Their Wonder Years: Season 1: Fall 1998
Copyright© 2025 by Tantrayaan
4: The Day Everything Clicked
Coming of Age Sex Story: 4: The Day Everything Clicked - Bharath always thought going to America would mean fast love, wild parties, and maybe a stewardess or two. What he got instead? A busted duffel bag, a crying baby on the plane, and dormmates he never thought could exist in real life. Thrown into the chaos of Georgia Tech’s freshman year, Bharath begins an unforgettable journey of awkward first crushes and culture shocks. A slow-burn, emotionally rich harem romance set in the nostalgic 90s—full of laughter, lust, and longing.
Caution: This Coming of Age Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa mt/ft mt/Fa Consensual Fiction Humor School Sharing Group Sex Harem Orgy Polygamy/Polyamory White Female Hispanic Female Indian Female
It was only the second morning of their gym routine, but Bharath and Jorge already felt like they had aged thirty years overnight.
“I swear, even my ears are sore,” Jorge groaned as they shuffled across the dew-soaked campus lawn like wounded soldiers, gym bags slung low like emotional baggage from a failed relationship.
“I don’t think I can fully raise my arms,” Bharath wheezed. “I had to shampoo my hair with my elbows. My elbows, Jorge. I looked like a drunk chicken in the shower.”
Jorge winced. “I sneezed this morning and it felt like my rib cage collapsed.”
Neither of them even considered skipping.
Not after what they’d seen.
Not after walking past men in the gym who looked like they’d been handcrafted by Renaissance sculptors on pre-workout supplements, or watching women on the track who ran sprints with the intensity of someone trying to outrun generational trauma.
“We’re gonna look like that someday hermano,” Jorge mumbled, eyes bloodshot.
Bharath nodded, then tripped over a sprinkler head.
The gym loomed ahead of them like a temple built for pain.
Inside, they stretched, lifted, grimaced, and audibly regretted their life choices. Jorge’s attempt at squats ended with him whispering, “I think my soul left my body,” while Bharath got stuck mid-deadlift and had to be rescued by someone with traps the size of dinner plates.
They both still relied heavily on the assisted pull-up machine — the one that practically did the exercise for you while quietly judging your choices.
But this time?
It only took two fewer assist plates.
Progress.
“I think I saw my muscle twitch today,” Bharath whispered during a water break. “It might have been a shadow, but it felt personal.”
They powered through rows, presses, a cable machine that Jorge swore was designed by a sadist, and a “core finisher” that left them lying on their backs like roadkill.
The real boss fight, though?
The shower.
It was still a gauntlet.
They walked in with towels clutched like armor, eyes locked firmly forward, pretending they were in a steam-filled monastery of platonic brotherhood and not a communal chamber of horrifying angles and slippery tiles.
Jorge tried to whistle casually and ended up choking on steam. Bharath nearly slipped on someone’s dropped loofah and had to catch himself on a wall with arms that no longer worked.
“Why is it so open?” Bharath whispered through gritted teeth. “No curtains. Just horror movie vibes and trauma.”
“Don’t make eye contact,” Jorge muttered. “You make eye contact, you owe that person a coffee. Maybe more. Also, I’ve been told you do not drop the soap.”
They showered like fugitives — quick, silent, using exactly one bar of soap between them like it was a sacred artifact. After Jorge’s dire warning they were very careful that it didn’t drop down to the floor. Unfortunately, it ended up with their hands grasping each other reaching for the bar at the same time. That brought a quick end to the shower as they both denied anything ever happened. The lonely soap bar remained forgotten in the shower forever.
And yet, despite everything — the soreness, the social nudity, the protein-bar-induced regret — they felt it: A rhythm. A routine. A weird, sweaty sort of brotherhood forged in whey powder and communal suffering.
They emerged ten minutes later, hair damp, eyes red, bodies sore — and somehow ... a little stronger. The light was visible at the end of the tunnel.
“We lived,” Bharath said, patting his own chest weakly.
Jorge nodded solemnly. “Barely. But yeah. We’re basically Spartans now.”
They tried to high-five each other. They couldn’t lift their hands. Gritting their teeth they tried again.
It was a slow, floppy high-five.
But it counted.
Breakfast was a blur. Boiled eggs. Toast. Tabasco. Milk. The boys inhaled their food like they were late for a flight rather than a 10 a.m. lecture.
“You know we have our first real class in twenty minutes, right?” Ravi said, licking Tabasco off his thumb with zero shame.
“Right,” Bharath nodded, checking his schedule. “CS 1331. Boggs Hall.”
“Ten AM.,” Jorge added, groaning. “I hope the chairs are soft. My glutes are toast.”
Just then, Tyrel strolled past with all the swagger of someone who had already conquered the day. He wore sunglasses indoors, a biscuit sandwich in one hand and his Walkman clipped to his belt, headphones slung around his neck blasting Hypnotize by B.I.G.
“Good luck in geek camp, nerdlings,” he said with a shit-eating grin.
“You’re not coming?” Ravi asked, chewing.
Tyrel stopped, dramatically turned around, and took a slow, exaggerated bite of his biscuit. “Mechanical Engineering, baby,” he said, thumping his chest. “Thermodynamics. In a windowless basement. With real men.”
Jorge raised an eyebrow. “Que mierda! Are you calling us fake?”
“I’m calling y’all keyboard gardeners,” Tyrel said, gesturing vaguely with his sandwich. “While you’re learning to tickle semicolons and debug feelings, I’m out here solving the energy crisis one torque diagram at a time.”
Bharath laughed. “We build the future.”
Tyrel leaned in conspiratorially. “You type the future. We weld it.”
“Oh god,” Ravi muttered, sipping his milk. “Here it comes.”
Tyrel pointed at each of them like he was hosting a talk show. “CS majors out here writing ‘Hello World’ while the real dawgs are calculating heat dissipation in turbine engines. Y’all choose majors where your only enemy is a syntax error. My enemy? Is entropy. And gravity. And reality.”
Bharath grinned. “Jealous because our labs have AC?”
“I don’t need AC. I sweat excellence.”
Ravi deadpanned, “You also sweat through your shirt every day.”
Tyrel ignored him. “Y’all get homework that starts with ‘Write a function.’ Mine starts with ‘Assume Mars has air.’”
“Didn’t you say you blew up a microwave last week?” Jorge asked.
“That,” Tyrel said, holding up a finger, “was experimental research. Uncontrolled combustion is just enthusiasm without supervision.”
“Did you fix it?” Ravi asked.
“I wrote a strongly-worded poem about it in my lab notebook. That’s what we real engineers do. Expressive thermodynamics.”
Bharath chuckled, tossing his milk carton into the trash. “Enjoy your dungeon.”
Tyrel walked backward toward the exit, raising his sandwich like a trophy. “Enjoy programming your loneliness! I’ll be out here learning how to launch rockets and fix motorcycles with duct tape!”
He slapped Jorge on the back, fist-bumped Ravi, and gave Bharath a mock salute.
“Remember, boys,” he called over his shoulder, “code fades, but torque is forever.”
Then he disappeared out the cafeteria doors, his Walkman kicking into another B.I.G track, leaving behind a table full of amused, mildly insulted CS nerds and the lingering scent of biscuit and bravado.
Jorge shook his head. “He’s gonna die in a boiler room, isn’t he?”
“Wearing sunglasses,” Ravi added.
“Looking smug,” Bharath finished.
They grabbed their backpacks and headed out. Geek camp or not — class was calling. And apparently, so was thermodynamics. Loudly. In all caps.
They arrived outside Boggs Hall just before ten, joining the trickle of freshmen gathering for CS 1331: Intro to Object-Oriented Programming.
Ravi checked his printout again. “Room 104. Let’s get good seats.”
They filed in and found the lecture hall mostly empty — a wide, tiered room with soft blue seats and long desks, perfect for spreading out.
Bharath sat in the middle row, three seats from the center. Jorge plopped beside him. Ravi sat behind them.
The room buzzed with quiet anticipation.
Students flipped open notebooks with trembling hands, propped up bulky Dell laptops like they were defusing bombs, and checked their folders for the syllabus again and again — just in case it had magically changed in the last two minutes.
The room buzzed with low-level panic, caffeine, and the unmistakable smell of someone’s forgotten egg sandwich.
And then— She walked in.
Like a glitch in the simulation.
Marisol.
Wearing a navy Georgia Tech hoodie that somehow managed to be both casual and runway-ready, tucked just right into a pair of fitted black jeans that made time itself pause. Her hair was tied back in a sleek ponytail, gold hoop earrings catching the light with every step. She scanned the room like she was looking for someone — or just deciding who deserved to live.
Half the class stopped breathing.
A pencil dropped. A laptop fan kicked into high gear in what sounded suspiciously like panic.
One guy in the front row actually adjusted his posture and tucked his shirt in without moving from his chair.
Someone behind Bharath whispered, “Is she lost?”
“No way she’s in CS,” another muttered. “That’s a finance major. Or aerospace. Or dreams.”
Bharath, for his part, forgot how chairs worked.
He was sitting normally one second, then suddenly ramrod straight like someone had installed new spine firmware. His hand froze on his pen mid-word. He didn’t even know what he had been writing — possibly his name over and over.
He had drawn a heart around the word algorithms.
Kill me now, Bharath thought.
And then — to his complete surprise, as if summoned by the sheer force of his hormonal panic — she smiled.
And started walking toward him.
Not in his general direction. Not toward someone behind him. Not to the door. To. Him.
Jorge, sitting to his right, elbowed him so hard he nearly dislocated a rib.
“What the hell is happening?” someone whispered like they were witnessing a miracle or the birth of a new religion.
Bharath couldn’t answer. His brain had put up a ‘We’re Closed’ sign.
Marisol reached their row, scanned the empty seats, and — with the ease of someone who had clearly never known social anxiety — slid into the one right next to Bharath. She dropped her bag with a soft thump and turned to him.
“Morning,” she said, casual as a breeze.
“Morning,” Bharath replied, somehow managing not to squeak. His voice cracked internally, but externally? Smooth as silk.
“You’re in this class too?” she asked, already unzipping her bag.
“Yeah. You too? Fancy seeing you here? What are you doing here?” he replied, immediately hating himself for saying something that stupid.
“Smooth!”, gasped a guy behind him.
She chuckled. “We literally talked about it at the bookstore yesterday.”
“Right. I remember now.”
He absolutely didn’t. Her sitting next to him was blowing his mind. He hoped that the extra spritz of Wild Stone he had on would help with his confidence.
Jorge, meanwhile, was now vibrating like a suppressed earthquake. His face was locked in an expression that read I will mock you for this later but right now I am too impressed.
But Bharath didn’t notice.
Because what he did notice — what he couldn’t not notice — was that the entire row of guys behind them had gone eerily silent.
Like birds before a thunderstorm.
They weren’t even pretending not to stare anymore.
Not at Marisol.
At him.
One guy in a faded North Face hoodie mouthed “Damn.” Another nudged his friend and whispered something that made them both burst into grinning disbelief.
There was reverence in their gaze. Confusion. Maybe even awe.
Bharath had gone from “Indian guy with average notebook” to “mysterious alpha who pulls goddesses in CS lectures” in about six seconds.
He didn’t know what he had done. But he was never changing seats again.
Marisol leaned in slightly, her voice low. “You think she’s gonna go hard on us on the first day?”
“Hope not,” Bharath replied, a little too fast, a little too earnestly, like a man who had just remembered what words were.
She gave him a sideways glance and a small, approving smile — the kind that short-circuits nervous systems.
The air around them shifted. Not heavy. Not awkward.
Just ... charged.
Behind them, someone whispered, “Bro. Did he save her cat or something?”
Someone else muttered, “He must be Bill Gates’ illegitimate son.”
Meanwhile, Jorge pulled out his notebook and, without looking up, scribbled one word across the top of the page: Legend.
And Bharath — barely breathing, pretending everything was normal — smiled faintly and opened his own notebook.
He had no idea what the class was about anymore.
But whatever this was? He was in.
At exactly ten, the door closed with a soft click.
A woman in her mid-fifties walked to the front — short grey hair, sharp glasses, and the kind of posture that suggested she tolerated no nonsense.
She picked up a stick of chalk and wrote in neat block letters:
PROF. HELENA STONE
CS 1331 – OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING IN JAVA
She turned to the class, adjusted her glasses, and spoke in a clear, clipped voice.
“If you are here by mistake, this is your last chance to escape.”
A few chuckles.
“If you are here on purpose — congratulations. You’ve chosen the career path that combines math, logic, caffeine addiction, and existential dread.”
More laughter.
Bharath smiled, finally relaxing into his seat.
Marisol leaned over and whispered, “I like her already.”
He nodded.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
Professor Stone wasted no time.
By ten minutes into the lecture, the word “Object” had already been written on the board in multiple places, along with its mysterious cousins: Class, instance, and encapsulation.
“An Object,” she said, pacing across the front of the room like a general before battle, “is a package. It holds both data and behavior. Like a student. Name, major, GPA — those are properties. But that same student can register for classes, drop out, change majors. Those are actions — methods.”
She paused and scanned the room. “If that went over your head, don’t panic. This class exists to unpack that mystery. Slowly. Painfully.”
More nervous chuckles.
Bharath didn’t laugh.
Because he was ... getting it.
Somehow, it all just made sense. The way she diagrammed things — a stick figure labeled “Student” with arrows pointing to boxes that said.register() and.getGPA() — reminded him of flowcharts from the coding competitions back home.
Maybe it was because he’d spent that summer reading Ritchie Kernighan’s books like his favorite novel. Or maybe he was just wired for this.
Either way, he found himself nodding while the girl to his left — Marisol — was scribbling furiously and whispering, “What the hell is encapsulation again?”
By the end of the hour, Professor Stone had walked them through the syllabus, the grading scheme, and a dire warning about plagiarism that somehow involved a gif of a cat crying behind bars.
The bell rang.
Students began gathering their things.
Marisol groaned. “That was a lot.”
Jorge leaned over. “You say that like it’s over. I blacked out during the middle twenty minutes.”
Ravi popped his head between them. “I understood three words: ‘Java’ and ‘Attendance mandatory.’”
Marisol turned to Bharath. “Please tell me you were lost too.”
Bharath hesitated. “I mean ... not really?”
They all turned to look at him.
Even Jorge — mid-shoulder stretch — stopped and narrowed his eyes.
“You understood that class?” Ravi asked.
“Yeah, kind of?” Bharath said. “I mean, the way she broke it down — it just clicked. I’ve read a bit of this before.”
Marisol squinted. “Wait. Are you one of those kids?”
“What kids?”
“The ones who finish assignments before class. The ones who prepare.”
Bharath looked guilty.
“Dios!,” Jorge said. “We’ve brought a teacher’s pet into our group.”
“I’m not—!”
“It’s too late,” Ravi said. “We’ve seen your true form.”
Marisol crossed her arms, grinning. “Well then. I guess we’re going to have to steal your notes.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” she said. “We are forming a study group, and you are the central asset.”
“That sounds ... like a threat.”
“It is,” Jorge confirmed.
“Absolutely,” Ravi added.
Bharath held up his hands in mock surrender. “Fine. You may borrow my notes.”
“Borrow?” Marisol echoed. “You’re cute.”
Jorge threw an arm around Bharath’s shoulder as they walked out of the lecture hall. “Welcome to the most academically desperate band of idiots on campus. Our motto: If you succeed, we all get an A.”
Outside, the sun was higher now, baking the pavement with Georgia heat. Students swarmed across the quad in crisscrossing lines, everyone with somewhere to be, phones in hand, earbuds in, caffeine in tow.
They lingered just outside the steps of Boggs Hall, surrounded by the smell of cut grass, fresh concrete, and whatever strange perfume the vending machines emitted.
“So, when’s this study group thing happening?” Bharath asked.
“Tonight?” Ravi offered.
“Too early,” Jorge said. “Let’s give the illusion of independence for at least two days.”
Marisol pulled out her almanac. “Tonight. Don’t put off what you can do today to tomorrow. Student center. We’ll pretend it’s casual. You show up with your notes. We ask you things. You explain everything. I glare at you. Jorge eats chips.”
“Why do I have chips?” Jorge asked.
“You just seem like you’d bring chips.”
He thought about it. “That’s fair.”
Ravi nodded. “It’s settled then. Bharath, our nerd guru, will guide us through the jungle of objects and classes.”
“I don’t know if I’m qualified—”
“You’re the chosen one,” Marisol said, patting his shoulder. “Don’t fight destiny.”
The Howey lecture hall was a fridge — or maybe it just felt that way after the late morning sun had roasted them through their walk across campus.
Bharath and Marisol entered side-by-side, their conversation still bouncing lightly from the CS lecture they’d just survived.
“I still don’t get how you understood all that object nonsense,” Marisol said as she chose a seat in the middle row. “It was like English until she said ‘instantiate’ and then it became Egyptian.”
Bharath gave a small, embarrassed laugh. “I’ve just ... read, that’s all.”
She sat and slung her bag under her chair, raising an eyebrow at him.
“You read ahead?”
“Well, yeah. I got a Java book back home. I didn’t think I’d get into Tech, so I started early.”
“Wow,” she muttered, opening her notebook. “You’re like if a cinnamon roll came to life and coded.”
Bharath blinked. “Is that a compliment?”
“It means you’re nice and secretly badass. Take it.”
He smiled sheepishly and opened his own notebook.
The lecture hall was filling up fast now — at least eighty students, mostly undergrads, all filtering in with the usual mix of caffeine, earbuds, and calculated indifference.
Then, just as he was uncapping his pen, he caught the faint whiff of something familiar — a citrus-floral perfume with a sharp, expensive edge.
He didn’t need to turn.
Ayesha.
Her voice reached him first, low and amused as she was with her companion Zara.
Zara said, “So, where are we sitting?”
“Anywhere away from people who think GPA stands for ‘Good Personal Aroma.’”
Zara giggled. “Is that a cab guy sighting? Hey FOB ... We’re talking about you mister”
Ayesha chuckled, “Apparently he’s decided pretending to be the strong and silent type is attractive now.”
Bharath froze for just a breath. He didn’t look up. Didn’t flinch. But the edge of his page crumpled under his grip.
Marisol caught it.
Her eyes narrowed. She followed the sound, the tone, the deliberate flick of syllables meant to wound without taking credit.
Zara and Ayesha settled a few rows behind them, talking loud enough to be overheard — but just soft enough to maintain plausible deniability.
It wasn’t the first time Bharath had heard that tone since landing in Atlanta.
But it still stung.
“Ignore them,” Marisol said, voice low and even. “Some people peak in high school. They’re just mad they have to climb again.”
He didn’t answer.
So she added, “And for the record, cinnamon roll or not, you could run circles around most of the guys in this room.”
That earned a small twitch of his lips. Close to a smile.
Professor Rhodes arrived shortly after — a gangly, absentminded man in his early sixties who looked like he’d been asked to teach math on his way to a jazz concert. He wore a wrinkled grey blazer over a yellow T-shirt that said, “Limits do not exist.”
“Alright,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Who here actually remembers limits from Calc I? Be honest.”
Only a few hands went up. Bharath was one of them.
Marisol, meanwhile, was busy drawing a doodle of a drowning man labeled “Me.”
The professor launched into the review with a dry humor that made the math almost tolerable. He scribbled equations with practiced ease: derivatives, Taylor series, integrals like waterfalls.
Then came the class exercise.
“You’ll find problem sheets taped to the back wall,” he said. “Grab one. Pick a partner. Let’s see how rusty we are.”
Marisol groaned. “Math trauma time.”
They both got up, fetched a sheet, and returned to their seats.
Bharath read the first question and started sketching a graph.
Marisol blinked. “Wait—you already—?”
“Do you want to try first?” he offered.
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You’re just going to be polite and secretly do it in your head anyway.”
He looked guilty.
“You’re hopeless,” she said, but smiled as she slid her notebook toward him. “Alright, sensei. Walk me through it.”
He did — gently. Not as someone showing off, but like someone sharing something that made sense to him, hoping it would make sense to her too.
Marisol found herself unexpectedly ... absorbed.
He didn’t lecture. Didn’t condescend.
He just showed.
And when she got something right, he lit up — like he was genuinely proud of her for figuring it out.
Zara, watching from behind, leaned in toward Ayesha.
“Okay. That’s weird. Are they like ... friends? Isn’t she way too attractive for him?”
Ayesha stared at Bharath’s side profile. His steady hand. The quiet focus. Marisol’s easy laughter.
Something about the whole thing rubbed her raw.
“I give it a week,” Ayesha muttered. “He’ll overstep. Guys like him always do.”
Back at the desk, Marisol tilted her head and tapped her pencil against her notebook.
“Okay. That one made sense. Wait ... that actually made sense.”
Bharath smiled. “It’s just visualizing it like motion. You’re good at connecting patterns.”
“Flattery will get you slightly fewer sarcastic comments from me,” she said, smirking.
Then, softer: “Thanks.”
He looked up. “For what?”
“For being ... not like the others.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
So he just smiled again and got back to the problem set.
By the time class ended, Marisol had filled almost two full pages. Her notes weren’t perfect, but she understood what she’d written. More than she’d expected.
As they packed up, she nudged him.
“Study group is officially doubling as Calc support group. Congratulations, you’re our TA now for that as well.”
Bharath looked mildly alarmed. “Do I get paid?”
“You get chips.”
“Jorge’s chips?”
“Possibly.”
She slung her bag over one shoulder. “Come on. Let’s grab something cold before I spontaneously combust from both math and drama.”
He glanced back once as they walked out.
Ayesha was still seated.
Her eyes locked onto him for a split second — something unreadable flickering behind them — before she looked away.
He turned back and followed Marisol out the door.
Whatever it was? It could stay behind.
The lecture hall had mostly emptied, the scrape of chairs fading into hallway murmur and fluorescent hum.
But Ayesha remained seated.
Her notebook sat unopened on the desk. The page still blank. The cap of her pen, slightly chewed.
Across the aisle, Zara was fixing her lip gloss in the reflection of her compact. Her voice was a faint buzz.
“You good?” she asked, not looking up.
Ayesha nodded. “Yeah. Just tired.”
Zara snapped the compact shut with a click. “God, this class is going to kill me. I need espresso and zero math for the rest of my life.”
Ayesha smiled faintly — the kind that didn’t reach her eyes. She watched Zara gather her bag and sway down the aisle in confident strides, already texting someone. Already moved on.
But Ayesha didn’t move.
Her gaze had drifted — not to the board, not to her notes — but to the now-empty seats across the room.
Bharath had been sitting there.
Beside him. That girl.
The beautiful Latina with the sharp eyes and don’t-touch-me confidence and goddess level boobs. The one who walked like she owned the floor and didn’t need anyone to tell her so.
Marisol.
Ayesha had seen them together the whole class — laughing softly, heads bent close. Not flirting, exactly. But familiar. Like they had a language no one else was privy to. She had watched Marisol slide into the seat next to him like it was hers by right.
And the worst part?
He hadn’t even looked up when Ayesha entered the room.
Not once.
Two days ago, she’d waved at him in the dining hall and he’d practically lit up. Now he was smiling at her like it meant something.
Ayesha folded her arms tightly, pressing her notebook to her chest.
Why did she care?
She didn’t like Bharath. Not like that. He was sweet, sure. A little awkward. Polite in a way most guys here weren’t. She’d actually liked that about him — the quiet way he held himself. The nervous charm. The way he’d looked at her like she wasn’t just another girl in a hoodie.
And now ... he wasn’t even looking at her at all.
Why did I say those things? she asked herself, wincing internally.
The GPA joke. The FOB comment. The smirk she wore like a mask.
She hadn’t been like this in high school.
She’d always thought she was better than that kind of girl — the ones who needed to hurt someone to feel powerful. But lately ... she didn’t know.
Was it really about him?
Or about how she felt invisible when he wasn’t watching her?
Why wasn’t he watching her?
Why wasn’t he orbiting her like the others always had?
And why — why — was that Marisol girl smiling like she actually liked him?
She had to be using him. That had to be it. Maybe it was some weird freshman strategy. Befriend the nerd. Milk his GPA. Laugh at his jokes. Graduate with honors.
Except ... except he had looked so genuinely happy.
So comfortable in his skin in a way she’d never seen before. Not around her.
And that smile Marisol gave him?
It hadn’t looked fake.
Not like hers did.
Ayesha stared down at her hands, fingers still curled tight around the edge of her notebook. Her knuckles were pale.
What the hell is wrong with me?
She didn’t know.
But something about the way Marisol had looked at Bharath — like he was worthy — had shaken something loose in her. Something small and ugly. Something she hadn’t wanted to admit lived in her.
And now ... she wasn’t sure what to do with it.
She stood slowly, adjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder. Her face was back to neutral, perfect, unreadable.
But her heart?
A little cracked.
And behind the practiced smirk and sharp one-liners, something very real was beginning to flicker:
Doubt. Jealousy. And maybe, just maybe ... regret.
After the Calculus lecture, Bharath and Marisol lingered on the brick steps outside Howey Hall, schedules in hand.
Marisol squinted at hers. “Next up ... Industrial Engineering 1101. The intro elective.”
Bharath blinked. “You’re in that too?”
“Yeah,” she said, grinning. “Don’t tell me—”
“I’ve got it too. Same room?”
She nodded, checking her sheet. “Room 228, Van Leer Building.”
“Looks like I’m following you all day.”
She laughed. “More like I’m being guided through the academic wilderness by the campus Yoda.”
Bharath snorted. “You’re going to keep saying things like that, huh?”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.