"You fucking bitches." Darkwood jabbed a finger into Logan's chest. "You had lunch without me?"

As it turned out, scouring the entire campus floor by floor for somewhere to eat really ate into the lunch hour. Logan and I had barely stepped foot back in the Main Hall when the bell rang, hearkening students back to class.

So, Logan rerouted us to our one shared period today, where we found Darkwood lurking by the doors, angrily chewing on a ball of pink mochi.

"Where were you?" I asked.

"In front of the dining hall -- as planned and repeated to me multiple times!" Darkwood fumed. "I expected as much from Princess here, but Logan? You abandoned a rendezvous point. What if something happened, huh?"

Logan, at least, had enough shame to flush slightly pink in the cheeks. "Did something happen?"

"Oh, I see. So only Sp--Finch is worthy of your concern. Not a single thought spared to the hitman roaming the halls."

"Did you kill someone today?" I chimed in.

"Not yet."

"So it's still 'attempted hitman.'" I patted his arm. Darkwood swatted my hand away.

"Excuse me." From behind us, someone cleared their throat loudly. A tall man stood close by, eyes glowering from behind seventies-style horn-rimmed glasses.

"Please refrain from congregating in front of lecture halls. Other students are trying to make it to their seats," the man reprimanded before stepping into the classroom. In a few strides, he situated himself at the professor's desk.

Logan wilted where he stood.

Darkwood shifted the strap of his book bag higher on his shoulder. "Serves you right, leaving me to the wolves," he huffed before storming into the lecture hall.

As usual, the majority of the seats in the front half of the room were already filled. Unusually, there was a bit of gendered segregation taking place. Most of the female students had flocked to the first three rows, leaving the male students to migrate farther back. Much to Logan's growing displeasure, our feet took us farther and farther away from the blackboard, until we were relegated to the very back of class.

A displeasure, might I add, entirely of his own doing. Multiple classmates gestured for him to join their row, hastily rearranging their books and bags to make room. Someone from the student council, the treasurer, even got up and offered up his own seat. And yet, Logan refused every offer with a polite shake of his head, though his eyes glistened with a yearning for that front row.

A line was forming by the podium. A pen passed from hand to hand as students scribbled their signatures on the sign-in sheet. Close by, the professor stood hunched over his desk, the glare of his computer screen beaming off his lens. He was so immersed in whatever email he was reviewing that any salutations fell on seemingly deaf ears.

As soon as Logan's bag claimed an aisle seat, he was back at the front of the room, joining the line behind a couple of guys from the rowing team.

"Can't Cross just sign us in?" Darkwood muttered, halfway through scraping a chair out. Almost as if he heard him, Logan turned his gaze on us, a sharp jerk of his head serving as an answer: get in line.

"Loser." With a roll of his eyes, Darkwood followed me up to the podium. "Did you two at least make out after your flagrant protocol violation? I'll forgive you if you did."

I smacked his chest to shut him up, but his words conjured up the very memory I just swore to bury during lunch. This happened to coincide with the very moment we linked back up with Logan in line and I felt my bodyguard's eyes land on me, as they always did, and for some reason, my face felt unbearably warm.

At least there was Darkwood between us, serving as a lanky buffer -- nope, never mind. Logan was already leaning around Darkwood's frame to keep me in sight. Peripheral sight, that is --thankfully, his eyes remained locked onto the person he was conversing with, as manners dictated they should be. Hopefully, then, he wouldn't be able to notice if my cheeks were pink.

At some point, the pen finally passed to me, leaving me the last person up at the front of the room. Upon signing a nonsensical series of loops that in no way shape or form spelled neither 'Alex' nor 'Finch,' the professor chose then to straighten up, his hands fixing the lapels of his brown tweed jacket. Without the scowl from earlier on his face, I finally understood why all the girls were sitting so close to the board.

He was young. Very young -- looking to be around Elijah's age, he seemed fresh off the heels of a doctorates program, ready to interview for the role of teacher's aide instead of, well, the teacher. He was also handsome, with sharp features and dark hair falling in ungroomed, dry curls over his forehead, covering brows that seemed a little too light. Behind those frames perched atop a high-bridged nose were a pair of spring green eyes that surveyed me coolly. I blinked -- and his face blurred with another's, someone who I couldn't quite place in that very second.

"Miss..." the professor began, pausing to let me identify myself.

I blinked again and the haziness of déjà vu floated away. "Finch."

There were no identifiers in the room nor on his person denoting his name. Unlike Logan, I was not in the habit of memorizing everything about my professors before the start of term. Honestly, I wasn't even sure what class this was.

"Do take your seat then, Miss Finch, unless you wanted to present the first lecture of class."

Several people sniggered under their breath as I made my way back to my seat, where I found myself sandwiched between Logan and Darkwood. Immediately, the green-eyed cretin leaned over and whispered, "Hot for teacher?"

My elbow found his rib. Darkwood cursed under his breath.

"Welcome to Advanced Studies of the Western European Middle Ages," the man began, clicking a button on a small remote that dimmed the lights. A projector descended in front of the blackboard. "I am Professor Rook. Thank you for choosing this class as your history elective for your senior year."

A nagging sensation tugged at the back of my mind as I struggled to place his accent. The tonality of his words was colored red, white, and blue, but there was something off with how crisp and tight his overall pronunciation was. He enunciated consonants like I did.

And Logan. And Darkwood.

Meanwhile, Professor Rook started by going over the syllabus, reminding us to note important dates such as upcoming midterms, project essays, and finals. A glance over at Logan's syllabus showed that it was color-coded, tabbed, and sufficiently thumbed through, the corners of the pages already creasing.

Rook was more lenient in comparison to some of the other members of faculty, allowing late submissions, generous office hours, and the option to contest certain grades if you were within a certain percentage threshold.

"After all, this is senior year. No need to make the last lap of this marathon any harder," our professor chuckled before switching slides.

Logan sulked in his seat.

Within ten minutes, Rook was wrapping up his spiel on classroom policies to then jump over to his 'subject to change' lesson plans, starting with the land poised to become the British empire around 476 A.D.

For a second, I thought Darkwood was attempting to keep up with slides, what with his fingers dancing rapidly over the keyboard of his brand-new laptop. Oh, wait, no -- he was just online shopping.

Following the kingdom of Britain would be France, then the Ottoman and Byzantine empires, Aragon, Portugal, and Cimeria. The slide changed to a portrait of Frederick the Great, the man who conquered a piece of land that would one day become Cimeria's modern day capital. Frederick, who stood tall with radiant blond hair underneath a glittering crown, a ridiculously heavy fur cape draped over a war-hardened figure. Even from the back of the room, his eyes seemed to watch me with disdain, just like every portrait of his always did.

"We'll conclude with the first civil war on Cimerian soil, when the Sparrow clan rebelled against the Fell monarchy."

The slide changed, and our dear professor was moving on to another country, another kingdom, another conqueror. And yet, that set of green eyes remained behind, now scanning the room before momentarily landing on me. Like he'd been caught, Professor Rook quickly looked back to the board.

I might not know you, and I sat up a bit straighter, but you know me.

He didn't look over anymore for the rest of class.

When the bell rang, I shoved my completely untouched notebook into my bag, practically scrambling over Logan to try and make it down to the front. I had no idea what I was going to say. I had no clue what was going on either, but my gut was screaming and I had to know what it was trying to warn me about.

Too late: a small crowd had formed already around the front desk, over-eager students inquiring about when the professor would host his first office hour.

"I'm glad you're taking this year so seriously, Finch," commended Logan, quickly joining me in our descent down the lecture hall.

"Or she, like everyone else here, just thinks the professor is hot," snorted Darkwood.

Logan clutched his metaphorical pearls, i.e., his Oxford collars. "Don't be ridiculous," he harrumphed. "People here actually care about their education, Dark -- I mean, Callahan, so--"

The crew before us decided to depart instead of waiting in line, allowing me to inch forward. Professor Rook snapped his gaze over for a brief second. All of a sudden, he, too, was haphazardly cramming his laptop and legal pad into his satchel before ducking out of the room, right as Logan opened his mouth to greet the professor.

"Probably just wanted to avoid another congregation," snickered Darkwood. He looked at me next. "And what line were you going to use -- oi!"

I rushed towards the hallway, where I was nearly bulldozed by the stampeding student body scurrying to their last class of the day. I got on the tips of my toes to strain for a glimpse of Rook's figure. The attempt was futile -- he was already gone.

"Finch," came Logan's voice, low in my ear as his hand snaked around my wrist, "is everything alright?"

I frowned, turning to face him and Darkwood. "Does he seem . . . familiar to you guys too?"

"Is that what you were going to lead with?" Darkwood clasped his hands together. "Professor, I swear, you and I," he breathed in a ridiculous falsetto, "we knew each other in a different timeline."

"Stop watching Pretty Little Liars or I'll revoke your Netflix access."

"Then what were you dying to ask him?"

Great question.

I glanced down the hall one more time, my mind chasing down the fast-evaporating wisps of suspicion while the crowd thinned out with each passing second. What was so off about him? His age? It wasn't like he was the only faculty member here without wrinkles. That he looked over to me while lecturing about Cimeria? Pure chance, perhaps -- and the quick look-away could simply be due to the fact that he may, in fact, hate eye contact.

"I wanted to see," I said, my words crawling after one another, "if he's Cimerian?" Lame. Unconvincing. Very silly.

The boys agreed with my internal judgment, the two of them sharing looks that ranged from mild confusion to oh-she's-full-of-shit. (I'll leave it to you to guess who had that second look.)

"Why, because he pronounced the territories right?" scoffed Darkwood. "With that logic, you might as well ask him if he's from the entire continent of Europe while you're at it. His French was impeccable."

"Didn't it sound like a native accent?"

Did it?  All of a sudden, I could barely recall what about his pronunciation threw me off in the first place.

"I would hope someone who wasted money on a historical studies graduate degree would know how to pronounce countries right."

"That's rich, coming from a prospective art history major."

Logan pressed his thumb into my wrist and the motion shocked me from the argument. Had he been holding onto me this whole time?

"You probably glimpsed him a few times before but just didn't know who he was," he said, ever the logical one. "Professor Rook has been around a few years, but he only teaches the senior electives so he's not well-known to most students."

Sure, that might explain his visual familiarity. But it failed to satisfy all the other minor details that refused to sit right in my head.

Unfortunately, bad vibes were an impermissible form of evidence and Logan was standing awfully close, his fingers trailing towards my palms--

"Aren't you going to be late again?" I asked. As Logan finally registered that we were the very last people, once again, standing in the corridor, I gently shook my arm from his grasp. A few stragglers were passing by to take their place in the lecture hall we were just in, but that was it. There was one minute left on the clock.

"Alright, if we book it--" He was already turning to leave.

"You go on ahead. Callahan can escort me."

Logan stopped dead in his tracks. "With what qualifications?"

"Didn't know you needed a license to walk somebody," muttered Darkwood.

I rolled my eyes. "Logan, your lecture is three doors down this hall. Callahan has biology right below my chemistry lab."

"Do I?" Pulling out a crumpled-up ball of paper from the depths of his pants, Darkwood unfolded the sheet and squinted his eyes. "Ah, I do."

"Plus, he knows how to beat up a girl or two."

Logan's shoe was bouncing impatiently. "How can I possibly let you out of my sight when you just told me there's someone suspicious in the building?"

"Oh, now you want to believe me?"

"I never doubted you for a second. Now will you let me walk you?"

He held out a hand.

But then the final bell rang and in that split second, I caught his resolution wavering in his eyes. Just barely -- but it was enough for me to seize my advantage, plus Darkwood's sleeve, and make a run for the stairs. "See you after class!"

Logan sputtered a week protest before finally (and rather quickly) conceding and shouting, "Fine -- but remember to meet me by--"

Darkwood stopped just to point a finger in Logan's direction. "How dare you lecture me about rendezvous points!"

I half-expected -- oh, who am I kidding? I fully expected Darkwood to peace out the second Logan was out of sight. In fact, I'd been banking on it. But to my surprise, he soldiered the entire commute with me, right up to the chemistry lab -- without complaint.

"What?" he asked as I threw him a bewildered look. He held the door open with his loafers pressed up against panel.

"I'm just a little shocked you actually escorted me here. Would've thought all those extra steps would be such a burden on those gazelle legs of yours."

"Logan entrusted me, his best friend, in his place as your boyfri -- wait, no, that doesn't make sense." Darkwood snapped his fingers. "Bodyguard, yes, that's what he is."

Someone loudly cleared their throat from down the hall. Darkwood and I paused to meet the angry gaze of a janitor sweeping away at a big fat pile of nothing, who mimed a very aggressive zipping of the lips at us.

"Gunning for that five-star review, are you?" I deduced.

Blowing me a kiss, Darkwood then bid me farewell. "Tell Grandmother I was on my best behavior."

I motioned to join the first available seat I saw. Despite it being minutes past the start of lecture, the professor had yet to arrive, and so students milled about, chatting with their friends. With the two-party system common for chemistry and biology labs, most, if not all, of the desks had been claimed, leaving the lonely to float alone at the back of class. I was just about to throw my bag next to Gregory, a mousy looking boy who looked like he couldn't possibly stab me with a beaker when suddenly--

"Alex!"

At first, I didn't realize that someone was actually calling for me. No one called me Alex. It was always just Finch.

"Alex, over here!"

Someone shot up a hand and beckoned me towards the front of the room. It was Sophia, surrounded by a horde of girls who all stiffened when I looked in their direction.

"I saved you a seat!"

Muffy Hartford looked like she was swallowing a lemon as she pulled her bag off the metal stool, freeing the seat for me. I wanted to tell her she could keep it. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up as my body recalled the tension it went through at Priscilla's summer bonfire. But Sophia was patting the surface of the seat with a wide smile, and my survival instincts told me turning her down would land me in a much stickier situation.

"I didn't see you at lunch." There was that ridiculous pout again. "Was Logan able to find you?"

The girls waited in treacherous silence and I shot Gregory a longing look. Gregory averted his eyes. "Uh, yeah," I finally said, turning back to face them and setting my bag on the table. "We met up."

"Such a shame he couldn't eat with us today," Sabrina, another blonde, whose roots were showing, piped in. "Couldn't you have just met him in the dining hall? He's busy enough, he doesn't need to be chasing you down everywhere.

Muffy snickered under her breath. "Can she even afford the dining hall?"

A wave of giggles passed around me, laughter barely contained behind manicured acrylics. Quite expected of Muffy, I thought.

"I don't have to," I beamed. "Logan buys me lunch."

Muffy's smile froze, but before she could say anything, Sophia cut in. "That's just how Logan is," she said saccharinely. "He's always willing to help the needy."

Oh, but that was quite unexpected of you. Sophia's smile remained steady.

"Needy?" I couldn't hep but repeat, turning to face her.

"Oh, don't think anything of it!" Sophia reached over to clasp the hand on my lap, as if consoling me. "Logan told me you're a scholarship student. Funds must be hard to come by, right?"

From gold digger to pity project. Was this a promotion or a downgrade?

"Maybe Logan won't have to donate to the Finch Foundation anymore," a girl hovering by Muffy sneered. Oh, very witty -- ten points to Irissa Tate. "You're quite friendly with the new guy -- Callahan, was it?"

Ah, shit. The one thing backstories and PowerPoints couldn't make up for: the inherent chemistry between a girl and the orphaned boy who tried to kill her.

"What, a girl can't make friends?"

"There's friends and then there's being a little too friendly," Muffy so helpfully defined. "Trading up already?"

"Well, yes, is that not what gold diggers are supposed to do?"

Before Muffy could bite my head off, I was saved by the professor's arrival. The herd around us scrambled, beelining towards the surrounding tables where they'd claimed their territory via designer pencil bags. While everyone's eyes were quickly trained on the slides, I caught a glimpse of Sophia's first ever frown before she, too, turned to face the screen.

Upon the wrap-up of yet another syllabus overview, our first assignment came in the form of an empty periodic table. It was our one permissible cheat sheet on any and all future exams (so better not mess it up!). It was pure busy work, but after the extensive lab safety protocols we just went over that would've put any of Logan's PowerPoints to shame, I guess even professors needed a break to scroll on their phones for a bit.

The silence in the room uncapped as classmates eagerly borrowed one another's brains to fill out the squares. Before long, as the rows of elements began to quickly fill up, the murmurs of "which element is this?" turned to "guess who I kissed over the summer?"

"Oh, do you need help?" Sophia was glimpsing over at my untouched sheet. "I heard you struggle with some of your studies."

What haven't you heard at this point?

Without even waiting for me to reply, Sophia so graciously pushed her sheet over to my side of the table, and had I been a real underperforming student struggling to place in the ranks, Sophia would've come off as a godsend. A true friend.

I'd also have to be a real idiot. Because the first square, having always belonged to hydrogen, had the details of iridium filled in. Everyone and their mother knew hydrogen was number one. I knew it. She knew it. Darkwood probably knew it.

Sophia blinked her sapphire eyes at me with an unassuming smile.

"Thank you," I beamed, writing it down anyway (using 0.5 millimeter lead -- for future erasing purposes). "Logan must talk a lot about me. I feel like we've been friends forever."

Her delayed laugh tinkled like copper. "Sure, if you consider complaining talking."

At this point, Muffy paused her scribbling, her ears preened for gossip.

"Isn't that how it is?" I wrote in the wrong element for chlorine, mismatching even Sophia's inaccurate guide. Her lips twitched. She didn't correct me. "If a boy is mean to you, it means he has a crush on you."

"I guess," she relented. "I'm just surprised he never mentioned it to me. He tells me everything, you see."

Leave it alone, Park, my brain cautioned. Irissa and Sabrina were cluing in now too. I knew better than this -- one does not engage in these situations. Sophia was prying -- either for information or to get under my skin. Muffy & Co. were, to put it generously, trolls, always vying for engagement via rage farming. The more I spoke, the more I was feeding into all of my adversaries' objectives: Sophia would find out more about me and simultaneously piss me off with every "oh, well Logan told me--" card she had; and the other girls would feed off the tension. All I needed to do was shut up.

But, well -- you know how that always works out.

"Technically that means he doesn't tell you everything," I corrected.

"Logan's a very private person--"

"Oh, absolutely. I mean, he never even mentioned you existed."

(Until just this summer.) (And it wasn't even to me.)

Sophia's smile turned brittle. "I'm sure he must've said something -- just not to you. After all, you haven't been on . . . good terms until pretty recently, right?"

"That makes sense. We don't do a lot of talking when we're together."

If we were going to be pedantic, then Logan and I spent more time arguing than anything. But the small flare of vindication I felt at the drop of her lips and the rush of red to her cheeks kept me from defining anything.

My victory was short-lived -- the trolls quickly came tromping over, banners raised in defense of their new It Girl.

 "Logan mentions you all the time!" Muffy lied through her teeth. "He's always going on about how he misses Cimeria since you were still there."

Fact: Logan Cross rarely ever mentioned his noble upbringing for fear of looking like what he was (a nepo baby).

"What would you know about what Logan talks to his actual friends about?" sneered Sabrina, turning her nose up at me.

Fact: Sabrina Woolsworth had never actually spoken more than five words to Logan due to the fact that she broke out in anxiety hives just from being near him.

"It's really okay, guys." Sophia tucked a golden curl behind her ear, her expression chastising, her eyes twinkling. "I'm sure he had his reasons."

Fact: Sophia Morgan was quite good at this.

"The first student council meeting is after class -- let's just ask Logan then," suggested Irissa.

A profoundly stupid idea, considering Logan would sooner tell people to fuck off than reveal what his favorite color was.

"Um," one of the girls on the farthest edge of the circle, Piper Devins, stuttered. "The council president doesn't like it when non-members are present--"

"Yeah, but it's Sophia." Muffy rolled her eyes and Piper quickly ducked her head. "I'm sure Logan won't mind."

And so, when the bell rang, Sophia was swept away by her new friends, arm in arm with Sabrina, with Muffy leading the charge. There was no extended invitation to join them this time around. Sophia lingered just long enough to point at one of the squares on my sheet and giggle, "Looks like you got a few wrong," before tossing her curls and skipping away, not a second glance spared.

Her laugh kept bouncing around inside my head as I erased all my wrong answers. I was cursing myself, partly because for once it wasn't me who had the last word and partly because for once someone was getting under my skin.

Nathaniel Morgan's little sister, of all people -- though, actually, that tracked, considering how annoying I found that blond narc.

And what exactly was her problem with me? Obviously she still harbored feelings for Logan. Did she view me as an obstacle in her way? Did she blame me for 'stealing' him? Whatever it was, it left me on the receiving end of a lot of rage, multiplied tenfold by the years-long animosity harbored by Muffy and her crew.

It's not even real, I fumed, still erasing. If it'll make my life easier, I'll just break up with him and--

"Oh, dear," Professor Green tutted from where she loomed over me. "You ripped your cheat sheet."

Whoops. I picked up a corner and peered at the professor through the giant schism in the center. "Any chance you might have an extra form?"

At first, her frown conveyed a resounding 'no.' Eventually, though, the corners of her lips twitched and she beckoned me over to her desk, where she did indeed spared a fresh sheet of paper, unmarred by any kind of aggressive erasing.

Outside, there was no Logan Cross waiting for me, making that his second missed rendezvous point of the day. 

Wait, no -- he had instructed me to meet him on the second floor of the library in case he was running late. My mood continued to sour. The second floor of the library was where the student council room was, meaning I'd have to run into Blondie yet again -- this time with the added bonus of having Logan himself there to witness this ridiculous pissing contest I was having.

Would he let her sit in on the meeting? It wouldn't be the first time Logan made an exception for someone in that family. I could picture it now: Logan beckoning Sophia into the student council room while telling me to wait outside. Oh, look, Muffy was in the vision too, sneering at me like she always did.

But he wouldn't do that.

Would he?  I was still banned from the student council room. Would he make an exception for me?

I keep justifying whatever it takes to make you happy.

"Logan!"

My foot nearly skidded off the step and my hand shot out just in time to clutch the railing for support. Somehow, I'd managed to catch up with everyone. Muffy had one arm in the air, waving back and forth while her other arm snaked around Sophia's and hauled her down the last level of stairs. Down at the bottom stood Logan, who'd shockingly shed his blazer in favor of wearing his Oxford rolled up to his elbows.

"Should we all walk to the student council meeting together?" asked Muffy.

Logan arched a brow. "The student council meeting isn't for another two hours. Didn't you get the email?"

Muffy stammered. "I thought it must've been a mistake. You've never rescheduled a student council meeting."

"Well, now I have. Hence, the email." A perfunctory response -- middle managers would love him. "And non-members aren't supposed to sit in on these meetings anyway."

"Ooh, a secret society. Can I join?" asked a voice behind me. Darkwood had also wrapped up class and was now standing behind me, leaning down so that I could hear him. Why he had to say it right in my ear, I had no idea, seeing how his comment was loud enough for everyone else to hear as well. Irissa and Sabrina shot us twin glares before immediately exchanging angry whispers.

Look at that. Less than twelve hours had passed and I'd already secured my place as Public Enemy #1 yet again.

"Sophia's a close friend, though," persisted Muffy, despite Sophia's obvious attempts to get her to back down. "I'm sure it shouldn't be a problem."

"I'm sure if you were student council president, it wouldn't be. But until you vote me out, then Soph can apply for a position like everyone else. And we can review the application at the rescheduled meeting time."

Just as expected. Yet, all I could think was, There was that stupid nickname again. Really, how hard was it to tack on those two extra syllables.

Muffy did not take a loss easily. Letting go of Sophia, she asserted a crossed-arm stance on the second to last step to give herself the smallest height advantage over Logan. "Why even reschedule the meeting? Extracurriculars haven't started yet. Plus, I don't remember ever being called on to vote about the time change. According to Article Three--"

As Muffy cited to the ancient and binding powers of the St. Cross Student Council Articles of Conduct and Ethics, Logan simply moved around her on the stairs. Now, this was unexpected. The Logan I once knew would've never ignored an invocation of a text as sacred as the Articles of Conduct and Ethics -- but the Logan before me merely rolled his eyes, a smile threatening to turn his lips.

"Then start without me," he declared before grabbing my hand tugging me forward. He laced our fingers together and held our palms tightly behind his back. "I have a study date."

It's a cover, it's a cover, it's just a cover, I thought; all the while, my mind was frying. He's doing his job, he's being a bodyguard -- he's just keeping his client close.

But I couldn't help but squeeze his hand back and for a brief second, completely breaking the boundary I'd just put down this afternoon, I let myself pretend that this was all real. And that all of this was simply a boy keeping that study date he promised his girl earlier that summer.

* * * 

happy holidays everyone! hope everyone had some good food this weekend and spent an inordinate amount of money while telling yourself you're actually saving money in anticipation of next year's tariffs

holding space,
knee