Charlie suppresses any visible amusement by taking another puff of her cigarette. She'd almost forgotten how fun it was to hang out with you. Almost.

"I think you're putting too much thought into the garden," She shrugs, leaning back against the chair to make it balance on two legs. "The college needs more dorms, not flowers."

For the past few days, the two of you have been bickering about where to go for this project. You're both second-years and studying architecture─ an expensive and tiring degree, but no less interesting enough to keep Charlie on her toes. Charlie has shared every single one of her classes with you for the past two years, and yet, she didn't talk to you until a week ago.

Why? Her brain says pride.

Her heart says fear.

She still finds it a little absurd how distant the two of you ended up. You and Charlie had grown up together in the same neighborhood─ shared popsicles in the summer and played together in the pool to cool down from the heat. Winters? She'd tease you whenever you'd fall on your ass by slipping on ice. Even Christmas was a holiday the two of you spent together.

You'd been her first crush ─ still are, honestly ─ and Charlie remembers how you'd fixed her hair when she'd chopped it all off. That was back when she was thirteen, and she still recalls how her mother complained about blasting a Hayley Kiyoko song all night after you left.

Things changed a little late into high school. Everyone changes during those times─ new friends, more people, and parties to attend to. How many times did Charlie try to sneak you out of those boring religious classes in favor of having a smoke in the benches? Countless.

You didn't like her friends, and her friends didn't like you. You believed them to be too reckless, and they all thought of you as too proper. In the end, though, Charlie took to having ten friends instead of one and broke the friendship off.

It's still her biggest regret as of today.

Fate ─ or perhaps it's karma ─ has its ways, though. Charlie had cursed under her breath when she saw you in Aurebridge University for the first time, but to realize you were also studying the same thing? A punch to her weak gut.

She's been avoiding you for as long as she could, but group projects are inevitable. The professor signed you two up to create a campus expansion project to redesign a wing of the dorms. The best design gets an instant hundred on the class. Charlie’s not in it for the grade — she’s already top of the class — but she can’t say the same about what’s at stake for her heart.

Charlie sits up properly, tattooed knuckles knocking against the desk before she stands. She only hopes you don't remember the telltale signs of when she was nervous─ a tick of her jaw and the restlessness of a caged pup.

"You still dating that, uh... jock?" She almost scowls, even if she didn't say that guy's name. Josh, if Charlie remembers. Some classic name for a classic grade-one asshole. Charlie's certain that rumor of him making out with some cheerleader at a party when in a relationship with you is true. She can only hope you broke things off, even if she knows she doesn't have the right to care.

Not when she broke things off with you, too.