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Avoiding the curse is easy when you know what to look out for.

The key is to always be one step ahead. With my vast knowledge of all things clichés from all the romance movies I’ve watched and the endless Wattpad books I’ve read, I was confident I wouldn’t fall under the curse.

In all the romance stories, the cliché love interest has always been the same type of guy.

The one that the main character will always brush off ever having a romantic relationship with, because it’s such an unrealistic scenario—a ‘never gonna happen’ situation.

Whether it be the mysterious bad boy who doesn’t engage with anyone, or the rival they’ve been competing against, the two leads have either never crossed each other’s path or stayed away from one another.

And here’s where the catalyst comes in.

The catalyst is the one responsible for bringing the main character and the cliché love interest to spend more time with each other. In the case of how it began for my parents—with it happening again to Eliza—it was the ‘being partnered up’ scenario.

And so, the game plan was simple: identify the cliché love interest in every situation and ensure that the scenario doesn’t fall upon me, and whoever the curse decides to lay on my path.

While the years of middle school were spent rigidly following this plan, I had started doing it subconsciously once I entered my high school years.

At the start of any school year, I made sure to befriend, or at the very least make an acquaintance, with someone in each class.

So if any partnered assignment came up, I wouldn’t be accidentally stuck with anyone that I had categorized as a cliché love interest. There were instances where the curse could’ve made its appearance, when the teacher decided to pair up the students themselves, but thankfully it didn’t.

And so, I had lived those years of my life unscathed from the curse.

When college came around, I was confident the curse would be avoidable, given the large size of the campus and the number of students that surrounded it.

Attending a university where its highest pride was the baseball team, it’s no surprise that the cliché love interest would be the star athlete himself, Colton Reed.

You could tell God really took his time when he made Colton.

On top of his great talent at the sport itself, the Big Man had also decided to give him romance hero swoon-worthy features—with his tall frame and messy hair that I never saw tamed.

Though, the latter might have to do with the fact that I had only got to see his hair during those split seconds of him not wearing a cap or a helmet when he was on the field.

And though my life might’ve been focused on avoiding the curse, I was still the same girl who grew up with cliché love stories. So, you couldn’t be too surprised to learn that I harboured a crush on Colton, especially with the fond memories I have attached to baseball.

When my family was still in our bubble of being picture-perfect, my Saturday afternoons were spent playing catch in our backyard with my dad.

Considering my parents never had a son, my dad rarely shared his love for baseball.

That was until I found a baseball glove lying in the garage one day and asked him about it.

‘What’s this?’ questioned my six-year-old self, my hand holding it as I inspected the hand-shaped leather.

‘Ah, that’s a baseball glove. You wear it so it’ll protect your hand when you’re catching a ball,’ my dad explained to me, his eyes looking at the glove fondly with a tender look on his face.

‘Can we play?’ I asked my dad, interrupting him from his reminiscing.

My dad’s head jolted back a bit at my unexpected request. ‘You want to play catch?’

‘Yeah!’ I had exclaimed. ‘It sounds like fun.’

He laughed at my excitement, ruffling my hair. ‘Sure. Go wait out back, I’ll try to find us a baseball.’

That one random afternoon snowballed into a love for the sport and the creation of a special bond between my dad and me: from playing catch in the backyard to attending little league baseball games held around town, and spending time together watching the Major League Baseball, or MLB, games on TV.

Even after my parents got divorced, I always went over to my dad’s place every Sunday and we would watch a live game together with a box of pizza sitting between us. It didn’t matter what team was playing, it had just become our tradition.

Even though I never religiously followed the sport, baseball held and still holds a special place in my heart.

When it had come to choosing where I would be spending the next four years of my life, a college that has one of the best collegiate baseball teams in the nation wasn’t one of my requirements, but a very welcome bonus nonetheless.

I still remember the day I saw the college team play for the first time in our own baseball stadium.

It was my freshman year of college, and I was so excited to see a live baseball match, even if it was just one of those exhibition games they did during the off-season.

It also happened to be the day the college was introduced to the star-athlete-to-be.

The game held my attention fairly well, but when it was Colton’s turn to bat, he became my sole focus. He had a certain aura to him as he walked up to home plate. It wasn’t necessarily arrogant, but more of a confident one, as if he knew just how good he was and he was ready to prove it.

When Colton took his place and prepared his stance to swing the bat, I felt time stand still. My mind was alerted with the knowledge that I was going to witness something remarkable that would forever be marked in my memory.

Once the players were ready, the pitcher threw the ball.

Colton missed.

Strike one.

The ball went back to the pitcher’s glove and Colton readjusted his grip on the bat.

Colton got into his batting stance again and the ball was tossed the second time.

He missed again.

Strike two.

While the ball was tossed back to the pitcher, Colton set down the barrel end of the bat as he took a deep breath, his back rising and falling along with the number ‘23’ on his back.

When he was ready, Colton picked up the bat once again, all eyes of the crowd on him.

The pitcher threw the ball the third time and Colton swung.

The sound of the ball hitting the bat echoed throughout the stadium as the ball flew across the field and continued to fly past the fence.

Just like that, the silence from the crowd was replaced by a thunderous roar of cheers for Colton as he started to run the length of the infield.

First base.

Second base.

Third base.

Home plate.

He hit a home run.

The crowd continued to erupt in excited shouts as the commentator’s voice blared through the speakers, ‘And that was a home run hit by a new freshman on the team! A beautiful swing, if I do say so myself. I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing more of him on the field pretty soon.’

And so, Colton’s star athlete reputation was born, as well as my silly little crush.

I’ve always been careful not to crush on any guy that would fall under the ‘cliché love interests’ category—another precaution I had decided to take to prevent myself from falling under the curse, and for the most part, it had been easy.

The whole ‘bad boy’ persona never really appealed to me, at least not in real life.

It was fun to read about them in books. My phase of exclusively reading Wattpad books with the ‘bad boy’ trope pretty much explained how addicting they were.

But if that fiction ever became reality, I already knew I’d be asking where the exit was.

And in terms of having a rival, whether academically or in other situations, I never did have one. I’d never been competitive enough to earn myself one.

That had left me with one last option, the star athlete, which in my humble opinion was the best one.

I might be biased, but I sincerely believe anyone who grew up with the High School Musical movies has a default setting of automatically having a crush on the school’s star athlete—courtesy of the one and only, Troy Bolton.

I mean, who could forget the scene, where Troy got knocked down and Gabriella stood up in the bleachers mid-game singing his name to encourage him?

Was it over the top? Yes. Was it just as iconic? Most definitely.

While crushing on the star athlete definitely went against my precautionary rule, Colton seemed like a justified exception.

We ran in two completely different circles, pursuing a degree in two very different majors.

The chances of us ever crossing each other’s path were slim to none. Almost non-existent.

But of course, it was never zero.

Our furthest—and only—interaction with each other dated back to a brief encounter last semester, when I was still a sophomore.

A run-in that I liked to refer to as the incident .

It was a late afternoon on a Wednesday. The sun had already started its descent, and the track team was hard at work on the field.

I sat on the bleachers with my close friends, Lily and Claudia, while we waited for Nina—the other part of our quartet, who was also my roommate and my best friend—to finish her training session.

That day was one of those rare occasions that semester when I got to witness Nina in action.

Her training usually ended hours after my final class, so we would just see each other back in our apartment.

But one of my lecturers had decided to hold a replacement class, indirectly extending my stay on campus for the day.

On the other hand, Lily and Claudia had a club meeting that ended at the same time as my class did, and so all four of us agreed to have dinner together, taking the opportunity to hang out, since we were still on campus after all our day’s responsibilities had been settled.

As the track team was wrapping up their training for the day, I decided to make a stop before leaving. ‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ I said to Lily and Claudia, getting up from the bleachers.

‘Okay,’ noted Lily. ‘We’ll just meet up at the entrance then?’

I gave her a nod. ‘Sure. And can you bring my bag for me?’

Once they agreed, I made my way to the bathroom.

There were a few bathrooms scattered around the stadium—including the newly added single-stall ones located on the other end of the building—so I just went to whichever was the closest. Thinking Nina wouldn’t be out for another twenty minutes, I decided to take my time, occasionally stopping to read some of the newspaper headlines of the college’s track team achievements on the bulletin boards.

The bathrooms finally came into view, two doorframes standing right next to each other. I was a few steps away from entering the women’s bathroom when I momentarily paused mid-walk as someone stepped out of the men’s bathroom.

And. He. Was. Shirtless.

But not for long, unfortunately .

He was putting on a shirt as he stepped out of the door, briefly stopping at the doorframe to wear it perfectly. Only when his head popped out of the neck hole did I register who it was.

It was Colton.

And then, it fully hit me.

I had just seen Colton shirtless.

I might have only caught a glimpse of his abs for about five seconds, but they had been tattooed to my brain forever.

Putting his arms through the other two arm holes, Colton smoothed down the T-shirt on his torso.

As if he could sense my attention on him, Colton swerved his head in my direction, his eyes meeting mine.

He fully caught me in the act of shamelessly gawking at him shirtless and watching him put a T-shirt on.

Fuck.

A playful smile made its way to his lips. ‘Like what you see?’ he teased me.

Without giving it a second thought, I just verbalized the first thing that came to my mind.

‘Very much,’ I blurted out and willed myself to walk at a normal pace as I stepped into the women’s bathroom.

Once I was inside and the coast was clear, I finally let myself freak out.

‘What just happened?’ I muttered to myself. Bringing my hands to my cheeks as they start to heat up. ‘What did I just do?’

Was I flirting? Was that flirting? Did that even qualify as flirting?

Normally, I wouldn’t have been so bold to say something like that. Maybe it was just the spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, my mind temporarily malfunctioning after being caught like that.

As I paced back and forth in the bathroom—my brain going a mile a minute on how to deal with the consequences of what had just happened—it occurred to me that freaking out wasn’t necessary. While I never thought I would run into Colton, I knew there was a slight chance I would.

At least it didn’t happen at a place I frequently went to; that day was just a rare occurrence.

In the grand scheme of things, we probably wouldn’t ever see each other again, logically.

Colton and I didn’t have mutual friends—at least, none that I was aware of—and we were studying different things on different sides of campus.

And even if we were to bump into each other again, he probably would’ve already forgotten about the whole thing by then. I was freaking out over nothing.

Reassuring myself of this fact, I splashed my face with some water from the sink before finally going into one of the stalls.

By the time I reached the entrance to meet up with Lily and Claudia, Nina was already there with them. My backpack was slung over one of her shoulders.

‘Finally,’ Nina exclaimed once she saw me coming. Her eyes narrowed in question when she noticed the flush on my face. ‘Are you okay?’

‘What? Yeah, I’m fine. Are we leaving?’ I answered, reclaiming my bag from her. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Nina replied. ‘And yes, we’re leaving. What are your thoughts on Thai for dinner?’

‘Thai sounds perfect to me,’ I said and that was the end of it.

There are moments in life that you just want to keep to yourself and as we sat in the Thai restaurant catching up with one another, I realized the incident was one of them.

I didn’t particularly understand why. All three of them were well aware of my silly crush on Colton, so I knew they would’ve loved to hear this little story.

But for some reason, even with the numerous opportunities to bring it up during dinner, I just didn’t. I had decided to keep this small interaction with Colton to myself.

As I tucked the memory into my mind, I reminded myself that was all it could be. A memory. Anything further would mean tempting the curse, and I wouldn’t allow that to happen.

Time went by, with the incident being my only interaction with Colton, and real life proving that it was just a coincidental encounter rather than what fiction would claim a fated one.

But of course, just when I thought the curse’s claws were starting to loosen their hold on me, it had only just begun working its magic.