Bite Me, Maybe?

This has to be a joke. No, seriously. Someone please tell me this is a joke.

I take a slow sip of my iced vanilla latte, my eyes flickering up over the rim of the cup. Across the table, Liam is telling me about the ins and outs of his fantasy football league for the third time in ten minutes. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t taken a breath since we sat down. It’s like some kind of punishment for all the questionable decisions I’ve made lately—this, apparently, being one of the worst.

“I’m going to die,” I mutter to myself, glancing at the door of the coffee shop like it’s the emergency exit of a burning building.

“What?” Liam pauses mid-sentence, finally noticing that my eyes are glazed over. He frowns, pushing his glasses up his nose, clearly ready to launch back into his thrilling story.

“Nothing!” I slap on the fakest smile I can muster. “I said…wow. I totally get why you’d want to bench your quarterback.”

Spoiler alert: I have no idea what a quarterback does.

He grins, completely unaware of the fact that I’m currently plotting my escape route. To his credit, Liam’s not a terrible guy. He’s just…painfully boring. And also, he chews like an absolute psychopath. Every sip of his drink comes with a slurping sound that makes me consider texting Harper under the table. SOS.

No. I’m a grown woman. I can survive this.

I glance down at my phone anyway, my thumb hovering over Harper’s contact before quickly typing out: Help. I’m being held hostage by boredom. Send reinforcements.

Her response is immediate: Faking an emergency in 3…2…1…

Liam’s still talking when my phone buzzes again, and this time I make a big show of gasping.

“Oh no!” I stare at the screen with wide eyes. “My roommate…she…uh…she lost her snake! In our dorm. And it’s really aggressive.”

He blinks. “You have a snake?”

I grimace. “Oh, you know. College. Roommates. Can’t control what people bring home.”

I scramble out of my seat, giving him a quick apologetic smile. “Anyway, I really should go help her find it before someone gets bitten. You understand.”

Before Liam can respond—or, worse, offer to help—I snatch up my purse and dart out of the coffee shop, the fresh air hitting my face like freedom. I immediately shoot Harper a thumbs-up emoji, already grinning. That was easier than I thought.

Back at our dorm, Harper is sprawled across the couch, completely ignoring the history textbook she’s supposed to be reading in favor of scrolling through her phone. Her dyed black hair is pulled into messy space buns, and she’s wearing a T-shirt that says “Bite Me” in dripping red font. Very on-brand.

“Tell me everything,” she says without looking up. “Was it as terrible as you expected?”

“Multiply that by ten,” I groan, collapsing onto the couch next to her. “He spent the entire time talking about his fantasy football team. His team name is The Liaminator. I’m not kidding.”

Harper snorts, throwing her head back with laughter. “God, why do you keep doing this to yourself? You know all these guys suck.”

“I know, I know.” I sigh dramatically, kicking off my shoes. “It’s just…I thought he might be different. He seemed sweet in class. But once we got out of the library? Snooze fest.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Lily, you realize all these guys are the same, right? You’re in college. It’s a breeding ground for bad dates.”

I groan, running a hand through my hair. “I just…ugh, why is it so hard? All I want is to meet someone who’s not a total idiot or obsessed with his stats or who can at least pretend to have a personality.”

Harper gives me a look. “That’s asking a lot for frat dudes. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”

“Well, maybe I’ll swear off frat guys entirely,” I mutter, leaning back against the couch. “From now on, I’m only dating guys with zero interest in fantasy football or protein powder. New rule.”

Harper grins. “That eliminates ninety percent of the population on campus. Good luck with that.”

We both laugh, but it doesn’t take long before the conversation shifts to the many other disasters that have been my love life since starting college.

There was Jake—the guy who thought “Netflix and chill” was a perfectly acceptable first date suggestion. That went about as well as you’d expect. Then there was Ethan, who cried on the third date because his ex got a new boyfriend. And Connor, the pre-med student who didn’t believe in deodorant. We don’t talk about Connor.

“It’s like I’m cursed,” I say, throwing my hands up in frustration. “I mean, who else has this kind of track record? I’ve gone on exactly zero dates that haven’t made me regret every life choice up to this point.”

Harper’s grinning like a Cheshire cat. “You know what this means, right? You should totally let me set you up. I’ve been dying to test my matchmaking skills.”

I snort. “Absolutely not. I’ll die before I let you set me up with one of your goth friends.”

“What’s wrong with goth guys? They’re moody, mysterious, and they won’t talk about fantasy football. Sounds perfect.”

“Yeah, no thanks. I don’t think I can handle someone who’s more dramatic than me,” I joke, pushing myself up from the couch. “Anyway, I should probably stop going on dates and start, you know, focusing on school for a change. I’ve missed so many study groups lately, I’m pretty sure my anatomy professor hates me.”

Harper looks up. “Wait, seriously? Aren’t you, like, on track to fail if you skip more study groups?”

I groan again. “Don’t remind me. I have to go to the next one, or I’m screwed. I swear if I don’t pull my grade up, my nursing major is going to crash and burn, and then I’ll be stuck drawing blood in some random lab for the rest of my life.”

Harper’s lips twitch. “The irony of you dealing with blood when you can’t even handle frat boys is almost poetic.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Just remind me to go to the next study group, okay? I need to actually show up if I want to pass anatomy.”

“Fine,” Harper says, smirking. “But only if you agree to consider dating a goth guy. You might be surprised. I know some really hot ones.”

I groan. “Please, just help me graduate first before you ruin my dating life even more.”

“Deal.”

As the evening stretches on, I curl up with my anatomy textbook, half-heartedly flipping through pages about bones and muscle groups, my brain still stuck on the absolute failure of today’s date. I can’t keep wasting time like this. No more distractions. No more weird frat guys with bad taste in fantasy sports.

But just as I think that, my phone buzzes with a new message from the study group chat, reminding me about tomorrow’s session. Ugh. I haven’t been to one in weeks, and now I’m going to have to face Drew Marshall, the one guy in the group who seems more interested in glaring at everyone than studying.

Great.

Because what I really need right now is more awkward encounters with grumpy dudes.