Lie to Him, Moan for Me!

The prompt

I didn't look back.

Not at Liam.
Not at Nathan.

Especially not at Nathan.

I found Emma and the others near the back corner of the dining hall, a cluster of trays, soda cans, and half-eaten fries between them. They were loud and laughing, the kind of easy that felt like a different planet from where I'd just been.

I sat down, pretending nothing had happened, pretending my pulse wasn't racing for the wrong reason.

"Hey! We thought you bailed," Emma said, sliding over to make room. "Were you with Liam?"

I nodded, forcing a smile. "Yeah. Just for a bit."

"And the brooding roommate?" she asked with a sly grin. "Still as charming as ever?"

I picked up a fry and shrugged. "I didn't even talk to him."

That was mostly true. If sarcasm and glowering didn't count as talking.

Emma snorted. "I still don't get how Liam puts up with him. The guy's allergic to joy."

I wanted to agree. I really did. I should've rolled my eyes, piled on with another clever insult about Nathan's eternal scowl and emotional constipation.

Instead, I said nothing.

Because all I could hear was the way his voice had twisted around that one word—flaunt. Like I'd done something wrong just by kissing my boyfriend. Like I'd owed him some kind of... what? Courtesy?

God, no. No.

I shoved another fry into my mouth and forced myself to focus on Emma's story about someone in her dorm catching bedbugs.

But even as I nodded and laughed and tried to lose myself in the conversation, my mind kept drifting back—to the way Nathan's jaw had tensed. The heat in his eyes that wasn't just anger. The way he'd looked at me like he was daring me to understand something neither of us wanted to name.

It was nothing. He was Liam's best friend. We didn't even like each other.

And yet—

I felt it again in the pit of my stomach, that buzzing undercurrent I couldn't shut off. That thing that twisted up tight every time he was near. That wrong feeling I couldn't quite explain.

I hated him. I did.

And maybe, if I kept repeating that long enough, it would finally drown out whatever the hell this was.

....

The walk to English felt longer than usual.

Maybe it was because I kept replaying that moment at the table in my head—Nathan's voice, his eyes, the way his words slid under my skin like splinters I couldn't dig out.

I shook it off and pushed through the classroom door.

The familiar hum of conversation greeted me, people scattered in lazy clusters across the room, and the whiteboard already had today's writing prompt scrawled across it in our professor's looping handwriting. I slid into my usual seat near the windows, second row from the back, pulling out my notebook and pretending I wasn't scanning the room.

But I was.

Because I knew he had this class too.

Nathan walked in two minutes later.

Of course he did.

He was late, as always, with that quiet, unreadable expression and a black hoodie pulled halfway over his head like the rules of the world didn't apply to him. He didn't glance my way—not once—but I felt the shift the second he entered the room. Like gravity had tilted just slightly off-center.