," she said quietly. "I never said that."

Liam looked at her.

She was still looking slightly away from him, her jaw set, her hands folded in front of her now, her blue eyes doing the thing they always did when she was trying to look unbothered and wasn’t.

He reached over and ran his hand over the top of her head slowly, his palm moving through her hair once.

She went still.

"Let’s go somewhere," he said. "Just us. Catch up properly."

Clara kept looking at the hedge for another second. Then she exhaled and looked back at him. "Okay."

---

Clara sat on the edge of the bed.

Her heeled sandals were still on. Her hands were folded in her lap. The shower was running behind the frosted glass door, steady and constant.

She looked around the room slowly.

Clean dark wood floors. Walls a warm off-white.

A king bed dressed in crisp white linen beneath her, four pillows stacked neatly at the head. A low wooden dresser with a wide mirror above it.

A small round table near the window with two chairs.

Soft warm light from a lamp in the corner. Outside the window a quiet side street, afternoon light going golden at the edges.

It smelled like fresh linen and something faintly cedar.

’This is a hotel room,’ she thought. ’I am sitting in a hotel room.’

She looked at her hands in her lap.

’I said okay and got in the cab and now I’m here and he’s in the shower.’

She pressed her palms flat against her thighs and looked up at the mirror above the dresser. She saw herself sitting there.

Pink crop top. Light blue jeans. White heels still on her feet. Hair slightly loose. Cheeks still faintly pink.

She looked like someone who had made a decision and was only just now catching up to it.

’This is my first time in a hotel,’ she thought. ’With a boy. With Liam.’

She had thought about this before. More times than she was willing to admit to anyone including herself.

Long nights after Derek when she had nothing to do but lie in the dark and think. She had thought about it plenty.

She just hadn’t expected it to feel like this when it was actually happening.

Something large and warm sitting in the center of her chest that she didn’t have the right word for. Not bad. Not scary.

Just very real. The kind of real that made everything feel slightly too bright and slightly too quiet at the same time.

The shower turned off.

Clara straightened on the bed. Her hands pressed flat against her thighs. She looked at the frosted glass door and held very still.

’It’s Liam,’ she told herself. ’I’ve known him my whole life, also i really like him.’

---

The frosted glass door opened and Liam stepped out with a towel around his waist, running another one across the back of his damp hair. He looked over at her.

The number appeared above her head immediately.

[100/100]

He looked at it for a moment. Then at her.

Clara was sitting exactly where he had left her.

Hands on her thighs.

Blue eyes watching him with an expression she clearly believed was neutral and wasn’t even close. Her blonde hair loose around her shoulders. White heels still on her feet.

"Your turn," he said, nodding toward the bathroom.

Clara held his gaze for a second. Then she nodded once, stood up, and walked past him. The frosted glass door clicked shut and the shower started again a moment later.

Liam turned and dropped onto the bed, spreading out across the white linen, hands behind his head, eyes on the ceiling.

’You had her first,’ he thought. The corner of his mouth moved on its own. ’You had her first and you had no idea what you had.’

The shower ran steadily behind the frosted glass.

’She changed schools. She showed up at my campus today and got jealous about a girl she doesn’t even know and couldn’t hide it for thirty seconds.’

He smiled at the ceiling.

’She’s mine now, Derek. Every single bit of it.’