Off Limits On Purpose

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Chapter 4 What Do You Want, Alex

Star

The number was still there at six in the morning.

I knew this because I checked. I told myself I was checking the time, which was a lie so thin it barely qualified as one. The screen lit up, six oh four, and right below it sat the unknown contact I had never bothered to name. Same time tomorrow? Still unanswered. Still unread by anyone but me, over and over, like rereading it would change what it meant.

I deleted nothing.

That was the part I couldn’t explain to myself in any way that held up.

Mia found out by accident, the way Mia found out everything. She borrowed my phone to check the time before her first class and the message was just sitting there on the lock screen, plain as anything, and she looked up at me with an expression that took up her entire face.

“You didn’t delete it.”

“I forgot.”

“You don’t forget things, Star. You’re the only person I know who remembers what she ordered at a restaurant two years ago.”

“I had a lot on my mind.”

“You had Alex Carter’s number on your mind.”

“That’s not what I said.”

She handed my phone back like it was something fragile. “I’m not going to make a big deal out of this.”

“Good.”

“I’m just going to think about it loudly in my head where you can’t stop me.”

I didn’t dignify that with an answer. We walked to breakfast and she filled the silence with something about her chemistry lab partner, and I let her, grateful for anywhere else to put my attention. Halfway through her story she stopped and looked at me sideways.

“You’re not listening.”

“I’m listening.”

“What did I just say?”

“Something about a centrifuge.”

“It was a titration, Star.”

“Close enough.”

“You’re not okay.”

“I’m completely fine.”

“You keep checking your phone.”

I hadn’t realized I was doing it until she said it. I put the phone face down on the table and picked up my fork instead, and she let it go for exactly as long as it took her to finish her toast, which was not very long at all.

My notebook was open on the table between bites, the cover facing up the way it always sat. Focus. Grades. Future. No distractions. I had written those words during the first week of freshman year, in handwriting that still looked a little too careful, like I’d been trying to convince someone.

Mostly myself.

Lit class was first. I liked that class for the wrong reasons most people expected. Professor Chen ran it like an argument that hadn’t finished yet, always circling back, never letting anyone settle into being right. Most people in the room treated it as a requirement to survive. I treated it as the one hour of my day where nobody asked me to perform anything. I just had to think clearly, and thinking clearly had never once been my problem.

I took my usual seat near the front and opened my notebook to the right page and was halfway through copying the board when the door opened late.

I didn’t look up. People came in late constantly.

Then the room went quiet in that particular way a room goes quiet when something has shifted that everyone notices except the person speaking.

“Sorry I’m late,” Professor Chen said, sounding more amused than annoyed. “We have someone auditing today. Mr. Carter, take any open seat.”

I looked up then. I couldn’t not.

He was already looking at me.

Not the bench look from the courtyard, not the calm, decided look from days ago. This one had something else underneath it, something almost like he knew exactly what this would do and had walked in anyway. He lifted two fingers in something that wasn’t quite a wave and took the empty seat two rows behind me, the one nobody chose because it had a wobble in the leg.

I turned back to my notebook. My handwriting got slightly worse.

“He’s not in this class,” I said under my breath to Mia, who sat one seat over.

“He’s auditing.”

“He’s never been in this class. He’s not a Lit major.”

“Maybe he likes literature.”

“He likes proving a point.”

Mia didn’t answer that, which from Mia was its own kind of answer.

The lecture went the way lectures always went, except for the part where I could feel the back of my neck the entire time, that specific awareness you have of a person watching even when you can’t see them doing it. I took the most thorough notes I had taken all semester. I also couldn’t have told you a single theme Professor Chen discussed if someone had asked me five minutes after class ended.

When the lecture wrapped, I gathered my things fast. Not running. Just efficient.

He caught up with me outside, easy and unhurried, like jogging two steps to fall in beside someone wasn’t actually effort for him. People glanced over as we walked. I felt it the way I always felt being looked at, a low hum under my skin that I had gotten good at ignoring.

“That’s not legal,” I said before he could speak. “Auditing a class you have no academic reason to be in.”

“Professor Chen said I could.”

“That’s not a denial.”

“I asked. He said yes. I don’t see the crime.”

“The crime is showing up in my class with no warning.”

“Would a warning have made it better?”

“It would have given me time to prepare to ignore you properly.”

“That’s the most honest thing you’ve said to me.”

I stopped walking. He stopped too, a careful half step away, hands in his pockets like he had nowhere else he needed to be in the next several hours. A group of girls passed us and one of them looked back twice. I didn’t acknowledge it. Neither did he, which surprised me more than it should have.

“What do you want, Alex?”

“I told you I’d stop coming if you gave me one thing.”

“I’m not giving you my number.”

“I didn’t ask for your number.” He tilted his head slightly. “I figured out a way to text you. I asked for coffee. Once. That’s the whole deal.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then I guess I’ll see you in Lit on Thursday.”

I looked at him for a long moment, the kind of look I usually reserved for people who were about to be told no in a way that ended the conversation permanently. He didn’t flinch under it. He didn’t do the thing most people did, where they started talking faster to fill the silence before I could use it against them. He just waited, steady, like he already knew what my silence cost me more than it cost him.

“One coffee,” I said. “And then you stop showing up where you have no reason to be.”

“Deal.”

“I’m serious, Alex.”

“I know you are. That’s sort of the appeal.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that, which was its own small disaster. I turned and walked toward the stairs before he could see whatever was happening on my face, and he didn’t follow, which somehow felt like its own kind of win for him.

Mia caught up with me on the landing, practically vibrating.

“You said yes.”

“I said yes to one coffee. To get him to stop.”

“Sure.”

“That’s literally what happened, Mia.”

“I believe you.” She was smiling the smile she only used when she knew something I hadn’t admitted yet. “I one hundred percent believe that’s the whole story.”

I pushed through the door to the second floor without answering her, because there was nothing true I could say that would make the smile go away, and nothing false I was willing to say either.

I didn’t think about any of it again until I crossed the quad toward my last class and caught Marcus Webb watching me from across the lawn. Not the way men usually watched me. The way you watch something you’re keeping score on. He said something to the guy beside him. They both laughed.

I told myself it was nothing.

I told myself a lot of things that week that turned out not to be true, but that one settled into my chest and stayed there, small and quiet, the kind of thing you don’t examine too closely because examining it means admitting you noticed it at all.

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