Chapter 1
The night before her first day of college, Olivia lay flat on her back, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling of her dorm room.
The room was unnaturally quiet. Her assigned roommate hadn’t arrived yet, leaving the second bed bare and empty under the dim yellow hum of the desk lamp. Outside, the distant rustle of university trees mixed with the nervous flutter in her chest. Tomorrow, she would step onto a college campus as an official student—a thought that made her stomach do tiny, chaotic flips.
She reached up, adjusting the heavy frames resting on the bridge of her nose. Running a finger along the smooth wire of her braces, she let out a small, self-deprecating sigh.
Summer had changed some things. She was no longer the chubby, round-cheeked girl who looked like she’d tumble down a hill if pushed gently. She had leaned out a bit, grown taller, and her baggy clothes hung a little differently now. But the core of Olivia remained stubbornly intact: the thick, oversized glasses, the metallic smile, the wild curly hair that refused to cooperate, and an inner world entirely dominated by overthinking.
Her eyes drifted to her phone on the nightstand. A text from her brother, Ethan, sat unopened:
Ethan: Don’t embarrass me tomorrow. And if you get lost, do NOT call me. Call Noah.
Olivia tucked her arms under her head and smiled softly. Noah.
Sitting alone in the dark, the quiet room pulled her back in time. Her mind drifted back ten years, to a warm, sun-drenched afternoon in her family’s living room, and the exact moment her entire world shifted on its axis.
TEN YEARS AGO...
Eight-year-old Olivia was sitting crisscross on the rug, intensely focused on eating a biscuit while trying to draw a cat. She was a delightfully round child—all soft cheeks, oversized pink-framed glasses, and braces that she regularly complained made her look like a robot.
The front door slammed open, shattering the quiet.
“I’m telling you, man, your bowling speed is illegal!” Ethan’s loud, boisterous twelve-year-old voice echoed through the hallway. “You almost broke my bat!”
“It’s not illegal, Ethan. It’s simple physics,” a calmer, slightly quieter voice replied. “If you adjust your grip and account for wind resistance, you won’t get caught on the crease.”
Olivia blinked, holding her half-eaten biscuit mid-air, and turned around.
Ethan trotted in, sweaty, covered in grass stains, and carrying a wooden cricket bat over his shoulder. And right behind him walked a twelve-year-old Noah.
Olivia had seen boys before, but she had never seen this boy.
Noah was tall, lean, and carried a worn cricket ball in his hand. His dark hair was slightly damp with sweat, clinging to his forehead, and his dark eyes were intensely focused as he tossed the ball lightly in the air and caught it. He was quiet, painfully awkward in the way he stood, but there was an effortless, striking gravity to him that made eight-year-old Olivia’s brain temporarily shut down.
Oh, her little heart thumped. Oh wow.
Noah stopped in his tracks when he noticed the small, round girl sitting on the rug, staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes behind giant pink glasses.
“Who’s the kid?” Noah asked softly, shifting his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other, suddenly looking like he wanted to jump out a window rather than navigate small talk.
“That’s just my sister, Olivia,” Ethan said dismissively, dropping his bat on the sofa. “Ignore her. She lives here.”
Olivia bristled, puffing out her cheeks. “I am not just a kid! I am eight and three-quarters!”
Noah blinked at her. He didn’t laugh like Ethan did. Instead, he crouched down to her eye level, his expression deadpan, though a tiny spark of amusement danced in his dark eyes.
“Eight and three-quarters,” Noah repeated carefully, as if analyzing a formula. “Impressive. Do you always eat biscuits while drawing mutated dogs?”
“It’s a cat!” Olivia gasped, scandalized, clutching the drawing to her chest.
Noah leaned closer, examining the squiggly lines with serious dedication. “Right. A cat. With six legs and no tail.”
Before she could defend her artistic masterpiece, Noah’s hand reached out. Smoothly, efficiently, and without breaking eye contact, he snatched the remaining half of the biscuit right out of her small hand, popped it into his mouth, and stood up.
Olivia’s mouth dropped open in absolute shock.
“Hey! That was mine!” she shrieked.
Noah chewed casually, towering over her again. “Tax for using improper feline geometry.” He reached down and gently ruffled her unruly hair, completely messing up her ponytail. “See you around, Lily.”
“My name is Olivia!” she yelled, her face turning bright red—partly from rage, but mostly from a sudden, terrifying wave of warmth that flooded her cheeks.
“Sure it is, Lily,” Noah said mildly, turning around to follow Ethan toward the kitchen.
As the two boys disappeared down the hall, Ethan’s voice drifted back: “Don’t mind her, man, she’s annoying.”
“She’s fine,” Noah’s quiet voice replied. “A little menacing, but fine.”
Standing in the middle of the room, her hair ruined and her biscuit stolen, eight-year-old Olivia placed both hands on her hips, puffed out her cheeks, and declared to the empty room: “I am going to marry that boy.”
PRESENT DAY...
In the darkness of her dorm room, eighteen-year-old Olivia let out a quiet chuckle, turning onto her side.
Ten years had passed since that afternoon. Noah had grown up to be even taller, even more devastatingly handsome, and somehow even more socially awkward. He still treated her like that same tiny, bespectacled menace who followed them around—ruffling her hair when she least expected it, stealing her snacks, and correcting her logic whenever she tried to argue with him.
She touched her cheek, feeling the lingering ghost of a ten-year-old crush that had stubbornly refused to die.
He still thinks I’m just Ethan’s annoying little sister, Olivia thought, pulling the blanket up to her chin. He has no idea.
She closed her eyes, a small, hopeful smile gracing her lips as sleep finally pulled her in.
Tomorrow was her first official day of college. Tomorrow, she’d see Ethan, and more importantly, she’d see Noah. And even if she was still the girl with the big glasses and the metal smile, she was ready for whatever chaos was about to begin.
