Page 408 of Ruthless Court

HANNAH

Dating Kane Haverhill is considerably less terrible than predicted.

This is inconvenient.

I had prepared for ego.

Drama.

Possessiveness.

Women throwing themselves at him in public places.

Cameras.

Gossip.

Several of those things happened.

The problem is Kane.

Kane is annoyingly good at being my boyfriend.

Three weeks after WaffleGate, I have been forced to revise the working hypothesis.

The internet has not helped.

The picture Vale posted of me kissing Kane beside a stack of chocolate-chip waffles escaped containment within eleven minutes.

By lunch, three campus accounts had reposted it.

By dinner, somebody had edited together a video beginning with the picture of me in the player section wearing my giant glasses, followed by clips from our seminar debate, the waffle kiss, and Kane staring at me during a game.

The caption:

HE FELL FOR THE BOOKWORM.

I considered deleting the internet.

Instead, I survived.

Then things became stranger.

Girls started wearing tortoiseshell glasses.

Not prescription glasses.

Fake ones.

Oversized.

Chunky.

One girl in my archaeology lecture paired hers with an enormous cream sweater, leggings, and a pack of Twizzlers tucked into her tote.

I stared at her for so long she finally noticed.

“What?”