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‘I know you’re just mocking me about taking a nap, but if I were to lie elsewhere on campus, it would most likely be here,’ he explained.

‘You really like it here, don’t you? This spot I mean.’

‘I guess you could say that,’ he shrugged. ‘I don’t know what it is, but I just feel a lot calmer whenever I’m here.’

‘Do you ever come here before games?’ I remembered Colton telling me he would occasionally come by, but he never really specified when.

‘Sometimes, mostly when we’re up against another competitive college team.’

‘Like the team you’re competing against next week?

’ I asked. Their last off-season game was happening next Saturday, right there on campus.

The team might have won the last Men’s College World Series, but they hadn’t gotten that far without a few near misses, winning by only a point against the other team.

The team they were battling against next week was one of those others.

He gave me a nod. ‘I know it’s only an exhibition game, but I want to do well.’

‘You will,’ I said, giving him a genuine smile.

‘Thanks,’ his voice was a little shaky from his honest admission. ‘Are you coming to the game?’

I thought of teasing him about my potential absence, but the vulnerability in his voice quickly dissolved that idea. Instead, I thought about something else to liven up the mood. ‘Yes, I am. I heard part of being a good partner is attending the other partner’s home games.’

‘Really? How come I never heard of that before?’

‘It’s an exclusive rule. It only applies when your partner is a star athlete.’

Colton’s laugh burst out of him, and it was so contagious that I started joining along.

‘Okay, enough chit-chat. Time to get to work,’ I said.

We were in the questions phase of our ASL class, meaning it was starting to get a little difficult. The things about asking questions in ASL are the movements of your eyebrows, and how different the structure of the sentence is, compared to the English language.

For example, for wh- questions, instead of signing them as the first word of the sentence, they are signed at the end, and you have to make sure your eyebrows are down when you ask the question.

As a beginner, it takes some time to understand how to sign correctly as you rearrange the words from English to ASL.

We started with simple questions, such as ‘what is your name?’, ‘where are you from?’, and ‘where do you live?’, before moving on to yes or no questions.

When it comes to yes or no questions in ASL, you don’t have to sign the first part of the question, such as ‘are you’ or ‘do you’.

Instead, you just have to make sure your eyebrows are up in order to signify that you’re asking a question, then continue signing exactly as you would, when making the usual sentence structure in ASL.

We slowly worked our way down the list from ‘do you like ice cream?’, ‘are you a student?’, and ‘is it cold here?’. We each took turns signing the questions, while the other tried to guess what was being signed.

It was Colton’s turn to sign, and it seemed my brain was starting to get overloaded.

‘Wait, can you do that again?’ I requested.

He signed it once more, but I couldn’t seem to remember one of the words from the question he was asking.

‘What’s this?’ I asked him, repeating the hand motion of the word that I couldn’t quite recall.

‘It’s ASL for date,’ he said, signing it again. ‘Date as in a romantic date.’

‘Oh,’ I nodded. ‘Can you sign the question again?’

He signed the question one more time, and after his third attempt, I finally understood the question.

‘Do you want to go on a date with me?’ I guessed.

‘You got it,’ he said with a fond smile on his face.

I quickly flipped through my notes to see if I had written it down somewhere, when Colton asked me another question.

‘So do you?’

‘Do I what?’ I asked distractedly.

‘Do you want to go on a date with me?’

My hand halted its movement as my entire body froze.

He’s not asking what I think he is, right?

‘What?’ I asked him again, silently praying I heard him wrong.

But it seemed my prayers were left unanswered.

He asked the question once again, only this time in ASL. Then, once more vocally to give me full clarity. ‘Do you want to go on a date with me?’

I hadn’t heard him wrong.

He was actually asking if I wanted to go on a date with him.

But instead of answering him, I asked him another question. ‘Why?’

Colton’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, with confusion written on his face at my question. ‘Because I like you. And I want to take you out on a date.’

And there they were.

The three cursed words.

My worst fear, coming to life.

The expression on my face must have been alarming, when Colton’s face started to look concerned. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ I quickly looked down at my notes, trying my best to not meet his eyes. A part of me was hoping that he would drop the question. But since he had already asked me numerous times, the best thing I could do was give him an answer.

‘I can’t,’ I finally replied, my voice much smaller than it was a moment ago.

‘I mean, we don’t have to do it this week, if you’re not free,’ Colton answered instead. ‘I have a game next Saturday, but Sunday should—’

‘Colton,’ I cut him off, my voice louder and clearer this time, looking him in the eyes. ‘I can’t.’

His eyebrows narrowed in confusion as my words sink in. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I can’t go on a date with you, Colton. I just can’t,’ I clarified.

I could tell Colton was waiting for me to offer up an explanation, but I didn’t know what to say, or how to explain the reason, without it sounding nonsensical.

Instead, I just looked back down at my notes, pretending to peruse through them, silently willing Colton would forget about what just happened.

Once again, we let the silence surround us. Only this time, tension accompanied us instead of comfort.

Colton was the one to break it.

‘What are you hiding from me, Clara?’ he asked, his voice soft.

For a moment, I thought about coming up with a story or a random lie, but as I brought my head to look at him, I just couldn’t do it. So, I took a deep breath and said the words out in an exhale. ‘You’re a cliché, Colton.’

His head jerked back at my admission, not expecting the words that just slipped out of me. ‘I’m a cliché? What do you mean?’

‘Do you know how in every cliché love story, there’s that one guy that the main character will never consider ever having a relationship with? A cliché love interest?’ I started explaining. ‘Maybe it’s the work rival or the school bad boy?’

A look of confusion came over him, and his eyebrows furrowed. ‘And what does that have to do with me?’

‘You’re the star athlete. Everything about that screams cliché love interest.’

‘I don’t necessarily think that’s true.’

I snorted. ‘Tell that to the whole sports romance genre.’

‘Wait,’ he then said, his open palm hanging in the air. ‘So let me get this straight. The reason why you can’t go on a date with me is because I’m the star athlete?’ he asked. I could tell by the tone of his voice how idiotic he found it to be.

‘Look, I know it sounds stupid. But—’

‘You were the last person I thought to see me as just a star athlete, Clara,’ Colton admitted.

I snapped my head toward him, seeing his face looking down on the grass, avoiding my gaze.

‘I don’t just see you as a star athlete,’ I said. ‘You don’t really think that, do you?’

‘Really?’ he scoffed. ‘Because from what you’re telling me, the reason you can’t go on a date with me is solely based on the fact that I’m a star athlete, which just so happens to be one of the traits of a cliché love interest.’

That’s not what I’m doing. Right?

‘Colton, you don’t understand,’ I said, exasperated.

‘Then, make me understand.’

‘My mom and sister fell in love with cliché love interests too, okay?’ I blurted out.

‘And you know how their relationship ended? My parents got divorced, and my sister called off her engagement. Maybe it sounds ridiculous to you, but I just can’t help but think that my family might be cursed, that maybe we’re just not meant to be with these cliché love interests.

And I just won’t doom myself the way they did. I just can’t, Colton.’

Colton was silent as minutes—or maybe it was just seconds—flew by, the words I just said dangling in the air between us. I darted my eyes away from him, trying to think of something, anything to say that could dissolve this unwanted tension away from us. But Colton beat me to it.

‘You’re being really unfair right now.’

I braved myself to face him, only to find him looking ahead, instead of at me. ‘What do you mean?’

He took a deep breath before he turned to me, his eyes on mine. ‘You’re being unfair to me by already making up your mind about me without even giving me a chance. Heck, you’re not even being fair to yourself for not even trying to see what this whole thing between us could lead to.’

I shook my head. ‘That’s not true.’

‘But it is, and you know it is,’ Colton said, his tone firm.

‘Clara, you can’t let the outcome of other people’s relationships define your own potential relationship with other people.

It isn’t fair for anyone—even if the relationship is the one between your own parents or your sister’s.

But that’s just an excuse for the real reason, isn’t it? ’

I just stayed quiet, unsure of what to say.

‘You’re scared,’ Colton continued, his firm tone turning soft. ‘Of whatever this is.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, quickly brushing him off.

‘You know exactly what I’m talking about, and it doesn’t have anything to do with clichés and curses.

Maybe I’m getting over my head here, but I think you like me too.

But you’re scared. You’re scared because you don’t know how this will play out; it isn’t something you can just read about, knowing it’ll end well.

You love to read about it, but you’re scared to actually do it, to actually pursue something with a person,’ Colton explained.

‘But Clara, you can’t let that hold you back forever. ’

‘That’s not what this is,’ I replied, my tone defensive. ‘Just because I don’t want to pursue something with you, doesn’t mean I don’t want to pursue it with somebody else.’

He arched a brow at me. ‘But you won’t date me because I’m a cliché love interest. And falling in love with one is a curse?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, answer me this. Would you go on a date with me if I wasn’t a star athlete? If I was just a normal college student that asked you out. Would you have said yes?’

There it was, the same question Eliza had asked me, not too long ago—the question my head often went to, whenever the idea of being with Colton came to mind.

But just like what I told Eliza, I answered him the same way.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I told him, my voice a faint whisper. ‘Because you are a star athlete, a cliché love interest. And I won’t allow myself to tempt the curse, not with you.’

A look of hurt flashed over Colton’s features, but he quickly masked it away. Giving me a nod, he said, ‘Good to know.’

I opened my mouth to say something, yet nothing came out. I don’t think anything I could say would soften the blow of whatever I had just said.

‘I think we’re done practicing for the day. Don’t you?’ Colton said, putting a smile on his face—though it was nothing like his usual, but a tight-lipped one, that didn’t reach his eyes.

I didn’t know what else I could do in this situation, so I just went along with it. ‘Yeah. You should probably go if you don’t want to be late for practice.’

We started packing up our things and cleared up the space. Colton stood up first, his hand holding out to help me get up. But he quickly clenched it into a fist and dropped it to his side. He probably thought I didn’t see it, trying to play it off as being nonchalant.

But I did see it. And I don’t know why I felt a painful tug in my heart at something so small.

‘I should get going,’ he said, his backpack strapped to his shoulders as he nudged his head to the baseball stadium. ‘I’ll see you next Wednesday then.’

I gave him a nod. ‘See you next Wednesday.’

Colton waved me goodbye before heading his way. I decided to give him a head start, thinking we would be better off walking separately this time.

Once I couldn’t see his outline any more, I started my walk to the library, carrying my heavy heart with me.