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Colton looked taken aback by my question, but he quickly recovered. ‘I guess that means you’ll just have to trust me,’ he answered, his tone firm and void of any teasing.

Should I?

God, Clara — it’s just for a class. Stop making it so complicated.

‘Can you give me some time to think about it?’ I told him.

‘Seems fair,’ he nodded. ‘I’m Colton Reed, by the way; I’m a junior.’ He held his hand out as he introduced himself, even though I had already indirectly admitted to knowing who he was. But I appreciated him for trying to help me feel less embarrassed about it.

‘I’m Clara Healy, also a junior,’ I replied, shaking his offered hand.

‘Nice to meet you, Clara.’

The sound of the door opening snapped our attention back to the front of the class as Mr Albert stepped back in. ‘Okay, so where were we?’

‘I think that’s everything for today. Class dismissed,’ Mr Albert announced.

I took out my phone from my backpack to check the time and noticed that he had ended the class ten minutes early. Not surprising, since it was only the first class of the semester, but still any class that ended early was always much welcomed.

‘I’ll see you next week, then. And will you let me know if we can be partners?’ Colton asked as we were packing up our things.

‘Yeah, I’ll let you know by then.’

‘All right. See you around, Clara.’ He stood up from our table, backpack strapped to his shoulder and went his way. He gave me one final wave as he opened the front door and stepped into the hallway.

I gave him a head start of a few minutes before exiting the classroom myself. I don’t think I could have handled the awkwardness of us walking in the same direction after saying goodbye.

Realizing it was my last class for the day, and that I didn’t have anything left to do on campus, I decided to just head back to my apartment.

The pouring rain from earlier had come to an abrupt stop while we were still in class. The lingering mist greeted me as I walked out of the building, instantly putting a grin on my face.

My daily commute from the apartment to campus and back was usually by bus, occasionally hitching a ride from Nina if we happened to leave at around the same time.

But as I was walking to the nearest bus stop, it seemed like a missed opportunity to not stay in the cool breeze for a little while longer.

I ended up walking past the bus stop and continued.

This wasn’t the first time I walked back to the apartment ever since Nina and I had started living off-campus for our sophomore year.

However, this was my first time walking back to the new one we leased for our junior year.

I wasn’t sure how long of a walk this was going to be, but my estimation was around half an hour.

This gave me the perfect amount of time to determine what it was exactly that had incidentally led me to being almost partnered up with Colton.

As my mind ran through everything that had transpired, I realized I couldn’t just trace it back to one thing. It was a combination of all the little things.

Me rushing out the door in the morning, making me forget to bring my umbrella with me. The book I was reading in the coffee shop earlier and how invested I was until I lost track of time. Having to take a longer route to class because of the unexpected rain, and again, the absence of my umbrella.

If you were to remove all these minor details, I would have made it to class earlier.

I could have had the chance to choose a different seat next to someone else and get acquainted with them in case there were any paired assignments coming up.

That way, I could have avoided sitting next to Colton and the whole ‘being partnered up’ scenario, even though we were in the same class together.

I halted my steps when it finally hit me.

How did I not see it?

It was the curse.

Every single thing could be seen as a common mistake. If each of them had occurred separately, I wouldn’t have thought too much of it. But it had taken place consecutively, as if domino pieces falling in line—with the last one being me having to partner up with Colton.

‘No. No, no, no,’ I muttered to myself, shaking my head.

I was always careful about these things.

I had a system to make sure this didn’t happen.

But I must have lost focus, since there was almost zero possibility of us ever being in the same class together, with us majoring in two different things.

It never occurred to me that we would share a class in an elective course.

The one time I slipped up, and here was the curse, already working its charm on me.

It might have made it this far, but I could still put a stop to this.

I hadn’t said yes to being partners with Colton yet.

Moreover, this was still only the first week of classes—there was a chance that other people might drop the class which would allow me to find someone new to be my partner instead.

All I had to do, once I saw him the next week, was to tell him that pairing up together can’t workout. I had already given him a reason, even though it wasn’t real. He’ll understand , I thought.

I had managed to avoid the curse this far, there was no way I was going to let it get to me because of a minor mishap on my part. Not when I could still stop it.