Chapter 5

Stevie McGabe

We finally make it to our new home. The bedroom I now have is about half the size of my one back home, and the kitchen needs scouring with the strongest bleach known to man, but I still feel the tingle of excitement of it being ours—mine and Rhea’s—first little step into actual proper adulthood.

Now that Darryl’s phone is back in use, we exchange a barrage of texts, and every night, he phones me to wish me sweet dreams. He is still an hour behind me, and last night when he rang me after they played, I was so tired from a day of traveling, unpacking, and preparing myself for the first day of my writing workshop that I actually fell asleep with him still on the line.

Now, it is already eight thirty, and I am still pouring my coffee into my thermos. “Jeez!” Rhea says, yawning widely, her dark brown hair still in a post-sleep bird’s nest. “I thought you’d have been out of here already. Doesn’t your thing start in, like, fifteen minutes?”

“Yes. It does,” I return through gritted teeth, silently cursing the lid as it refuses to thread onto the top of the thermos properly.

“And isn’t this place over fifteen minutes away?” She takes the thermos out of my hands seconds before I hurl it up against the wall, calmly putting the lid on securely and giving it back to me.

“Yes! I can’t believe I’m going to be late on my very first day!”

“Calm down, girl! Breathe.” Rhea puts her hands on my shoulders and looks me in the eye. “The beginning few minutes will just be people milling about nervously introducing themselves anyway. No one will notice you slip in a couple of minutes late.”

***

Yeah. ~Right.~

The room is completely silent when I push open the heavy door with a bang, which, of course, makes every head swivel towards me. Standing behind a wooden lectern is one of my idols—Daniel Bryans. He is a world-renowned author, writing a huge series of historical fantasy books, and the main reason I want to come to this university to study. He also happens to be fairly easy on the eye.

He also happens to be staring at me with a bemused smile on his face. “And you must be Stephanie McGabe. Please, come and take a seat with your fellow scribblers.” With my face burning red with embarrassment, I try to make my way to one of the empty seats that surround the large table in the center of the room, but as I pull it out, I spot a large mound of chewed-up gum stuck to the seat. Seeing me hesitate, Mr. Bryans clears his throat, and when I look up at him, he has one eyebrow quizzically raised. “Problem, Stephanie?”

“Uhm…there’s gum…on the chair,” I reply, my voice trailing off as every other student’s eyes burn into me.

“There’s a free seat here,” he gestures to the only other free chair, which is positioned right in front of him. Tucking my hair behind my ears, I drop my head and almost tiptoe to my seat, the guy next to me smirking as I drop down into it with a clatter. Mr. Bryans sighs. “Okay! Now that ~everyone~ is here, I’ll get back to what I was saying…”

***

Three hours later, we’re dismissed with our first writing assignment. Mr. Bryans strides out while people are still murmuring about the lecture and what they’re going to do, the girls giggling over his good looks. I moan, slumping forward and banging my forehead on the hard desk repeatedly.

“Hey, it wasn’t all that bad, was it?” the guy next to me asks, amusement lacing his tone. I turn my head, so I’m looking at him.

“No. It’s worse,” I reply, making him smile. He’s cute, in a clean-cut all-American kind of way—all dimples, curly blond hair, and blue eyes. “Talk about making a great first impression, huh?”

“Nah, don’t even sweat it.” We both stand, gathering our bags and notebooks. “He really hadn’t even started saying anything before you came in. We’d only just sat down. The first ten minutes or so were just everybody awkwardly standing around making polite conversation. Even Mr. Bryans was late.”

He chuckles, and I flash him a grateful smile. “Well, seeing as I missed out on the first introductions, I’m Stevie.”

“Cameron,” he says, shaking my hand. “Say, do you have anywhere to be right now? I thought maybe we could grab a coffee and maybe bounce some ideas off each other?”

I give him a bright smile. “That sounds great!”

***

“And where are you just rolling in from, young lady?!” Rhea smirks as she hands me a gooey calzone as I walk into the kitchen. “Didn’t your writing thingy finish hours ago?”

I run my finger along the edge of the folded pastry, scooping up the melted cheese that had escaped and popping it into my mouth. “I went out for coffee with the guy who was sitting next to me—Cameron Farmer, he’s called. He’s really nice,” I continue, following Rhea into her bedroom. “We got a lot of ideas brainstormed for our first assignment. Oh! And when I turned up late, ~everybody~ was staring at me, and Mr. Bryans made a total thing out of it! He was all like ~‘Stephanie, I presume. Take a seat right under my nose, Stephanie’~.” I roll my eyes and take a huge bite of my food.

Rhea raises her eyebrows at me. “Okay…firstly, you went on a date with some guy you just met?”

“It wasn’t a date! I’ve got a boyfriend, remember.”

“And secondly, that was a terrible impression of the dude you’ve spent so many hours swooning over on YouTube.” She shoves the last of her own calzone into her mouth before doing a much better job of mimicking his voice—yeah, I may have subjected my poor friend to too many videos of him, too. “~’Oh Stephanie, please see me after class to work on getting that A’~”

“Ewww!” I pretend to shudder.

“Don’t act all coy now, Miss McGabe. I know all about your secret fantasies with Mr. Daniel Bryans, writer extraordinaire.”

“He’s sexy and intelligent and a brilliant writer…but he’s, like, forty! That’s just gross.”

“Hmm,” Rhea shrugs, flopping back onto her bed. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong, only looking at guys our age. Maybe I’m destined to be with someone older and wiser and shit.”

My phone starts to buzz with an incoming FaceTime from Darryl, and I flash an apologetic smile at Rhea as I answer it, walking back through to my bedroom.

“Hi!” My face beams as soon as his face fills my little screen.

“Hey, Stevie,” he grins back at me, his cheeks flushed a little and a light sheen of sweat coating his skin—two things I’ve come to associate with my boyfriend’s drumming. He animatedly starts to tell me about his day and about how he has been hanging out with the guys from The Sons of Hyperion, but all I can focus on is the pretty girl sitting in the background…wearing Darryl’s hoodie.