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Idling in front of the mailboxes was, of course, Colin Benjamin. The recessed lighting overhead turned the gel in his coifed hair to strands of glass as he stared down at a letter in his hands. His tall, gangly form blocked the entire space like he was a grocery shopper who’d stopped his cart in the middle of an aisle to scan the shelves.
The smartest move would be to hang back and wait until he was finished. But waiting required patience, and Allison possessed not one ounce of that. Especially not when she’d been desperate forweeksto find out about her TA-ship. She’d spotted the manila envelope peeking from her mail slot as soon as she’d rounded the door. She needed to get her hands on it.
Gritting her teeth, she smoothed down the front of her flowypolka-dotted top and tossed her long brown hair over her shoulder. Then she moved in.
As she inched toward Colin, she took the most subtle deep breath she could manage and held in her gut to ensure she’d fit between him and the counter.
Even growing up in a house where Allison’s mother bent over backward to make Allison feel normal and beautiful, it was impossible, as a perpetually plus-sized girl, not to think about those things. Nothing about the world had been built with her body shape in mind, and so every space became a math problem with angles to analyze and equations to work out.
Allisonhatedmath.
Thanks to the curse of her father’s last name, her mailbox was at the top of the row, forcing her to rise up on her tiptoes to reach the envelope. Even then, leaning forward as far as her short calves would allow, she only managed to snag the corner. The thrill of triumph lasted the one second it took her to realize that, in the process, she’d thrust her ass up against something behind her.
Or, more aptly, someone.
And there was only one someone in this room.
A wail of mortification clawed at her throat as Allison jumped away. She kept backing up until the scratchy, cracked arm of the leather couch jammed into the bend of her knee and pinched her bare legs. The envelope’s thick material crinkled loudly against her fingers.
Color flared in Colin’s narrow cheeks, and his eyes went wide. Had their unfortunate close encounter of the ass-to-groin kind unearthed the same memory for him as it had for Allison?
Of the first time they’d met? At that party?
The night before classes had started Allison’s sophomore year at Brown, she and her best friend, Sophie, had been crushed in the middle of a crowd in some upperclassman’s apartment, dancing like their lives depended on it, when someone had pressed up against Allison.She’d assumed at first they’d bumped into each other, but then seconds passed by and the person didn’t move, so Allison had eased her body back and, against her better judgment, let herself grind with this stranger.
Never having been great at impersonal interactions, she only made it about halfway through the song before she glanced back at him.
“I’m Allison,” she’d yelled over the music.
“I’m”—his mouth pursed, and his thick blond eyebrows arched over his glasses—“just trying to get by.”
It was only then that she’dreallytaken him in, squinting through her haze of alcohol. His arms raised over his head, the discomfort on his face. She’d trapped this poor, unsuspecting guy against the wall. Held him up with her ass.
That was the moment Allison learned embarrassment could be a physical, painful thing.
Over the past few years, she’d tried very hard to forget that night, and the eight months of dating Colin that had followed. But ever since seeing him at Claymore’s orientation, it all kept flooding back, uninvited. Every bit of their history, from her horror at discovering two days after that party that he was in her Literary Theory class, to her failed attempts at avoiding him, to their first time getting coffee a week later, to their first kiss a week after that. And all the other firsts, and seconds, and thirds that followed, right up until he unceremoniously dumped her in the middle of spring semester.
They were some of the best and worst moments of her life, and Allison wished she could forget them all.
Colin shifted in front of her, and, to her surprise, a soft smile spread over his face. He almost looked happy to see her. “Oh hey—”
Allison bristled. She was not in the mood for small talk with the guy who’d once broken her heart, especially not when she was holding a piece of paper that could change the course of her whole future.
“Could you not manspread all over the lounge? Other people need to get in here, too.” She unwound the red string from the buttonthat held the envelope closed, circling it again and again until it snapped off.
Her tone seemed to amuse him, the right corner of his mouth ticking up higher. Something mischievous sparked in his gaze. “I thought maybe you… wanted to dance?”
Allison fought off a squawk of horror. This wasexactlywhy she’d been avoiding him since orientation. Maybe to him, their past was a joke, but their breakup had been one of the most painful moments of her life.
Before she could decide how to respond, the trill of a new voice cut through their standoff. “Oh.Perfect.”
In the doorway stood a statuesque woman in her late forties. Her ash-blond hair was swept into a messy bun, the shorter strands framing her round face and tangling with her leaf-shaped gold earrings. Her gray-blue eyes were lined with flawless cat’s-eye swoops, and she donned that shade of red lipstick that somehow looked good on everyone. Her sensible black sheath dress was adorned with a loose, floral chiffon kimono in shades of blue and yellow, giving her an air of bohemian professionalism that Allison immediately coveted.
Her heart hammered as if she were standing in front of a movie star as Professor Frances glided toward them. “Allison, excellent. I was hoping to see you before our first class on Tuesday.”
“Ourclass?” Allison’s gaze fell to the unopened envelope in her hand.
“You couldn’t possibly think I’d let someone else have you after that writing sample on the similarities between the Wife of Bath and Ursula fromThe Little Mermaid.” Professor Frances grinned.
