By three a.m., they weren’t even using words, just an exchange of GIFs and memes in a secret language of intimacy and humor they were both working to decode.
Grabbing her phone now, she unlocked it and automatically opened her texts with him, picking up right where they’d left off, as was her new morning ritual since deciding to be annoyingly responsible and asking for friendship.
Being friends with Dan sucked ass.
Not because he wasn’t a great buddy to hang out with—much to Thu’s dismay, he was quickly climbing the list of Harper’s all-time favorite people—but because he made it so damn hard to not think of how much more she wanted from him.
Over a week had passed since she’d friend-zoned their growing connection, and each day reached a new level of frustration—sexual and otherwise.
They both made an unspoken pact to spend all their limited free time together: Looking for each other in the morning with an extra cup of coffee. Lunches walking around campus. Evenings in study rooms, where little actual studying was done, and a lot of stolen glances and shy eye contact were made instead.
When she was around Dan, Harper indulged parts of herself that anxiety had drowned away—she was goofy, carefree, addicted to the feelings he pulled from her. But none of that changed how she still had to white-knuckle her way through a normal day, panic constantly screaming at her that the world was about to crash to bits. Where in that mess was she supposed to build a foundation with another person, when everything felt dangerously out of her control? Like one step off course would send her entire world hurtling out of orbit.
At this major juncture in her life, she needed to concentrate on the things she could control—school, grades, career—and unwaveringly focus on her end goal. Because, regardless of what either of them felt now, she’d be leaving in four short months.
Leaving. Leaving. LEAVING. She slapped the heel of her hand against her forehead with each reminder.
She already cared for Dan so much that the idea of saying goodbye even as friends made her chest ache. Setting her silly little heart up for even more trouble would be devastating. And Harper wasn’t na?ve enough to buy into the ridiculous fantasy that a relationship could survive years of physical distance, especially when she’d also be working seventy hours a week at the hospital. Impractical didn’t even come close to describing it.
Harper stared at her ceiling, feeling the crushing weight of emotions she didn’t have names for. It was in moments like this that she wished so desperately for her mom. She wasn’t sure if her mom would’ve been helpful—every day it was a little bit harder to imagine what her mom would do or say—but Harper believed her mom would help her strike a balance between the two seemingly opposite things she wanted. If nothing else, her mom would be able to give her a hug, something Harper had wanted for so long it was physically painful.
But Harper didn’t have her mom.
Instead, she had confusion and anxiety and loneliness and a threatening degree of horniness.
Harper’s friends were all but useless—telling her to stop being an idiot and jump into bed with Dan as soon as humanly possible, having little empathy for her reluctance to involve her heart at this point in her life when her mind had always been her guide.
Giving her pillow one last groan, and with a few very adultish punches and kicks into her mattress, she rolled out of bed and got ready for school.
* * *
During lunch, Harper and Thu met up with Indira and Lizzie in the atrium and camped out on a long couch stationed across from the Orthodontic Society’s ticketing table for the upcoming dental prom, “Filling Groovy,” being hosted that weekend.
Although Indira attended Callowhill’s medical school, the dance was open to all professional programs, and Indira successfully smuggled Lizzie in as her date every year.
Indira, Lizzie, and Thu were buzzing with excitement, huddled together on the couch and keeping up a constant stream of gossip and predictions for the drunken escapades of their classmates as people stepped up to the table to buy tickets.
Harper didn’t understand why any mid-twenty-year-old would be quite this excited for a school dance, but the yearly ticket sellouts and ridiculously swanky venues proved that no group of people was ready to bump and grind harder than sexually frustrated dental nerds.
Not sharing her friends’ enthusiasm, Harper stayed on the couch as they all got in line to buy their tickets. She tucked her knees to her chest, resting her forehead against them as she gave in to her exhaustion.
“Sleepy?”