Game Theory × NH

007 | nitrogen

× Mercury

It had been five days since I was offered to go to London. Five days to think over the opportunity to live my dream. Five days to think about all that I would be leaving behind.

I was sitting on the lawn outside the math building working on an English assignment that I got behind on. It was a nice California day, but honestly, when was the weather in LA not nice? The palm trees were lightly blowing in the wind and the small of freshly cut grass filled the air. There was a group of boys a couple of yards away kicking around a soccer ball and I had to fight the urge to join them. They looked tough and manly, I didn't want to tarnish their egos with my soccer abilities.

My phone kept going off with Snapchats from Jamie of her textbook with a funny caption or making silly faces as she sat in math, getting lectured in her studies.

I was outside waiting for her class to finish so we could go to lunch when I heard someone shout across the grassy field.

"Lynn!"

Looking up, I saw Bradley marching over to me. When I got a good look at his face, my heart fell. He was pissed - no that wasn't right... he was furious. I mean, he always had a brooding look to him, but this was different. It was the face of a raged, impulsive man.

I quickly put my phone away and stood up. Bradley didn't say anything, just held out his phone to me.

Taking the phone from him, I looked down and saw what got him all heated. It was a picture of me and Reese from the party last weekend, leaning against the wall with flirty smiles on our faces. We were pretty close, closer than I thought we were.

"What the hell is this?" Bradley finally spoke, his voice full of venom.

The picture was displayed on the UCLA Facebook page. The page displayed pictures from all kinds of events like sports, art fairs, science conventions, and parties.

I vaguely remember a guy at the party with a camera...

"Keep scrolling," Bradley pressed.

I went to the next picture and saw some more images of myself with Reese. I felt my face flush. Despite my head telling me to stop, I kept scrolling through the pictures almost like I was looking for some explanation for my behavior. But there wasn't anything, of course.

Skipping past pictures of people I didn't know chugging down beer or grinding on strangers, I finally found what triggered Bradley and my breath caught in my throat.

"There it is," Bradley said, a lot more quietly now.

The pictures were taken after mine and Katie's little "disagreement". I knew what I was doing at the time when those were taken, I was yelling at Niall and he was yelling right back at me. But through the lens of the camera, it really didn't look like that at all, and for Bradley, that didn't matter. From the angle of the camera and how dark it was, you couldn't really see our facial expressions, but it was bluntly obvious who the people were in them.

Our faces were close together, really close, and our body language said a lot more than what was actually going on. We were leaning into each other almost like we were being magnetically pulled together. I didn't recall my hands being on his chest except for when I pushed him away from me, but there they were, on him, grabbing at his shirt. His hands were around my wrists, almost like he wanted my hands against him.