KC Stone

Two weeks out from the midterm he texted. you doing anything friday. wanna come study, i'll order food I looked at the message for a second. Come over? And stay there? yeah sure what time. 7ish. don't judge my place I've already been to your place i cleaned since then I smiled at my phone alone in my room like an idiot. I chose not to examine that. His place looked exactly the same. Maybe marginally cleaner, the textbook was off the counter. He had the di

It was a Thursday night when he texted me. hey man have you been to the stargazing nights yet? tryna make up some bonus points in case the midterm wrecks me lol I had been going to the stargazing nights actually, started early in the semester because extra marks are extra marks, and honestly the view from the top of the hill on a clear night was worth freezing your ass off for an hour. I told him it was pretty straightforward, just show up, fill out the observation sheet, hand it in.

Six weeks in and we had a thing going. Not a friendship exactly, we didn't text outside of lab stuff, didn't hang out, but there was enough of a comfortability there that it wouldn’t be super weird if either one of us suggested it. I had my phone on the table. Just chilling there. Innocently. We were halfway through the assignment, both of us heads down on whatever we were working on at the time, when it lit up. We both looked, you always look, it's automatic, the screen goes bright a

The semester fell into a rhythm pretty quickly. For some odd reason everybody sat in the same spot every week, without fail. That's just how it worked I guess. You pick a seat in the first week and that's your seat forever apparently. Philip would typically show up a little late, sliding in two minutes before the TA started, drop his bag, pull out his notebook. I assumed his last class was somewhere across campus, considering he’d always come in like he’d just ran here (and I respect

Nineteen, not out, and secretly into the guy who took the only open seat in his astronomy lab. The hottest guy he's ever met. Older, unbothered, straight as far as Cole can tell. A slow-burn, first-time story told across one semester, intrusive thoughts included. He kept saying I owe you one. Neither of them knew where it would lead. Fifteen chapters. The complete story.

The first time I saw him I had to do a double take. We were in the lecture hall, maybe two hundred seats, tiered rows, fold-down chairs, a huge whiteboard at the front. I found a seat somewhere in the middle, got my notebook out, wrote the date at the top trying extra hard to write neatly. I’d say about half the room took notes on laptops and the other half was still using pen and paper. I retained things better writing it down. I was nineteen and three weeks into my first semester and stil