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Freshman Year

Dear Spillit,

Is anyone interested in dating these days? I’ve been here for two weeks, and I’m already tired of trying to find a genuine connection with someone on the Covey Connections app.

Meeting a guy organically seems like a bust too. No one wants to talk anymore. Things have gotten so bad, I tried untying my shoelace to see if my dream man would notice and strike up a conversation. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to meet a guy who looks that far down.

Help! I want to find love, but I don’t think anyone else is looking for it.

Yours truly,

Desperate and Hoping

Dear Desperate and Hoping,

It’s tough in a world of fast hookups and even faster breakups, but I’m sure there’s someone out there waiting to tie your shoelace.

Why not try the bonfire tonight? Is there any place more organic than meeting the love of your life while roasting marshmallows and avoiding hot embers?

Sincerely yours,

Spillit

Gnawing at my bottom lip, I squinted at the familiar face across the flickering flames. Sienna? Was that her name? I couldn’t remember but knew she was in my broadcasting class. Confident, funny and with a line of people waiting to talk to her, she was everything I wanted to be but wouldn’t dare to try. Not after my track record in high school. When my three brothers convinced me to join the football team in sophomore year, I had no idea people would start calling me a Pick Me. A label which proved impossible to shake.

I planned on doing things differently this time. Instead of focusing on making friends, I was going to let people come to me.

My only problem… No one was being drawn in by my smile.

Was the outfit putting people off? Maybe I should’ve worn a dress. Sighing, I pulled down my white top, covering the sliver of skin on show at my midriff, and combed through my long blonde hair in an attempt to calm my nerves.

Okay. One, two, three.

And chill.

My shoulders sagged, and I relaxed onto the log. Well, as much as I could with the knobs digging into my butt.

When a calmness washed over me, I thought it was surely my time to shine. People would see it and want to say hi.

Another five minutes went by… Nothing.

I was still alone, and everyone else had someone to talk to. Goose bumps pricked my skin. Would I forever be known as the girl no one wanted to talk to? Had I come on too strong again without trying?

I picked up the marshmallow and stick next to me, impaling the velvety puff as I watched it cave under the pressure of the spike. It was a good distraction from my loneliness, but also made me think. Maybe I could learn something from this. Maybe I needed to just let things go and force the nervous energy out. Could people sense I was nervous about flaunting my tragically single status to the entire campus? Who really cared about things like that, anyway?

Me. That’s who.

No friends. No boyfriend. Not even a magical talking frog was willing to save me from the loneliness of the bonfire, and I hated it.

Biting my bottom lip, I forced myself to think of the prickle of pain instead of the prickle of guilt gnawing away in my stomach. Max, my brother, would be on the mound right now, and I was missing the weekly family catch-up just to sit here all alone. It was the first time in months that I hadn’t watched him play live. All because I came to this stupid event thinking I might meet the love of my life.

Why did I listen to that stupid Spillit advice column?

Twirling the stick in my hand, I placed it into the flames and watched as my marshmallow burned. Pristine white fluff quickly turned to black embers, feeling a heavy emotion washing over me.

Embarrassment.

Coming here on my own was a terrible idea, and I planned to walk into the journalism department on Monday morning and give whoever gave me that terrible advice a piece of my mind.

I twisted my lips when my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was either the Chally Sports app or one of my brothers asking me where I was.

Five more minutes.

I’d finish roasting my marshmallow, have a s’more, then go and call my family. I wasn’t going to meet my prince charming, or anyone for that matter, sitting alone on a log in the middle of the campus woodland.

My knees knocked, and I shivered as I flipped the marshmallow around, letting the other side burn. When someone cleared their throat beside me, I thought nothing of it.

“Hey, um, sorry.” His deep voice vibrated through my chest. When I looked over, I stilled.

Deep green was all I saw.

His eyes were so beautiful I’d barely noticed the haphazard smile accompanying it.

I wasn’t sure how long I stared at him, but if he noticed, he didn’t say anything. He tipped his chin, gesturing to the fire. “My marshmallow accidentally tapped yours, and well, now they’re stuck together.”

I gulped, trying to find my voice as my gaze drifted to the fire. He was right. Our marshmallows weren’t just stuck together, they were now a unit with no way to tell where one started and the other began.

When had I looked away long enough for that to happen?

Leaning back, I let out a loud, awkward laugh, but then clamped my mouth shut.

Could he tell how desperate I was to talk to someone?

“Oh, I’m sorry about that.” Why was I apologizing? It was his fault our s’mores were touching, so he should be the one to say sorry.

Then it hit me.

Wide-eyed, I threw him a big grin.

Marshmallows melting into each other on the fire.

Could a meet-cute get any more organic than this?!

“I’m Matty, by the way.” When he held his hand out, his shoulder leaned against mine, sending waves of electricity through my arm. I stared at his impressively large hand for a second too long before accepting it, then flicked my gaze back to his face. Hard callouses scratched my soft palm, and a thrill of anticipation soared through my stomach. Anticipation for what? I wasn’t sure, but I was eager to see where this might take us.

“Britt.”

His smile widened when I said my name, and I felt it. The same thing all those romance novels described. The air was trapped in my lungs, the words got caught in my throat, my heart was thumping out of my chest. In any other scenario, I’d think I was having a heart attack, but it wasn’t that. It was because this gorgeous guy was in front of me smiling like a goofy, lovestruck teenager, and I had no doubts I looked the same.

“It’s really nice to meet you, Britt.”

My stomach fluttered at him saying my name. Rolled out and firm. It was perfect. He was perfect. This moment was perfect.

The best part about it? This was the start of our story. I could imagine someone spending days and hours writing pages upon pages of where our relationship could go, and I’d be there for every damn sentence.

“So, what do you study?” he asked, doing nothing to separate our marshmallows, and I was okay with that.

I giggle, quickly biting down on my bottom lip. That was new. I’d never giggled at a guy before, and the anxiety of becoming a Pick Me was taking hold again.

“I’m majoring in Communications and minoring in Computer Science.”

“Really?” he asked. Why did I like hearing his voice so much? With just that one word, all my anxiety melted into nothing, the other people at the bonfire were drowned out, and the only thing I wanted to listen to was Matty’s voice on repeat for the rest of my life. As I gazed into his eyes one more time, a zing of electricity bounced between us, and I wondered if he felt it too.

“Because I’m majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Communications. Guess we’ll be in some of the same classes, then?” He smiled, and I felt it all the way to my toes.

Fate.

This was fate, right? There was no other explanation for me meeting Matty on the night that Spillit told me to come here. It had to be, not only because of the instant attraction between us, but also because we’d most likely see each other around campus.

He smiled at me, and I smiled at him.

Guess we’d have to sit next to each other in every class. Maybe even share notes… and other things.

“I guess so.”

Our marshmallows roasted until they burned to ashes, but we didn’t care because we couldn’t stop talking. I’d known him for all of twenty minutes, yet we were acting like we’d been best friends our entire lives.

Matty was awesome. He was funny and smart, and when he laughed, it was genuine. I hated to admit it, but I liked everything about him.

I’d never felt an attraction as strong as this.

My phone buzzed again, and I ignored it, but Matty frowned and looked down at his leg. “That’s your phone, right?”

Following his gaze, I realized our thighs were touching and he’d felt the vibration. Laughing, I pulled it out of my pocket, dismissed all the calls from my family, then turned it off and placed it on the other side of the log. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem.” He paused, studying me with his thick brow. “Someone’s really trying to get a hold of you.”

“Ah, it’s just my dad and brothers. They want to talk baseball.”

“Baseball? Who’s your team?”

“The Catfish.”

He raised a brow before shaking his head. “Should have known. Every girl I’ve ever met is a Catfish fan.” Matty rolled his eyes before turning back to me. “Or should I say a Tate Sorenson fan?”

“That’s not true,” I blurted, unsure if the heat in my cheeks was from being embarrassed by his accusation or that I might have to openly admit who my brother was. “Don’t get me wrong. Tate’s a dominant player, but I think he’s overrated.”

“Overrated?” Matty blew out a breath as he watched the fire. “Hasn’t he won Rookie of the Year, Player of the Year more than once, and a World Series?”

“I wasn’t talking about his game. That man could win Player of the Year through his batting average alone. I was talking about his looks, which is why most uneducated baseball fans are drawn to him.”

“Oh, okay, but the educated fan doesn’t notice that he’s tall, sculpted, and looks like he walked out of a men’s underwear ad?”

I groaned. “I’ll admit he’s good looking. However, he bears an uncanny resemblance to one of my brothers, so I’m good.”

Matty winced.

“Are you a Fish fan too?” I asked.

“Eh, I’d put myself in the casual, uneducated watcher category,” he said with an amused smile. Then he licked his bottom lip and bit down on it gently before saying, “Gotta focus on football.”

“Ah, so you’re a football player?” I tried to hide my excitement, but this was getting too surreal.

“Yeah.”

“Well, what a coincidence. Football is my favorite sport.”

“To watch?”

“And play.” I shifted in my seat and threw him a confident smile. “I was a kicker on my team in high school.”

His smile dropped, and he took me in silently for a second. “You’re shitting me, right?”

I shook my head. “Nope. First girl in my high school to be on the football team. I tried out for soccer for the longest time but kept kicking the ball too high and missing the goal. When the football coach saw me, he asked me to try out, and apparently, I was a natural.”

“Wow. Do you still play?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Gave it up before coming here because I figured I didn’t have a chance against college level players.”

He shook his head while mumbling “Unbelievable,” and I almost didn’t hear it. With his hands clasped, he finally looked at me again. “I’m a kicker too. I got scouted in high school because I was using analytics to help some players calculate the most effective kick. That’s when they realized I was pretty good at doing it myself.”

This was too good to be true. We were in the same classes. We loved the same sport, even played the same position. It was like Matty had been made for me.

“Are you on the team now?”

He nodded.

“Does that mean you’ve met Ben Mathieson? I keep hearing his name because he’s some kind of kicking legend, and I can’t wait to see him in action.”

He pressed his lips together, drawing my attention to how full and pink they were. I’d never met a guy with such bowed lips before, but I liked them because they brought out his high cheekbones.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of him. I think he’s a little overrated, though.”

My feet danced, letting out some of that nervous energy as I hyped myself up. This all felt too perfect not to be fate. I wanted to ask him out on a date, which was weird. I’d never done that before. I’d always waited for the guy to make the first move, but I couldn’t let this opportunity go to waste. Spillit was right.

What did I have to lose? We’d been talking for twenty minutes and got along so well.

“Ben, baby, what are you doing?!” Some girl’s hand dropped to Matty’s shoulder, and disappointment slithered through my veins.

“B-Ben?” My brows furrowed. Matty’s smile collapsed as he glared at the hand clutching his shoulder. “I thought you said your name was Matty?”

His eyes pinged back at me, but they were darker this time. “Yeah, sorry, I guess I should have said I’m Ben Mathieson. Matty’s my nickname.”

Oh my—

Heat rose to my cheeks. This couldn’t be happening, could it? I was just fangirling over him, and he didn’t say a damn thing. Was he mocking me? Was all that chemistry in my head?

Matty looked over his shoulder, giving the girl a tight smile.

“Olana. This is my friend, Britt.”

Could the fire burn me alive please?

He called me his friend. His friend. Bile caught in my throat, and my face burned. I’d completely misinterpreted the signs, didn’t I?

There I was planning our first date, and he just wanted to talk about football. He was treating me like I was one of the guys, and here I was, sounding more and more like a Pick Me with every sentence that came out of my mouth.

Olana made this churlish noise from the back of her throat and dragged her glare over me, stopping when she got to the stick in my hand—sans marshmallow. That, along with my self-respect, had burned away a long time ago.

Did she know what I was thinking? Could she tell I’d planned the next ten years of my life with her boyfriend in my head?

“Britt, this is Olana.”

He pointed his thumb at her but kept his gaze on the ground. My heart was crushed. Fate wasn’t intervening. Matty had just met me, and here I was lovesick and overly romantic, desperately hoping a guy like him would see something more in me.

“Really? That’s how you’re going to introduce your long-term girlfriend to people? This is Olana .” He still didn’t bother looking up or acknowledge her, and the air became thick, almost like I’d walked in on them midargument or having sex.

Why the heck did I just think that?!

“It’s nice to meet you, Britt.” She held out her hand, so I had no option but to take it.

With brown hair buzzed on the side that had been dyed to look like leopard print, Olana was clearly a rebel, and if that was Matty’s taste, then I never stood a chance. I wasn’t rebellious. My family was an athletic dynasty, one I didn’t like to talk about much because I didn’t want people to know. We didn’t do things differently. We drew inside the lines and followed the rules. Olana did anything but that.

When I dropped her hand, I glanced over at Matty, wanting an explanation from him. Still looking at his shoes, he wasn’t even attempting to make eye contact. In fact, his shoulders were slumped and all that confidence from earlier seemed to fade away.

As we were sitting in near silence, I decided to take things into my own hands.

“So how did you two meet?” Putting on a facade, I stretched my smile wide. I wouldn’t sit here and let them see me wallowing in self-pity. I was an athlete. Losing was part of life, and my brothers wouldn’t all be playing professionally if they hadn’t learned that a long time ago. It wasn’t always about winning but how you played the game. I may have lost this time, but I couldn’t let that get to me. No matter how much I liked the guy.

Just because I couldn’t date Matty, didn’t mean I couldn’t be nice. We had so much in common, after all, and I didn’t want to start off my college career with this moment hanging over me.

Olana threw her head back and cackled. My grin was fixed as I watched her, even though I couldn’t help but feel like Matty’s gaze was on me. The stare so strong it was distracting.

“We’ve known each other since middle school,” Olana said, plopping down next to Matty on the log. I glanced at the woodland floor, noting my bright-white shoelace was lying on top of the debris—unlaced and unnoticed.

Much like my unrequited crush.

Middle school.

They’d known each other since middle school? I never had a chance.

“But Ben was such a hermit I couldn’t get him to look at me until we were sophomores in high school.”

Was she still talking? I didn’t care how she met the man of my dreams. I guessed it was my own fault since I’d asked the question, but I was hoping for a short, simple answer. Not one with the ability to rip my soul into shreds.

“I knew all about him, though. I thought he was such a loser because he’d sit in the computer lab over lunch breaks instead of getting a tan.” She slapped his golden skin. “It was only after he joined the football team that I really started to notice him.”

My cheeks were hurting so badly from forcing a smile.

I’d only been here two weeks, and I could already tell this would be the worst day of my college career. This was torture. Sitting here smiling while listening to a girl reminisce about how she got together with a guy I thought was perfect was breaking me from the inside out.

I was humiliated and embarrassed.

Matty hadn’t looked at Olana once, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore either.

“Do you know how I finally got him to talk to me?” She nudged him on the shoulder, and it took everything in me not to frown as I shook my head. “Well…” She was going to tell me every intricate detail, and I wasn’t sure I could handle it. “He was always looking at the ground, using his hair to cover his face. So I decided if he wasn’t going to look up, then I was going to have to get his attention from the floor.”

I absentmindedly nodded and thought about all the other things I could be doing. Talking to my dad or brothers, meeting other people, laundry… The list went on, but I was choosing to sit here and torture myself so I didn’t look like a sore loser. Pathetic.

“I untied my shoe.”

What. The. Fuck?

Did she just say that?

The universe was punishing me, wasn’t it?

I subtly pinched my thigh to see if I was dreaming.

“Ouch.”

“What’s wrong?” Matty cut his gaze to me, and I waved, playing it off.

“Nothing. I just leaned my butt on a log knob.”

Did I just say log knob?

The edges of Matty’s lips quirked, and for some reason, that gave me a little comfort.

Olana hadn’t noticed. She was too busy talking. “So, I walked in front of him and left my foot in his field of vision so he could see the tripping hazard that was my lace.”

She was still going, and I was still smiling like one of those tortured Barbie dolls whose face couldn’t move.

“Can you guess what his first words to me were?”

“Your shoes are untied,” I said, raising my brows.

“How’d you know?”

Matty snorted but masked it with a cough.

When Olana knocked him on the back, any hint of a smile left his face. “Ben, did you tell her already? I should have known. It’s such a cute story.”

She threw her head back and laughed, but she was the only one who found herself funny. Matty’s gaze caught mine, that buzzing electricity passed through my veins, then the world disappeared around us. It almost felt like we were passing secret messages with our smirks.

Then I remembered it was his girlfriend I was grinning about. His girlfriend , i.e. not me. Never going to be me, and he was probably smiling like that to be polite.

Keeping my smile wide, I was trying my hardest not to look disappointed. Not only had she gotten the guy I was interested in, but she also stole my meet cute.

What was left for me?

Everyone was coupling up around the fire, and not wanting to make it obvious I was alone, I decided I needed to leave before I said anything to embarrass myself.

I dropped my stick into the flames, grabbed my phone, and stood. Blowing out a breath, I wiped the dirt off the back of my jeans.

“That’s super cute, but you know what? I didn’t realize the time. I’m late for a meeting with…” I looked down at my wrist, pretending there was a watch there and hoping they wouldn’t notice I was staring at my freckled arm. “Someone. It was nice meeting you both.” I waved, feeling foolish, but bit my tongue to avoid showing it.

“Hopefully, I’ll see you both around campus sometime,” I squeaked out before scurrying off to lick my wounds alone in my apartment.

There I was trying to make a move on Matty, and I did it to myself again. I came across as desperate and eager, trying to split up a couple who had been together for years. The only saving grace in this entire thing was that Matty seemed oblivious to my crush.

Never again would I trust advice from a stupid college advice column.

Who even writes that garbage, anyway?

Berating myself all the way to my dorm, I replayed the entire conversation in my head as if that would make me feel better about it. It didn’t. It only made me feel worse.

What was I thinking? I’d just met him, and I would have gotten naked in front of that fire if he’d asked me to. Shaking my head, I sighed. Maybe I was a Pick Me. Maybe I needed to accept that about myself.

Stupid.

I needed to get over this and accept the L.

Just friends.

That was all I’d ever be with Ben “Matty” Mathieson.

College–1, Britt–0