Undeclared (The Woodlands) - By Jen Frederick Page 0,36

inertia dropped away.

I don’t know where Noah and Bo went, but when Mike and I exited the small theater, they weren’t behind us. We began the twenty-minute walk through the heart of the campus to get to the coffee house on the other side.

Summer was refusing to release its hold, and the night air was sultry instead of cool. Tall, wrought iron lampposts lit our way, interspersed with emergency call boxes.

“That’s probably the weirdest date I’ve ever been on,” Mike broke the silence as we wandered down the sidewalk bisecting the east and west sides of the campus. “Did you ask me out to make that other guy jealous?”

“No!” I exclaimed and then confessed, “I might have said I thought you were cute, and he thought he was trying to help me out.”

“So what was with the hand-holding and snuggling during the movie?”

Had I really been snuggling? “I was having a panic attack, and Noah must have known it. He was just trying to calm me down. I wasn’t snuggling. Honest.”

Mike shrugged. “I didn’t think you were interested, so you kind of surprised me.”

It was now or never. I placed a hand on Mike’s arm and stopped him. “The situation kind of got out of hand. Noah and I go way back. But I do think you are missing out on someone. Just not me.”

“No?” Mike looked adorably confused now.

He hadn’t been whipping his hair out of his face for at least ten minutes, which seemed like a new record. When he wasn’t in a group, he wasn’t insufferably trying to make himself seem more attractive by hitting on every female in a twenty-foot radius. Maybe Sarah spent a lot of time alone with Mike and this was the guy she was attracted to.

“Why aren’t you dating anyone, Mike?”

This question clearly caught him off guard, because he stammered before he defensively replied, “I’ve had hookups.”

Ugh, classic Mike response. “So are you only interested in hookups?” I needed to feel him out without throwing Sarah under the bus.

“No,” he replied slowly and then swung his hair out of his eyes. “I asked a girl out a few times in my first year, but it didn’t go anywhere. Hookups are easier, you know. Less pressure.”

I did know. My few college experiences had been drunken make-out sessions with guys equally drunk, but I didn’t think anyone truly enjoyed those experiences.

“What about Sarah?” I offered up in what I hoped was nonchalance.

“Who do you think I asked out in my first year?” He laughed but it wasn’t a funny sound.

“Really?” I was completely surprised by this. Sarah looked at him so longingly but maybe it was with regret, not unrequited love?

“Wait.” Mike caught my arm. “This isn’t a bad idea.”

“What isn’t?” I hadn’t proposed anything yet so I wasn’t sure what idea he was talking about.

“We can pretend to be interested in each other, and can make Noah and Sarah jealous at the same time,” Mike sounded enthused by this.

“That never actually works out in real life,” I pointed out.

“It was just an idea,” Mike muttered. We walked a little farther and then he asked, “So what’s the story with you and Noah?”

“I haven’t had nearly enough to drink to divulge that. How about you and Sarah?”

“She seems to only like me when other girls are into me. If I’m not dating or hooking up with someone, she has zero interest,” he said, bummed.

“Sounds like a mess.” Was I really thinking I could play Cupid or something? That wasn’t in my skill set. This night was officially a disaster. I’d fallen asleep on Noah’s shoulder, possibly drooled, and now made Mike go from enthused to sad in five seconds. I was the opposite of Cupid. Instead of shooting love arrows, I shot depression arrows.

“I thought she might have put you up to this,” Mike confessed, sounding almost hopeful.

“I wished she had,” I replied sullenly, “but instead she gave me the evil eye, so you might want to go to the library tomorrow and strike while the jealousy-iron is hot.”

“See, we should carry this on for a while. It’d be good for both of us.”

Mike was trying to be encouraging, but I had seen the light. “I have enough dysfunction in my life,” I told him.

We were closing in on the CoffeeHouse, but I wasn’t in the mood to go there anymore. I wasn’t going to orchestrate any big love connection between Mike and Sarah. I wanted to go home. “Do you mind if bail