Kai’s hands were running over her arms, up and down in a rhythmic pattern as his lips coaxed hers open. It didn’t make any sense how she was in this situation, and truth be told, she didn’t exactly care. All that mattered was Kai and the way he was touching her. Her hands were cradling his jaw as they kissed, but slowly she moved them down his jaw, trailing down to his neck and collarbone before finding home on his chest. His heart was hammering under her palm, and she felt strangely satisfied knowing that she had this effect on him, that she wasn’t the only one intensely affected by the other’s presence. His hands moved away from her arms to her waist, tightening their hold and pulling her in towards him. 

Her sole focus was on the points of contact between their bodies, despite them being still completely clothed. At some point, breathing became a necessary chore, so she pulled back ever so slightly away from Kai’s lips, breathing heavily, and he took that to his advantage to place open-mouthed kisses against her jawline and neck. Cara let out a sound that sounded like a combination of a whine and a sigh at the feeling of his lips against her skin, of his hands wrapping around her back. She arched towards him, her back bending as her head fell backwards to give him more access to her neck as he right on her pulse point.

As he continued kissing and biting at the sensitive skin, she could feel a hand trailing down her back and coming round to the front of her waist before dipping under the waistband of her jeans. Cara in a deep breath, the anticipation taking a hold of her, and—

Cara jerked awake in bed, her heart absolutely hammering in her chest.

“What the hell,” she breathed to absolutely no one as she blinked several times, trying to adjust her eyesight to the darkness of her bedroom. She twisted around to turn onto her back as she slapped a hand over her forehead, finding it clammy and her legs feeling uncomfortably restless. 

She sat up in bed, pushing the covers off of her despite the chilly air of a January night, and Cara reached over to the bedside table to pick up her phone.

The bright screen was blinding, and she cursed silently, just not willing to deal with anything because she just had a freaking dream about the man she was currently in a fake relationship with at 2:20 in the morning.

.

Cara flopped back first into her bed, arms and legs out in a starfish position as she tiredly stared up at the ceiling, everything slowly coming into focus as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. 

She really did just have a dream about Kai, and she really could not believe her brain would betray her like that. Cara flinched as she remembered the way Kai’s hands felt roaming all over her body, even though none of that had happened. The worst part was that she was secretly annoyed that she had woken up before she could find out just how dextrous his hands were. Cara had never paid much attention to how his fingers were shaped until this particular moment, and it really could not have been a worse moment to realize that he had long, slender fingers that looked like could play the piano easily, reaching over to different keys without any issues. 

All she had really noticed was that his hands were large and warm every time she held it, and that didn’t help to calm the racing in her heart because it just made Cara realize that she loved his hands beyond the what-if. 

The really stupid part was that it wasn’t like the dream was conjured up out of nowhere because he was the only male she had been spending a lot of time with that wasn’t family. She had known how holding his hand felt and how his hair felt underneath her fingertips. She also now knew how it was felt to have his hands around her waist as his lips were on hers.

Ever since they had kissed, things had been almost awkward between them, which was new. Things were never awkward between them. Hostile, sure, but it was never to a point where they couldn’t stand being silent around each other like it was when Kai was dropping her back home a little past midnight.

After the kiss, she couldn’t bear to be around Kai, knowing how it felt to kiss him and not being able to do it more, so she asked him to take her home. Without any complaints, he took her home, wished her a good night, and that was it.

The entire car ride was absolutely silent and absolutely uncomfortable.

She knew it was because of the kiss, and here she was dreaming about making out with him, nearly having with him. 

Cara was absolutely screwed, and there was no way out of it without getting hurt in one way or another. She almost wished she could call Misty, but Misty would absolutely not pick up this late at night (or early in the morning), so the best Cara could now do was try to ignore everything and try to fall asleep.

Didn’t exactly help that everytime she closed her eyes, Kai’s bright brown eyes and mischievous smile as his face ducked down close to hers was all she could see. It got to a point where she could even feel his hands on her again, almost like they were a phantom limb. Cara jerked straight up, getting out of bed and pacing around her room in the dark to try to expel some of the anxious energy within her. It didn’t do much, especially when she ended up walking in a circle to avoid hitting the furniture in the room, so she ended up pacing around the apartment quietly to avoid waking Cian up. Twenty minutes later, she felt a bit calmer and committed to splashing her face with cold water, hoping it did the trick to magically erase the vivid memories out of her mind.

~~~

“Wow, Cara, you look like . What happened? Did you not sleep all night?” Misty asked gently as she sat down in the seat next to Cara in the dining hall. They both had plates of three stacked pancakes drenched in maple syrup with a dollop of whipped cream on top along with hot chocolate for Misty and black coffee for Cara.

“Nope,” Cara responded, popping the ‘p’. “I am suffering.”

“What’s up?” Cara opened to respond, but the reason was walking over to them, and she ended up closing and instead jerking her head towards him. She didn’t even speak of the devil before he appeared before her. 

Misty turned around to look, and she let out an understanding hum. “Did he keep you up all night? Although, he doesn’t look nearly as tired as you do,” she spoke in a teasing voice, way too loudly considering Kai wasn’t that far away.

“Shut up!” Cara hissed, smacking her friend’s forearm that was resting on the table. Misty winced as she jerked her arm away.

“Dude?!” Cara just glared in response as Kai finally stepped up to them. He looked between the two for a few seconds before raising an eyebrow, but he didn’t ask any questions. He probably knew by now that it was best to not come in between the two friends. 

“Hey,” Misty spoke up instead. “Don’t mind her. She just likes hurting me for no reason,” He smiled at Misty before responding.

“Yup, got it,” Kai answered, his voice conveying that he was teasing, smoothing past it all pretty easily. Cara supposed he really was just so used to it by now. “Look, I’m sorry but I won’t be able to make it for lunch today. I don’t have time to stay for breakfast, either,” he said, looking somewhere beyond Cara’s head. He wasn’t looking at her while talking to her, which Cara picked up as strange because he was the one person that would always look at the person he was talking to. Cara wanted to turn around to see what exactly he was looking at because he looked right at Misty earlier, so what was wrong with her that he wasn’t looking at her?

“It’s fine,” she answered, trying to read Kai’s face for any indication of what might be wrong, but she wasn’t able to find any answers. “Are we still on for tomorrow?” Cara asked, having made plans with him to meet up at the library the following day. 

He smiled apologetically, but she had been on the receiving end of his various kinds of smiles to know that this smile was not real. “I can’t,” was all that he offered. Cara wanted to ask why so she knew what had happened after that kiss that made him distant all of a sudden. She thought that she had made it perfectly clear that it was just a kiss, that it didn’t mean anything, so why was he acting like this? He wasn’t looking at her, wasn’t reacting to her normally, and she didn’t know what was happening.

This was exactly what she wanted to avoid, and it hurt more than she expected it to. 

“Alright,” she said instead. “I’ll see you around.” Kai opened his mouth like he wanted to respond, but instead his gaze snapped back to her face before dropping to her lips.

She looked down at her plate of pancakes, suddenly losing some of her appetite but forced herself to break off a piece with her fork and stuff it in . She didn’t want to bring up memories of the kiss that he was probably regretting.

“I’ll text you?” he asked, rather than said, and she nodded, still looking down at her plate. She heard take a step closer before the sound of his footsteps drifted away.

“He’s gone, Cara,” Misty softly said, and it was then that Cara looked up at her best friend.

“Nothing happened,” she said, answering Misty’s question from earlier. “Literally nothing happened beyond the kiss, and that’s the problem. I’m having issues, and Kai’s perfectly fine, or something. He’s being awkward around me, and did you see that? That’s the most we’ve spoken in two weeks. I can’t bring myself to text him randomly because we don’t do that, and he has only really checked in on me a few times. When I do text him, it’s one word responses, Even now, he gave me such short answers,” Cara blurted out in one breath, not bothering to wait for Misty to ask probing questions because all of this had already been on the forefront of her mind. 

“Are you literally losing sleep over this, though?”

“Not exactly…” This was one thing that Cara didn’t exactly want to share without probing. There was no way in hell she would willingly admit what had happened.

“Okay, then are you losing sleep over after graduation stuff?” 

“No, but that makes it sound like I should be!”

“Well you need to think about it!” Misty defensively said, but she paused to think before it seemed like a light bulb went off in her head, and Cara could feel herself not wanting to hear what was going to come out of her best friend’s mouth. “Did you have a dream about him?!”

“No!” Cara protested, sounding extremely disgusted, but she looked away immediately from Misty, and that was a bad idea because it immediately gave her away.

“You did! Oh my god, Cara! You did!” she screeched, her pitch getting louder by the end of her freak out, enough that some people were looking at them as they walked by.

“Oh my god, why don’t you say it louder? People across the campus didn’t hear you.”

“Was he good?” Misty asked lowly, leaning in towards Cara. “Don’t die, I will hound you till the ends of the Earth. Let me live vicariously through dream-you.”

“You are impossible,” Cara said as she rolled her eyes. 

“Answer the question!”

“That’s so weird!”

“It was a dream — just tell me!”

“Jesus, you are awful. It wasn’t even a proper dream. I woke up before anything…major happened.”

“So you two made out in your dream?”

“Pretty much.”

“Without any action.”

“Pretty much.”

“And that got you bothered enough that you look like you need to sleep for a day.”

“Rude, but pretty much.”

“Girl, you’ve got it bad.”

“Got what bad?” Cian asked from behind Cara as he set his own plate of breakfast — some breakfast sandwich that wasn’t drenched in maple syrup — down. Krish was right behind Cian (with the same breakfast), and he simply smiled at them as he sat down next to Misty.

“Nothing,” Cara said just as Misty spoke up, both of them simply choosing to wave hello to Krish. 

“She’s just struggling a lot over post-graduation stuff.”

“Oh yeah, my professor finally gave me his recommendation letter for graduate school,” Cian cheered, biting into his sandwich. Cian was fully committed to going to graduate school for his MBA while he continued working part-time at the company he was currently interning at. There were even negotiations to get him to work slightly fewer hours to be able to focus on school while moving to a full-time employee. 

“That’s great! Don’t you need another one?” Cara asked, finally eating her own food as she watched Misty and her brother eat.

“The other one was emailed to me a while ago,” he answered around a mouthful of food. Cara scrunched her nose, but she refrained from saying anything on the topic for the hundredth time. 

“That’s disgusting,’ Misty instead chided before looking at Krish. “See, Cian! Krish eats like a normal human being. You should learn from him, sometime.”

Krish laughed. “Trust me, we’ve tried to get him to give up that habit. It doesn’t help that he’s been hanging out with Kai enough because of Cara.”

“Wow, it’s so not my fault,” Cara responded. “Blame that idiot.”

They all laughed before Krish spoke up again. “Speaking of Kai, where is he? Doesn’t he usually eat breakfast with you guys? And Zach?”

“Zach has an exam today, so he’s studying,” Cian provided. “I don’t know about Kai.”

They all looked at Cara, even Misty, so she spoke up, “He said he was busy.”

“Well, since he isn’t here — what are your Valentine’s Day plans? It’s only a month away,” Krish spoke in a teasing tone, and Cara couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

“Valentine’s Day is a capitalistic holiday that celebrates a man-baby in diapers that shoots arrows at people. I think we’re good.” Misty nodded vigorously in agreement, but Krish just ignored her.

“Okay, but this is your first Valentine’s Day with him! He probably has something already planned,” he countered, sounding entirely confident, and that made Cara falter. Was he actually planning something for a holiday that celebrated couples when they weren’t even a couple?

She tried to laugh it off as she felt Cian’s eyes bore into her face. “I’m sure we’re not doing anything major. Probably just going to hang out at his place, or something,” she made up on the spot, trying to sound like nothing was off. 

“Are you two going to get each other anything?”

“No,” she answered. That much she was sure of. “We got each other Christmas presents, and if he gets me anything I’m going to murder him, so I’m pretty sure we’re just going to lay low. It’s not anything special.”

Krish nodded thoughtfully. “Fair enough, I suppose. But I do have a question.”

“What?”

“Are you considered the grinch except for Valentine’s Day?”

~~~

A few days later, Cara was walking to the library (yet again because the life of