College opened a new chapter _ new walls, new faces, same old ache.Jessie glided through classes silent and withdrawn, drawing little attention except for her striking quiet. She kept to the back row, always with a book, never with the crowd. People whispered, but no one really tried to get close. She preferred it that way
No one, it seemed, except Evans.
Evans was a king among students_ loud, handsome, always at the center of a laughing group. Rumors flew about his flings with girls, his reckless charm. They said he could make anyone fall for him, only to walk away as soon as he got bored. For Evans, every conquest was a point scored, a story to brag about later.
Jessie noticed him, of course. She always did, despite herself. He was everything she detested and everything she now understood: a reflection of the worlds carelessness with other people's heart. When Evans set his sight on her_ the quiet girl, the challenge _ she recognized the look in his eyes. He was intrigued, used to easy victories, and already imagining his next tale.
Day after day, he found excuses to linger near her in the department lounge, to joke loudly just within earshot, to toss casual smiles in her direction.
"You're too quiet, Jessie," he'd tease one day, leaning over her armrest in class, his grin all confidence and mischief. "Don't you ever have fun?"
She met his gaze with cool detachment, masking the storm brewing beneath. In her mind, the rule of four echoed_ one down, three to go. It was time to play.
She let her lips twist into the faintest hint of a smile. "Maybe you just haven't given me a good enough reason," she answered softly.
Challenge flared in his eyes_ he thought the game was his. He didn't realize he'd just wandered onto her board, with rules he didn't know and a prize he could never keep.
And so, two games began that day, one in full view of the world, the other beneath the surface_ a playboy and a secret playgirl, circling each other, neither ready for what would come next.
Jessie knew patience was power. She didn't flirt back, didn't drop her guard, and made no secret of her indifference. That only made him more determined. The more she held herself apart, the more he bragged to his friends. "Just watch. I'll have her in a week."
One evening, after a group project, Jessie lay on the campus lawn looking at the stars in the sky. It was so beautiful. She was carried away by its beauty that she didn't realize someone lay beside her.
"Why do you keep everyone at an arms length?"he asked, voice quiet, almost earnest for once. "You could have anyone here, you know. You are beautiful, brilliant, kind and amazing," he said.
She looked away, as if gathering courage to speak. "People let you down, Evans ."she murmured, letting enough truth touch her eyes.
"Repeat what you said, Jessie," he said
"What?"she asked, staring at him.
"I want you to repeat what you just said, Jessie," he repeated.
"People let y...," she tried to say but he interrupted her.
"Not that one. I want you to say the last word," he said.
"Down," she said, looking at him confusingly. "What is it Evans ?"she screamed.
He got up from the lawn and held his heart. He twirled and shouted, "My baby just mentioned my name, miracles, miracles, miracles."
That was when she realized what was going on. It was the first time she had mentioned his name since they met.
"Can you say it one more time please," he said looking into her eyes.
"So childish," she replied, stood and turned to leave. He held her hand from behind, their distance a breath away.
"Look at me Jessie, he said, his breath fanning her neck. Jessie stood frozen, her heart thundering in its cage. What was happening?
She turned, her body as stiff as a rock. She couldn't speak, she couldn't move. Evans lifted her chin, making her stare into his eyes.
"I won't let you down," he said, his tone softer than he meant it to be. The look of concern flickering across his face made her doubt her decision for a second. But then, she remembered. Men aren't to be trusted.
"We'll see," she replied, took her hands from his and walked away.
Evans stood there. What had happened? Why was his heart behaving abnormally when he held her? Why was he hurt when she replied that she was distant because people let her down? Why did he feel like doing all he could to make her smile? What was wrong with him?
The next day they sat together in class. Jessie slid into the desk beside Evans, close enough that the warmth from his arm brushed her own. Even before the lesson began his pulse betrayed him—a quick, uneven drum against his ribs—and when she settled in he glanced at her with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. She let her shoulder lightly bump his; he went rigid for a heartbeat, then managed a small, helpless grin. The hum of the projector and the shuffle of papers faded into a hush around them—everything seemed to narrow to the space between their two breathing bodies.
Jessie tilted her face toward him and let a slow, secret smile bloom. "Let's get burgers after class," she whispered, her voice warm and easy as sunlight on skin. The sound of it slid straight into his chest like a match struck. For a moment he forgot the room, forgot the other students, forgot the teacher's voice at the front—he was only aware of her, the way her eyes held a soft dare and a steady kindness. Words came out of him before he caught them. "What are you doing, Jessie?" he asked, astonished at how hushed and sincere he sounded.
A sharp shout cut across the quiet—"Evans!"—and the teacher's voice snapped like a ruler against the desk. "Concentrate, please. This is a lecture, not a daydream." Color rushed to his face; the spell broke. He lurched back into the present, fumbling for his pen as heads turned and the room exhaled. Jessie nudged his shoulder, playful now, bringing him back with a gentle touch that stayed long enough to be a promise. Her fingers lingered against his sleeve and, as if summoned, his hand found hers—brief and tentative at first, then firmed.
They sat under the harsh white of the burger shop lights, trays between them, the smell of frying potatoes like a constant small applause. Jessie watched him more than she talked — the way his jaw tightened when he chewed, the invisible pause before he reached for the salt. When his soda arrived flat, she asked for a fresh one without making a scene. When a joke he tried to land flopped, she laughed in a way that felt like forgiveness, not performance.
Evans noticed it in the tiny, unshowy ways: she pushed the fries closer when he reached for them, not touching his hand but making the space feel shared; she slid her napkin across the table when ketchup hit his sleeve before he could mutter an apology; she remembered that he liked extra pickles and asked for them with a confidence that implied she'd been listening longer than a single evening. She didn't glance at his watch or the logo on his jacket, didn't trade flirty glances for a payoff. Her attention stayed on him like a light that didn't require he shine back.
He thought of the other evenings — the polished smiles that arrived with compliments about his car, the easy bodies that moved in and out when the novelty dimmed. Those girls had wanted parts of him that could be shown off. Jessie wanted none of those things; she wanted the whole of his attention, the small, inconvenient parts no one boasted about. That distinction landed in him like a stone in a quiet pond.
"You always take sugar-free?" she asked, handing him a wrapped straw as if she'd always known.
He stared at the simple gesture. "Yeah," he said, the single word feeling larger than it should.
No grand declarations. No confessions. Just the fact of her care — precise, deliberate, and aimed at him rather than at what he could give. In that booth, between a smashed pickle and a shared fry, Evans felt something shift: for the first time in a long while, he considered what it might be like to be wanted for what he was, not for what he wore.
Evans laughed, but it came out small. He and Marco sat on the curb outside the diner, winter light slanting across their sneakers. He told Marco about the fries and the napkin and the way she asked for extra pickles as if she'd known he liked them all along. He described the quiet of her attention, the way it lingered without asking for anything in return, as if it were a light that didn't need to be answered.
"She sounds... different," Marco said, voice softer than Evans expected. For a second the teasing in his eyes softened, too. "Not the usual." He pushed at a chipped beer bottle with his toe. "So you're saying you actually like her."
Evans felt the word like a stone in his throat. "I don't know if 'like' is big enough," he admitted. "I—there's something about her. It's not loud or flashy. She just... makes me want to be better at the small stuff. To notice things."
Marco's mouth quirked. He folded his arms like a referee. "Good. Then don't do something stupid." He waited a beat, then grinned and leaned in. "Speaking of stupid — remember the bet? You promised you'd play her for a week. Ten bucks, you and me, last man standing buys the wings."
The grin tugged at Evans' hands like a warning flag. He remembered the bet with sharp clarity: a dare, a drunk late-night laugh, the crowd of their friends egging him on. He remembered promising he'd make her fall for him — not because he wanted to, but because it felt like a game at the time.
"Yeah," he said. The word wasn't a defense. It was a confession.
Marco shrugged, trying to make it easy. "It's only a week. You can do it, man. Who knows? Maybe you'll 'play' her and end up actually liking the gig." He laughed. "Plus, it's not like she knows. Right? Right."
Something in the way Marco said it — the careless certainty — made Evans feel colder than the night air. He thought of Jessie's hands, the way she slid the napkin across the table before he could apologize, as if protection were easier than piety. He thought of her vow — a rumor he'd half-heard, a myth that made his chest tighten — and how cruel it would be to be the next in a line of men who never saw her as a person, only a prize or a test.
"I can't," Evans said finally, and the word felt like stepping off a curb into the street. Marco blinked, surprised.
"You can't?" he echoed.
"I can't pretend." Evans tightened his fingers into his palms until his knuckles hurt. "Not with her. Not like that. If I'm going to be part of her story at all, I want it to be honest. Even if it ends badly. Even if I look like a fool." He let a breath out that tasted of resolve and something like fear. "I promised a joke I don't want to make."
Marco watched him, the grin gone, the light in his eyes now something like respect and, for a moment, concern. "So what will you do?"
Evans stood up. The decision felt less like a single action and more like a direction he had chosen for himself. "I'll tell her the truth," he said. "Tell her everything — about the bet, about how I feel. If she hates me for it, then she hates me. But I won't play her. I won't be another reason she builds walls."
They fell into a silence that was neither comfortable nor empty. Marco slapped Evans on the shoulder, half mockingly, half as if to steady him. "Then don't mess it up," he said. "And if you need backup, you know where to find me."
Evans smiled, a small, unsteady thing. He reached for his phone before his hands could shake too badly, typing Jessie's name with fingers that felt like they belonged to someone else. His thumb hovered over the call button. The light on the screen blinked back like a patient, expectant eye.
"Tell me you won't chick out," Marco said.
"I won't," Evans said. He pressed call. The line rang and the world narrowed to the sound and the space of his own racing heart — the sound of something breaking and something beginning at once.
Evans hung up and sat for a long minute with the phone warm in his hand, like it had borrowed his courage. He didn't sleep much that night. He practiced the words until they felt less jagged — honest, not rehearsed. He wrote them on the back of a receipt and folded the paper until the crease looked like a promise.
The next morning he got to campus early, because waiting felt safer than rushing. He paced the steps outside the lecture hall until students began to spill out, backpacks and laughter and the smell of cheap coffee. When Jessie came down the stairs, she had a stack of notebooks tucked under one arm and the same small, careful look on her face that had stopped him the night before.
He stepped in front of her before he could talk himself out of it. He fumbled for the words and let them come loose like something he'd been holding too tight. "Hey — Jessie," he said, voice thinner than he wanted. She blinked, surprised. "Do you have a minute after class? Could you meet me — like, right after? I need to tell you something. It's important."
Her brow lifted. For a second he thought she might say no, or laugh it off, but she didn't. She folded a stray lock of hair behind her ear and gave him a small, patient smile. "Okay," she said. "Where?"
"Outside the courtyard bench," he said before he could overthink it. "Right after. Please."
She hesitated for the length of a breath, then nodded. "I'll be there."
He felt like a weight had rolled off his chest and fallen into his shoes. Whatever came next, it would be true.
He met her on the bench like he'd promised, the courtyard half-empty, sunlight making a bright cut across the pavement. Jessie set her bag down beside her and waited, as if she already knew this was the kind of conversation that deserved room to breathe.
Evans sat too close and then moved back, because he couldn't tell which felt less intrusive. His hands would not stop; they folded and refolded until his fingers ached. He looked at her, finally, and the words came out rough and simple.
"Jessie, I— I need to tell you something. I promised I'd be honest." He swallowed. "A week ago I made a stupid bet with Marco. It started as a dare. I told myself it was nothing, that I wouldn't let it mean anything. But I lied to you and to myself. I'm so sorry."
She blinked once, and the softness in her expression hardened in the space of a heartbeat. "A bet?" She sounded very small when she said it, not mocking, just very, very tired.
"Yes." He couldn't make the apology big enough. "I said I'd 'play' you for a week. I thought I could do it without hurting you. I thought I could control it. But when I was with you — when you asked for extra pickles, when you laughed at something that wasn't a joke and then looked away — I stopped thinking about the bet. I started thinking about you. I started wanting to be better. That's not an excuse. It's the truth."
"Do you know how that sounds?" she asked, and for a half-second she was the girl who had been hurt a thousand times. Her voice had edges for the cameras and warmth for the neighborhood. It was a performance tuned to the smallest human responses. She watched him fold under the weight of his own admission and felt the careful, clinical satisfaction of a plan aligning with reality.
"I need time," she said finally, and the words were the hinge she'd promised herself she'd use. She folded her books, gathered a stray leaf in the wind like evidence, and walked away.She let the memory of his face press against her like a soft thing she needed to make hollow. She had planned to break him after he had fallen; she had not planned for how listening to him mean it would hurt. That was the risk she'd signed up for.
On the bench, Evans sat with the echo of her last look burning in his chest. He waited, patience like a wound. She watched from across the campus, the line of his shoulders visible between moving bodies, and felt the unfamiliar taste of guilt slip down but not stop her. Everything in her trained to the mission: the necessity of leaving him when he trusted her would prove whatever test lay beyond.
She was not certain that leaving him would be clean. She was not certain that she herself would remain clean afterward. But the plan did not ask for certainty. It asked for execution.
When the time came for the part of herself that still kept receipts and small mercies to speak, she would tuck it away. For now she would be the person who walked away, the person who remembered every small thing he'd told her and filed it like contraband. For now she would be the one to make him believe, and then the one to vanish.