Chapter 179: Sofia
"Haahh—"
The yawn tore out of him before he could stop it, his jaw stretching so wide it cracked at the hinge. His eyes watered from it.
He let his head drop forward onto his folded arms on the desk and his eyes closed the second his face hit his sleeve.
Kelvin leaned over. "Yo. You good?"
Liam lifted his head slowly.
His eyelids felt like they had weights attached to them.
He blinked, trying to clear the blur, and his gaze drifted to the front of the room on autopilot.
Miss Kelly was standing at the board, marker in hand, talking about something his brain flatly refused to receive.
She was wearing a blue dress. Short. Very short.
The kind of short that stopped well above mid thigh and made the word dress feel generous.
Every time she turned to write on the board the hem shifted upward and the full curve of her ass showed beneath the fabric, smooth and bare.
Liam stared.
’We had sex all night,’ he thought. ’All night. I got thirty minutes of sleep. Thirty minutes. And she is standing up there in that dress with more energy than any human being has any right to have at this hour.’
His mind started loading images from the night before without his permission.
The red net gown bunched at her waist.
The lube dripping through the weave.
The way she had looked back at him over her shoulder with that small satisfied smile.
The sound the floor made under his knees.
He felt it before he registered what was happening.
He looked down.
His dick was hard.
He stared at it for a solid three seconds. "Really," he said under his breath. "You were there. You experienced everything I experienced last night. And you’re still not tired."
Kelvin leaned in again. "Bro. Why do you look like that? I’ve been talking to you."
Liam said nothing. He just raised one hand and pointed at Miss Kelly.
Kelvin looked at her. She was facing the class now, the dress pulling tight across her chest with the movement, one hand gesturing at the board behind her. Kelvin looked back at Liam slowly.
A grin spread across his face from one side to the other. "Wooooo." He kept his voice low, almost reverent. "Dude. I get it completely."
"Thirty minutes of sleep," Liam said.
The grin dropped. "Thirty?"
"Thirty."
Kelvin turned back to look at Miss Kelly. She was mid-sentence, her voice bright and clear and full of energy, her heels clicking lightly against the floor as she moved. He turned back to Liam with a slow shake of his head. "How does she still have that much in her?"
"I don’t know," Liam said. "I genuinely do not know."
Kelvin kept shaking his head with what looked like sincere respect. Then he sat up straighter. "Okay. Real quick. While you were sitting here dying I was trying to tell you something."
"What?"
Kelvin tilted his head to the left without moving his eyes. "Rachel. Ten minutes. She hasn’t stopped."
Liam turned his head.
Rachel was two rows over, her square black frames sitting on her nose, her dark brown hair pulled back in a neat bun today.
She was already looking directly at him.
The moment their eyes connected she raised her hand slowly, finger by finger, until her middle finger was fully extended in his direction.
Her face didn’t move at all. No expression. Just the finger, steady and deliberate, held there long enough to make sure he got the message.
Liam turned back to the front.
"Hhhh." The breath came out of him long and flat.
"She likes you," Kelvin said.
"She kicked me in the dick, Kelvin."
"I know what I said."
"Those two facts cannot exist in the same reality."
Kelvin pointed at him. "Wrong. A girl who doesn’t care about you does not look at you for minutes straight. She does not get up in class to call you out. She does not show up in the parking lot to kick you. You know what she does? Nothing. She does nothing because you don’t register." He leaned back. "Rachel registers you constantly. That’s not hate. That’s something else wearing hate’s clothes."
Liam looked at him for a moment. "I’m too tired to argue with you."
"You don’t have to argue. I’m right."
"Whatever."
Kelvin stretched his arms up and his stomach made a sound like a slow rumble of distant thunder. He looked down at himself. "I didn’t eat this morning."
"Same."
"The place by the fountain. East side of campus. We haven’t been there in a while." He looked at Liam. "After this. You in?"
"Yeah."
"Bet."
---
The class let out and the lecture hall emptied in the usual rush, everyone moving for the doors at once.
Liam and Kelvin went with the current, through the corridor and out into the open campus where the afternoon sun hit immediately, warm and flat across the walkways.
On the east side spot sat around a wide stone plaza with a fountain at the center, water running steadily, students spread across the edges of it with food and drinks and laptops and conversations that had nothing to do with class.
A small building at the far end of the plaza sold food through a service window, a steady line of students moving through it.
Kelvin ordered a burger and a large drink without glancing at the menu board. Liam got a sandwich and a coffee.
They took their food to a table near the outer edge of the seating area, away from the thickest part of the crowd, and sat down.
The noise was constant but not sharp. Just the layered sound of a lot of people in one place, conversations bleeding into each other, someone’s music playing from a phone two tables over, the fountain running underneath all of it.
Kelvin unwrapped his burger and bit into it before he had fully sat down.
"How does it taste?," Liam said.
"Just like i remember."
Liam opened his sandwich and stared at it for a moment before taking a bite.
The coffee was hot and strong and he held onto the cup with both hands.
They ate without talking for a while.
The sun was warm on the back of Liam’s neck.
Across the plaza a group of girls were laughing at something on someone’s phone, the sound carrying. A guy on a bench nearby was asleep sitting upright with his backpack on his lap.
Liam was on his second sip of coffee when the voice came from directly in front of him.
"Hi, Liam."
He looked up.
Sofia was standing at their table.
She was wearing a cream colored top, fitted, scoop neck, the fabric close against her chest and showing the shape of everything underneath it clearly.
Her dark hair was loose today, falling past her shoulders in a clean straight line. Her jeans were dark and high waisted, sitting snug across her hips and thighs.
She was just standing there, looking at him with that same direct and genuine expression she’d had the first time.
The number appeared above her head.
[70/100]
The shift happened around them immediately and from multiple directions.
The table to their left went quiet mid-conversation, two girls looking over with their drinks frozen halfway to their mouths.
The guys near the fountain edge stopped talking. A ripple of murmuring moved through the nearest cluster of students like a wave.
"Is that Sofia?"
"What is she doing over there with that guy?"
"She has to be there for the other guy. The blonde one."
"No way she’s there for the other one."
Liam heard all of it and looked at none of it. He looked at Sofia. "Hey." He sat up slightly. "Good to see you."
Her smile opened up fully. "I’m really happy I ran into you." She shifted her weight. "I’m not trying to interrupt your lunch, I just—" She glanced sideways. "You remember Mei, right?"
Liam looked past her.
Mei was standing a few feet back and to the side, a drink in one hand, her straight black hair cut clean just below her jaw. She was already smiling. When his eyes landed on her she lifted her free hand and gave a small wave. "Hey."
"Hey, Mei," Liam said.
Mei’s smile got a little wider.
Sofia turned back to him. "I just wanted to see how you were doing. We haven’t really talked since that day. I wanted to check in and see if maybe we could catch up at some point. Even just for a bit."
Time stopped.
The fountain froze mid-stream, water hanging motionless in the air. Every conversation at every surrounding table cut out simultaneously, leaving a silence so complete it had weight to it.
The system appeared.
[Option 1: "Sure, but I’ll text you when I’m free." | +15 Lust Points]
[Option 2: "I don’t think so, I’m kind of busy." | +3 Lust Points]
Liam didn’t hesitate.
Time snapped back.
"Sure," he said, looking at her evenly. "I’ll text you when I’m free and we can figure something out."
The table to the left erupted in whispered conversation immediately.
One of the guys near the fountain said something to the other that made them both look over again.
Someone behind Liam made a sound that was somewhere between disbelief and offense.
Sofia’s cheeks went pink. The slow, warm kind that started at the center and spread outward.
She pressed her lips together for a moment, holding the smile back just slightly, then let it through. "Yeah. That works. Just whenever."
"Cool."
"Cool." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Sorry for interrupting your lunch."
"You didn’t," Liam said.
She smiled one more time.
Then she stepped back and turned, falling back into step beside Mei, the two of them moving off through the tables together. Liam watched them go for a moment, then picked up his sandwich.
Kelvin had put his burger down. He was staring at Liam with both hands flat on the table like he needed something to hold onto.
"What?" Liam said.
"That." Kelvin pointed at the space where Sofia had just been standing. "That was kind of awesome and cool."
"I know."
"She walked across this entire plaza to come to our table."
"I know."
"To talk to you specifically. Bro how did you become such a ladies man? You’re out here living like you’re the main character in some novel."
"Maybe. You never know."
Liam drank his coffee.
Kelvin shook his head one more time. "In that case, I’m following you everywhere from now on."
"Please don’t do that."
"Too late. I’ve decided."
Liam set his cup down.
The noise of the plaza had settled back into its normal rhythm around them, the murmuring from the nearby tables fading as people went back to their own conversations.
Then a voice came from just behind him.
"Liam?"
He turned in his seat.
Her cheeks were puffed out slightly, her brows pulled together, her lips pressed into a small tight line. She looked cute and unmistakably annoyed.
Liam stared at her.
He knew that face.
"Clara?"