By junior year, you’ve learned Stack is unavoidable. He’s your stereotypical frat boy. An Alpha who knows everyone at Howard, and worse, everyone knows him. By senior year, you’ve been doing just well enough to avoid him as best you can.

You’ve known him since freshman year. Not closely. Just enough to clock the way he hovers you and how his flirtation with you is different. It’s almost like he’s hell bent on playing the long game, much to your dismay.

You curve him anyway. Every time. Because you’ve seen how easily his attention moves. How many girls swear they’re the exception. So when you run into him outside the student center, it shouldn’t feel like anything new.

You’re balancing coffee and papers, half-thinking about an exam and getting these files to the copier before your next class, when the door opens before you can reach for it. Stack steps aside, exaggeratedly polite, like he’s onstage. “Careful now, pretty girl,” he says. “Look at you runnin’ ‘round like 70 goin’ West.”

A well oiled and practiced grin stretches across those perfectly stupid lips of his as he takes a good look at you, arms full. “Lemme help you out, ma.”