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I smile then and his eyes become the shiniest that they’ve been in the past five minutes that I’ve known him.
Finally, I close my eyes and rub my cheek against that cozy, warm chest.
Because he won’t leave me.
Atlas.
Chapter One
Present
Elevated heart rate.
Rapid breathing. Sweaty palms. A fluttering in my stomach. A churning, actually, that won’t go away.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that I’m having a panic attack.
But I’m not.
In the past one year, I’ve learned to tell the difference. Between a panic attack and… this.
This chemical reaction, for lack of a better phrase.
Actually, let me take that back.
It is a perfect phrase for what’s happening to me.
A chemical reaction. That is taking place in my brain right this second and is affecting my body in drastic ways. My brain is releasing copious amounts of chemicals like vasopressin, dopamine, and oxytocin that are firing up my neural receptors that in turn are making me feel this way.
In addition to also making me feel pleasure and euphoria.
It’s a crazy combination that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, let alone myself. I mean, I don’t have time for these things. For these chemical reactions and their side effects.
But I can’t help it.
I can’t help that my brain and hence my body react in weird ways when I look at him.
Damn it.
In any case, I should stop freaking out like this is happening for the first time and do what I came here to do. I mean, apart from attending this double lecture of biochemistry. Stupid fucking biochemistry, the bane of my entire existence.
Okay, Penny. You can do this.
You can so do this.
At least, my therapist thinks so. She also thinks that I need to do this. Ask for help, that is.
She thinks that I need to break barriers and learn to ask for help. There’s no shame in asking for help, Penny, she says.
And besides, look what happened last time when I didn’t.
So yeah.
I take a deep breath and begin to climb down the steps of the auditorium, my footsteps sounding unusually loud. Which I know is only my anxiety and not real. Because I’m wearing freaking chucks and the floor is made of concrete.
Even so, I flinch and keep flinching on every step.
I’m also flicking my anxiety ring that I wear on my thumb. It’s a tiny silver ring with even tinier beads threaded all the way through. And whenever I feel overwhelmed, I use one of my fingers to flick the beads, move them around in order to calm myself. Sort of like a rubber band that you wear on your wrist and snap against your skin to break your thought patterns.
It usually works like a charm, but not today.
Today, nothing is working.
I can’t stop flinching, and when I get to the bottom of the stairs, I flinch so hard that I stumble.
Great. Just great, Penny.
But it’s fine.
Because I manage to find my balance right away. And since the room is more or less empty because most of the students have already left, no one saw my little slip-up. Which is great.
What is even more great is that he didn’t see it.
The guy because of whom it happened in the first place.
Atlas West.
The TA. My chemical reaction guy.
Well, he’s not mine.
Never was, never will be.
Not that I want him to be, but still.
Because like I said, I don’t have time for these things. I have goals. I have ambitions. I am pre-med student. I need to go med school. I have MCATs. I need to ace them. I need to become the best doctor that I can be and…
Okay, I’m getting off topic.
Anyway, the reason he didn’t catch my almost-fall is because he’s looking at something else — a notebook. And that notebook belongs to a girl. And that girl is standing in front of him, bent over that notebook as she tells him that she didn’t really get today’s assignment.
Which is totally believable.
I didn’t get today’s assignment either.
To my dismay, I suck at biochemistry, and it has always been a point of contention for me. So I get where she’s coming from.
But I also can’t deny that I feel something heavy sitting on my chest. But it’s not due to my anxiety or panic. This tightness doesn’t involve my brain, it involves my heart.
This tightness is due to jealousy.
And I’m so not proud of it.
I’m so not proud that I’m checking out the distance between them and pondering if she should stand this close to him. If she should bend over her notebook like this and if she should touch his arm while explaining her predicament to him.
He’s a TA, for God’s sake.
There needs to be some professionalism here. Some decorum.
Which she totally ignores when she says, “Do you wanna grab lunch with me? And we can talk this over.”
