Chapter Text
“Pineapple sucks!” her roommate’s voice comes from the living room and the mention of the fruit has her stomach twisting with longing for anything. It’s been hours since she last ate and she has only herself to blame.
“You’re cracked,” a male voice — the same male voice that has been making comments about the tv show they are watching (and based on his comments it can be anything ranging from Gossip Girl to Game of Thrones. Maybe even Love Island. Her guess is as good as any) and based on her roommate’s laugh-ridden shriek has been throwing popcorn at the screen. “Pineapple on pizza makes it chic!”
“Inedible is the word you’re looking for,” she says, rolling her eyes (Mel can't really see her but she assumes that's the expression because it's the reaction his words warrant).
Mel really needs to get out of this room. She has to pee — her bladder is burning — and her stomach is growling. She closes her eyes, tips her head back and curses herself at gulping and turning off the lights and hiding in her room the moment the door of their living room opened. She just panicked is the thing — she had just said a tearful goodbye to Becca and their mother and she was overwhelmed and overstimulated and she didn’t want to come out and meet new people on top of that and she heard a male voice and it just made it so much worse to meet her roommate and her boyfriend at the same time and she didn’t want to seem rude by just being in her room and not coming out to mingle and…
She very literally jumped up to turn the lights off and dove under the duvets like they could see her. Now, hours later, she regrets that decision.
She thought that since they came in together that they’d pick something up and leave. Or they’d go to her roommate’s room and stay there. She didn’t imagine they’d slump on the one couch in the living room and spend the next however many hours talking about everything and nothing. They have covered ‘alien existence’ (the guy thinks they do exist, the girl is more skeptical), ‘whether the pyramids were built by men or not’ (they are both firmly standing on ‘yes’ but they must’ve been high on something), ‘which nacho flavors are the best’ (the guy think ‘flaming hot’ and the girl goes with simple ‘salt’. Mel is inclined to agree with the guy) and now they have moved on to ‘does pineapple belong on pizza’. So far, the guy seems to be winning — he’s louder, at least.
She just needs to pull herself together, put on socks so that her feet won’t make noise and sneak out of the room as quietly as she can. She may not be able to fix up a sandwich for herself — she doesn’t think even the most stealth of spies can make it so she can slip into their shared kitchen without them noticing — but she can at least avert the very real danger of having to have a cystoscopy if she delays the peeing.
She tries to open the door as quietly as she can — and thank god for this dorm’s maintenance cause it opens without a hitch! God is on her side! — and she tries to slip away, her back to the wall, inching painfully as her bladder pushes against her insides. And maybe that’s the reason she doesn’t look down at the floor or maybe she’s too distracted by her roommate’s loud shriek, diving for the phone to get it out of the guy’s hands but whatever it is, it results on her missing the wet spot on the floor, the one that makes her slip, sending her flying to the ground.
“Shit!” she gasps, the word leaving her throat almost involuntarily as her hip bone very loudly hits the floor, sending a flare of pain up her spine. She’s pretty sure her vision goes dark for a second. At least that effectively shuts her roommates up.
She allows herself to pretend that she’s alone in the room now that they are not speaking — God, they must be looking at her. Noticing her, seeing her, knowing that she was in there all along — and presses her eyelids shut as tightly as she can, trying to catch her breath. When she opens them back up, it’s not ceiling that she’s staring at but two concerned faces hovering above her.
“Hi,” she says, trying to put on a smile as she tries to move but the moment that she does, a flare of pain shoot up her hipbone.
“Don’t move,” the guy orders and she doesn’t say that she couldn’t even if she wanted to. She closes her eyes back up as he kneels next to her, his fingers moving to touch her spine. She almost jumps up — it’s not the pain, she just… didn’t think he’s be touching her. She’s not good with that; sudden touching and his breaths close to her middle and just… having people around who aren’t Becca and mom. “Nothing seems broken,” he says and if he’s noticed that she’s stiff, he doesn’t deem it emergency enough to address. “Can you sit up?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t tried yet,” she says, opening her eyes again and letting out a breath she was holding now that he’s in a safe distance from her. That, for some reason, get him to chuckle.
“Good one,” he smiles. “You hit your head, though. We should check if you have a concussion.” She presses her palms to the ground, sitting up cross-legged and the pain is almost like a faint throbbing dull sensation now. He holds up three fingers. “How many?”
“Three?”
He clicks his tongue, turning his hand to reveal four fingers. “Concussed.”
“He learned that trick from Bridgerton,” the girl who has been observing them all along says, rolling her eyes, smacking him on the head softly. He feigns offence as she pushes him out of the way, offering her arms to Mel. “Come on, let’s get you up.” She accepts the offer.
Once she’s functional and standing up, it occurs to her how mortifying the situation is — standing there in front of two strangers who know the sound of her hips cracking against the hardwood floor before they even know their name. Mel can’t look them in the eye, her face feels like it’s on fire and she’s pretty sure if they make fun of her for it, she’s going to cry. It’s just been a very long day.
“I’m Samira Mohan,” the girl says, tilting her head so she can get a better look at Mel who is determined to stare at her traitorous socks — they look like red and blue worms with eyes — who gave away her location. “You must be Melissa King, right? My new roommate?” She doesn’t sound mocking — like she thinks Mel’s a weirdo for having made such a back first impression. That gets her to look up at her.
She’s smiling softly, her brown eyes gleaming in the light of the room, her curls framing her face gently. “Mel,” she says, “you can call me Mel.”
“Nice to meet you, Mel,” she says, offering her a handshake that she accepts, deciding that telling Samira she’s not the biggest fan of handshakes might not be the wisest course of action following… this. Her boyfriend clears his throat. “Oh, yeah — this wanna-be doctor is Francis J. Langdon.”
He guy glares at her, “Or you know, as humans like to call me, Frank. I’m pre-med.”
“She’s been here thirty second, Frank,” Samira rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to tell everyone you’re pre-med! It just makes you look like a jackass.”
“It wouldn’t, if you told her you were a pre-med, too!”
“Well, I would’ve gotten to it!”
“I’m pre-med, too,” she interrupts before they can go any further. This is a very confusing dynamic between them. But then again, she’s never had a boyfriend before so she wouldn’t know. “Biochemistry and molecular biology. I’m a freshman.”
“Neuroscience,” Frank says with a smirk, “I’m minoring in food science.”
“Me too,” Samira hums, “I’m not minoring in food science, though, cause I am not a gym bro like him here.”
“Just because I run track for school doesn’t make me a gym bro!”
“You’re just showing off now, Frank,” Samira rolls her eyes. “We’re juniors.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” she says because nothing else makes much sense to say in this context and because now that the adrenaline rush of the fall has worn off the mortification of her situation seems forgotten, her bladder is yelling at her again. “I’ll just, you know…”
“Tell us, Mel,” Frank interrupts, though, before she can slip away (hopefully unnoticed but that’s a bit naive to hope for), “settle something for us, will you?”
“What?”
“Pineapple on pizza,” he leans on the wall, crossing his arms on his chest as he looks down at her. “Yes or no?”
“No,” she says immediately, wrinkling her nose. She doesn’t even have to think about it — she’s had the answer since he first brought up the debate with Samira more than half an hour ago and wondered what kind of person would like pineapple on pizza. Well, apparently a six-foot tall man with the most piercing pair of blue eyes she’s seen before and great dark hair that falls into his forehead. Samira ‘ha’s very loudly, pushing her index finger into his face as if to say ‘take this!’. “It has a worm-like texture,” Mel adds for good measure.
“Worm-like texture?” He raises an eyebrow. “How do you know how worms feel like?”
“Lucky guess,” she shrugs. “But no.”
He looks at her — she feels the time slowing down as his eyes bore into her eyes and she eventually looks away, her eyes darting to the bathroom door. She really needs to go. “Fine, okay, you win. Order boring pepperoni, why don’t you, Samira?”
“Yes!” she jumps in the air as Frank hands him the phone, Samira punching in the number into it. She thinks she’s been dismissed then, now that her opinion has been taken into account and his loss has been put on the record so she starts moving again.
“You’ll eat with us, right?” this time it’s Samira stopping her just as soon as she’s reached the bathroom and she will sob if she doesn’t get to empty her bladder in the next thirty seconds. But she’s also starving and a pizza has never seemed so good. “I ordered two large ones so you must.”
“Okay,” she says, nodding. “I’ll eat with you.”
Samira smiles and Mel doesn’t wait for anyone else to interrupt her as she goes on.
—
The living room — common living space is the official name for it in university’s guidebook — is small. Now that the three of them are sitting on the floor — Mel is cross-legged, Frank’s long limbs are scratched until his feet are pressed against their door and Samira’s leaning on Frank, her knees pulled to her chest — there isn’t much space to move at all. It feels cozy, though — almost like she’s back in her childhood house in Ohio, having a movie night with Becca and mom. Except that it’s nothing like that and they are watching ‘sex and the city’ on Samira’s laptop, cramped together with two almost-finished pepperoni pizzas between them.
“So, where are you from, Mel?” Frank says, breaking the silence.
“We’re watching a show,” Samira hisses at him.
“You are watching a show. I’m trying to get to know your roommate,” he counters. “I’m from North Carolina. Raleigh. Land of the free and whatnot.”
“No one calls it that,” Samira rolls her eyes. “The next thing he’s going to tell you is that he lives on a ranch.”
“I do!” he smiles, almost beaming at Mel. “It’s real nice! My brothers and sisters and I once watched Ma help a cow while it was giving birth to a couple of babies so that was really fun. So bloody and all. It happens a lot on the ranch.”
“And that’s what motivated him to become a doctor,” Samira says like someone who’s heard this story one too many times. They must’ve been together a long time then. “But that’s a lie, don’t let him fool you.”
“Oh, fuck off, Mohan,” he scoffs. “Your turn, Mel. Where are you from?”
“Cincinnati,” she says. “But I grew up in Medina. We just moved to Cincinnati last year after my dad died and — sorry. Too much information.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Samira says softly, leaning in only slightly but Mel’s grateful that she doesn’t reach out to hug Mel or something. She never knows how to react when people do that.
“Thank you, um, it’s alright. Not that it is alright. It obviously isn’t. I just mean — it’s what it is. And anyway, Becca likes Cincinnati more. That’s my sister. My twin sister, actually. Rebecca.”
“Does she study here, too?” Frank asks.
“No,” Mel shakes her head. She can explain that Becca can’t go to college — that she almost didn’t want to come to college herself (and especially not in another state) because of the reality of their lives and if it weren’t for their mother practically forcing her to enroll here, she’d probably be back in Cincinnati, trying to keep their lives together. She doesn’t, though, because it’s not something she tells people. Especially not people she’s known for less than a day.
Frank doesn’t push either and for that, she’s grateful. She doesn’t want to eat anymore, though. She wants to go back to her room, call Mom and Becca and then cry herself to sleep — she always wants to do that when she mentions her dad. “It’s late,” she says after a while when no one adds anything else. “I better go get some sleep. We have class tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I gotta dash, too,” Frank says, standing up, taking the empty pizza boxes. “I’ll throw ‘em out on my way.”
“Thank you,” she says, wincing because he probably wasn’t talking to Mel. He was probably talking to his girlfriend. She just scrambles to go back to her room as soon as she can and end the misery. “It was nice meeting you both. I hope we live well together and um — thank you for the pizza. Good night.” She disappears into her room before either of them has gotten anything more than their ‘goodnight’s out. She leans against the door as soon as it shuts behind her, taking a deep breath.
That went well, she tells herself, repeating it like a mantra. That went well. But even she doesn’t believe herself.
—
Frank is always around. It’s been three weeks since the start of the school year and she comes to the dorms to almost always find him there (or on the rare occasions that he’s not sprawled on the couch that’s too short and small and cramped for him, his cologne lingering behind, telling her that he’s been there). As for Mel, she really doesn’t have time to think about that because predictably, college is hard. It’s especially harder because she’s trying to find work as an assistant in one of the faculty’s labs (which is nearly impossible for a freshman no matter how many AP level classes plus a lab internship over the summer she’s gone through and every technician tells her that with a condescending tone that she assumes is because they think she still thinks she’s in high school).
So it doesn’t really concern her what her roommate and her boyfriend do in the room when she’s out (which is almost always because the school has a very nice library that she finds herself locked in for hours on end) and when she’s in, she’s always fast asleep. By the end of the third week — when she gets the schedule for her newly acquired trial-based lab assignment! (yay!!!!!!) — she feels like she’s lived a thousand lifetimes.
“Freshman weeks are like dog years,” Frank says when he’s in the room while Samira asks Mel about school so far. “Each week is like three months. At least.”
She narrows her eyes, tilting her head. “Really?”
“I mean, not literally,” he backtracks, running his fingers through his hair. He’s always doing that — pushing and pulling at his hair like he’s never happy with how it looks. It makes his hair messy, strands falling to his forehead no matter how much he grapples with it. “But like, emotionally, sure.”
Mel hums. “You’re right,” she nods. “I do feel like I’m nine months older than I was when I started school.” That gets him to chuckle — he does that a lot, too. Huff out a soft laugh when she says something that surprises him. She doesn’t know what’s going to surprise him either — it’s just that sometimes she says things and then he laughs like that and it makes her feel conflicted.
“Don’t listen to him,” Samira berates. “You’re doing really well. Jokey McJoke here couldn’t score a lab assistant position until the middle of sophomore year.”
“Hey!” Frank protests but Samira doesn’t seem to care. It’s the strange thing about their dynamic. She used to think that partners tended to… not roast each other, to say in so many words. She’s seen girls looking at their boyfriend — back in high school and on campus — and they’re always twirling their hair in their fingers, leaning on their boyfriend’s arms, doing these little breathy voices that make Mel feel weird. She thought that was how every relationship was supposed to be but Frank and Samira… well, they mostly tease each other and they laugh very loudly (often about jokes that Mel doesn’t get) and they ignore each other’s jabs in situations like this.
“Look, who’s talking,” Frank retorts, “didn’t they call you Slo-Mo cause it took you four hours to take your practical chem lab final last semester?”
“I was thorough!”
“You were a turtle!” Frank wrinkles up his nose. “But Mel, seriously, congratulations. You must be really smart to do that. That’s great.” She smiles, feeling jittery because o f the compliment. “I’m around the laboratory facilities a lot, alright? Call me if you ever need anything there now that we’ll be working close by.”
Before Mel can say that she doesn’t have his number, he’s walking to her — and it doesn’t take long to cross the room from the couch (technically his couch now because he’s the only one who sits there) to the kitchen where Samira and Mel are standing — and holding his open palm in front of her.
“Yes?” she asks.
“Your phone, Mel,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “I’m trying to give you my number so you can call me.”
The truth is, she feels weird doing this — taking a taken guy’s phone number. But his girlfriend is standing right there and though her eyes are narrowed, her arms crossed on her chest and she doesn’t look particularly happy, she doesn’t argue either. Mel imagines it’d just be more awkward if she pointed out that maybe Frank as a boyfriend shouldn’t be giving out his number to his girlfriend’s roommate. The easier thing is to just take it and never use it. Better for all the parties involved.
So she just puts her phone on his hand, trying not to blush when he sees that her background is Becca, Mel and their mom from when they were younger (he smiles when he sees that, one of those rare genuine small smiles that she seriously hopes Samira doesn’t catch because it makes Mel’s throat go dry) and punches in his name. “There you go,” he hands her phone back to her. “Call me whenever. I mean it.”
“Thanks,” Mel says, shifting on her feet awkwardly, her eyes darting to her room. She simply can’t stand there any longer — not when she is holding tightly to her phone and she feels a dark aura coming from Samira’s side and Frank seems to be oblivious to how much of a bad boyfriend he is being right now. “I, um, have some assignments I need to work on,” she stammers.
“It’s the weekend,” Frank says with a frown.
“Work never stops,” Mel says, trying to laugh but it sounds weird even to her own ears so she stops. “I’ll, um, see you around.” She hears him calling her name from behind her but she pretends like she doesn’t, very nearly slamming the door behind herself.
God.
What was that?
—
“What are your Halloween plans?” John asks. John Shen is a senior, working the same hours as her in the lab. He’s technically her boss here, almost on track to become a physician. She’s been working with him for two weeks now and he’s a nice enough person. Maybe too nice — he always has a diet coke on hand (and occasionally, he brings one for her, too, which she appreciates) and he didn’t yell at her when she mislabelled a vial last week (and she’s sure professor Shabani would’ve fired her on the spot for that) and he always seems to be smiling at her and asking about her plans. He’s nice.
“I have none,” she shrugs. “I mean, my mom and my sister and I used to always have a scary movie marathon and have lots of candy when I was growing up but I don’t think I can get away with eating that much candy now that I’m an adult so… I better think of something else. Maybe I’ll opt for tacos this year since Dia De Los Muertos is like the day after Halloween and I always liked Mexican food.”
It’s only when John blinks at her like he hasn’t understood a word she’s said does she regret talking at all. John is nice — but she agrees, sometimes, it’s hard to keep up with her. “Anyway,” he says, shaking his head like he wants to physically disparage the air between them. “I was going to say there’s a party in our part of the campus. You can come if you want. No pressure, obviously but if you do…”
“Oh, no, thank you,” she smiles. “It’s very nice of you to say but I don’t like parties. I, however, do look forward to my tacos.”
“Oh, okay,” John nods a bit emphatically. “It was just a suggestion.”
“Hm, thank you,” Mel hums, looking at the microscope in front of her. “Hey, look, those are live cells, right?” She moves so John can take a better look and when he shakes his head, explaining the characteristics of ‘live cells’, she feels relieved that the topic of Halloween has been abandoned.
—
The closer they get to Halloween, the darker it gets when she gets out of the lab and has to walk to the dorms. Usually, though, she manages to come out just before the sun is starting to go down and run all the way back to her room just as the sun sets. Tonight, though, the moon is in the sky when she comes out — arranging the supply for professor Shabani’s early class for grad students tomorrow took longer than expected — it’s pitch black, the air is crispy cold and there’s no one around. She shudders, standing under the entrance light, warily eyeing her surroundings.
She can just wing it — dial 911 on her phone, clutch it real hard and hope no trouble will come her way as she runs back home. She can ask John to take her home — he was changing when she said goodbye and he’ll be down soon enough — except that she doesn’t want a stranger to know her home address no matter how soft and gentle they look. Looks can be deceiving and Mel’s mother has raised her to be understanding, non-judgemental and kind but not to be careless.
She can call Frank. He’s not a stranger — he’s been in their room plenty of times and no danger — and he said it himself, he’s always around the labs.
“Do you need a ride?” John asks from her right, making her clutch her phone tightly as she very nearly jumps in the air. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” She can say yes — throw caution to the wind and accept the ride without troubling her roommate’s boyfriend. But she doesn’t know how happy Samira would be for a stranger man to know their dorm’s location and well… She just doesn’t want to take John on his offer.
“No,” she smiles. “I’m waiting for a friend.”
“Gotcha,” he nods. “See you next week then?”
“See you,” Mel agrees, watching as John walks away and leaves her alone in the dim light of the entrance. She searches for Frank’s number (he’s saved himself under ‘Big F (and that’s Frank not Fuck)’ which made her chuckle when she first saw it and then she saw that in description, he’s written ‘I know you laughed, Mel King!’ which just made her stomach tighten strangely) and presses dial before she can talk herself out of it.
He picks up on the second ring. “Mel?” his voice comes, a muffled crowd noise behind him as worry spills through the phone. “Are you okay?”
“Yes!” she gulps. “Yes, um. I was just wondering. Since, you know, you said that you are always around the labs. Could you — pick me up? This part of campus is pretty much empty and it’s dark and… I can walk home myself, I think, but I just don’t think it’s the wisest idea so if it’s not too much trouble and if you’re near—”
“On my way,” he interrupts before she can go on any further. “Which faculty?”
“Biochem,” Mel says. “Seriously, Frank, if you’re somewhere—”
“I’m on my way, Mel,” he interrupts, insisting. “Stay there. I’ll be up front in like ten minutes. No, actually, don’t stay there. Go inside. I’ll call you to come out when I’m there.” Mel nods even though he can’t see her and hangs up with a click, wrapping her arm around her own middle.
Now we wait.
She goes back inside.
—
“Thank you for picking me up,” is the first thing she says as she climbs into his car. It’s a beat-up black jeep with paint chipped in more places that she can count in the dim light of the lab. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that—”
“It wasn’t any trouble at all, Mel,” he shakes his head. “That party was boring as shit anyway.”
“You were at a party? Now I feel worse.”
“Don’t,” he hums, reaching for the radio once he’s sure her seatbelt is fastened. “You did me a favor calling me and giving me a reason to get the hell out of there. Drunk frat boys are not fun.” She doesn’t point out that frat boys of any kind aren’t fun (Samira was mentioned that he used to be in a frat in his sophomore year and for some reason, he went out but that he always wanted to be in a frat) and instead focuses on the warmth that spills from the ventilators.
“Thank you anyway.”
“You’re welcome,” he says shortly. “What were you doing in the lab so late?”
“John and I had to prepare professor Shabani’s ingredients for tomorrow’s class.”
“John?”
“He’s a colleague of mine,” she explains. “He’s a senior — premed, too.”
“Everyone in this faculty seems to be,” Frank mutters under his breath, staring right ahead. Mel doesn’t answer to that — she can’t think of anything to say and the fact that Frank is here must be annoying enough to him and she doesn’t want to add to that by saying something out of line so she just sits in the silence, listening to the latest bubblegum pop song on the radio.
She notices Frank glancing her way from the corner of her eyes and she promptly ignores it, staring right ahead. It’s only when he pulls up in front of her dorms that she finally lets out a breath she was holding turning to face him. “Thank you so much! I know it must’ve been annoying to have come—”
“It wasn’t,” he says firmly. “Actually, the days are getting shorter and with the way you’re pulling late let-offs, you’ll be forced to go home late at night. So just — text me half an hour before you’re off on your lab days and I’ll come pick you up.”
She has to admit it’s convenient — and puts her mind at ease not to have to walk home alone at night with all the horror stories she hears — but this is her roommate’s boyfriend and she might not be the most socially equipped person but even Mel knows that this is definitely blurring some lines if not crossing it. “How would you know my lab days?”
“I’ll ask Samira,” Frank shrugs.
Okay. This makes her feel better. If he asks her about Mel’s lab days, then she’ll know about this arrangement and if she doesn’t say anything, then Mel doesn’t see why she has to sweat over it. They are all friends — sort of. They don’t hang out in cafes and Samira doesn’t invite Mel when she goes to study at the library and somewhere on campus but when they are at home, they sit in the living room, going through their materials separately and when Mel skips lunch, Samira always puts a container in the fridge with her name on it and when Samira gets so lost in studying that she forgets to drink water, Mel always keeps a bottle for her on hand (and they have a mounting amount of Red Bulls in their fridge that is reserved for Frank so that makes them kind of friends, too, right?) so… This is fine.
“Are you sure it’s not too much trouble?”
“Mel, I have a car — the campus is very very small if you have a car. It’s no trouble to me at all,” he says with a tilted head and a smile. “Honestly, it would just make me feel a lot better if you didn’t go around alone at night getting murdered. Who else would tolerate me crashing on their couch all the time?”
She hums. Admittedly, he’s in their room a lot. “If it makes you feel uncomfortable to text me,” he adds like it’s an afterthought. “You can just call your room. Chances are, I’ll probably be there. So…”
“No, it’s fine, I can text you,” Mel hums. She doesn’t know what Frank and Samira’s boundaries are but she’d be more comfortable if she didn’t have to talk to his girlfriend every time. “So, um, thank you, Frank. For the ride and the offer and… um, everything.” She looks at her intertwined fingers, pressing them together to avoid melting under his gaze.
“Stop thanking me, Mel,” his voice is gravel when it comes out — low and gritty, sending a rush of blood to her cheeks. “You’ll come to see that I very rarely do what I don’t want to.”
She runs up the stairs to her room — at least she can blame her pounding heart on that later.
—
She doesn’t even have to text him next week. Sometimes, she gets wrapped up in work — like when John’s fingers let a container slip and they have to start the blood agar growth plate all over again — and she forgets to send him a text and when they walk out, it’s decidedly late and she’s picking on the skin of her fingers until she sees that familiar jeep parked out in the front, Frank reading in the driver’s seat, perking up when he sees Mel, waving as she walks over. “Hi!”
“Hey,” Mel greets, getting into the passenger seat, not even noticing that John lingers there with his mouth half-open before retreating quickly back to his car. “Have you been here long?”
Frank glances at his phone screen. “An hour or so,” he shrugs. “It gave me plenty of time to catch up on my reading. Did you know Pride and Prejudice is a very solid read?”
“You’re reading Pride and Prejudice?” she asks, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. It’s just that — Frank doesn’t seem to be the Jane Austen type of guy. She’s sure she’s never seen him with a book in his hands (keep for this moment) and it’s just… She’s always loved the classics. Growing up, she used to get her mother to call Mel in sick from school when she was in the middle of a particularly interesting book. That’s how she spent most of the eighth grade ‘coming down with the flu’ as she breathed through all Jane Austen’s and Bronte Sisters’ books. But she never had anyone but her mom to talk about these books too. And Frank is reading Pride and Prejudice!
“I will have you know that despite the rumors, I can read, Melissa,” he deadpans. She thinks he’s joking — this is meant to be sarcastic, she’s pretty sure. It was hard to tell with him in the beginning but she thinks she’s getting better. “That was a joke, Mel. just — you know in case.” Well, because he makes it clearer nowadays. It’s good. Productive. It keeps Mel out of her head.
“Do you like it?”
“I didn’t in the beginning,” he says, thoughtful, “But I could be alone with my thoughts for only too long so I started reading more and I think I can understand why you love it so much.”
“How do you know I love it?”
“This is the book you reread when you’re feeling down,” he says like it’s natural to know that — like it doesn’t instantly set her on fire and twist her insides and make her feel like she’s a broken heater warming up uncontrollably on the inside. “I’ve seen you read it after you realized that you can’t get a TA position until you’re a junior and when Becca was sick two weeks ago but you couldn’t go back home because of your schedule and that first week when you walked around like a lost puppy. I’m very excited to reach the end of it, though, you always seem choked up somewhere around,” — he flips the pages until he lands somewhere toward the end of the book and when she sneaks a peak, it’s the scene of Elizabeth talking with her dad about Darcy and she feels a knot form in her throat again. It’s just… daughters with their dads, you know — “here. Yup — there it is again.”
“It’s just very good,” she tries to defend her reaction, gently rubbing behind her ears where earrings are to push the tears back — she found that helps somewhere around tenth grade and she never looked back.
“I know, I trust your taste,” Frank throws the book to the backseat, a contradictory action if she’s ever seen one, before fastening his seatbelt and putting the car in gear. “AUX?” he always offers, she never takes him up on it. She just doesn’t think her women’s rap/hip-hop playlist is going to be his forte. “Mel King, one of these days you’re going to have to share your playlist with me and I will know all your dark twisted secrets then,” he scoffs when she shakes her head and he turns on the radio.
“Why do you never play your own music?” she asks.
“Because I don’t have a music taste,” he shrugs. “Also, I don’t pay for streaming platforms and I don’t want to commit copyright violation crimes with you in the car,” — he winks at her — “Wouldn’t want you to have to testify against me in court.”
That’s a joke, too. Probably.
—
Her stomach growls the moment she gets in the car, the sound making Frank raise an eyebrow. “Sorry,” she feels herself blushing, trying to silence her stomach who in turns protests by making more noises. “I just haven’t eaten all day.” She was going to but then she realized she had forgotten to review the materials of her quiz because she thought that it was going to be tomorrow and she had to spend her lunch time doing that and after the quiz — she did very well, by the way, thank you guardian angel — she had to run to the lab and there John did offer her some processed beef jerky and a protein bar but she just doesn’t like the texture of that specific brand and beef jerky tastes like cardboard to her so she turned both down and… well, here they are.
“Well, we’ll have to rectify that, don’t we?” he sighs. “Mel, do I have to send you reminders to eat?”
“What? No!” she gulps. “I just — this is the first time it’s happened all year. I swear.” Usually, she’s very meticulous about eating. Her mom used to be very particular about their eating habits growing up and she kind of follows the same rules even away from home; never go to bed on an empty stomach, don’t eat take out more than three times a month unless you aren’t the one paying for it (they had — have — a thing with money), eggs are your best friend so learn which texture you like the most and stick with it (for Mel it’s always a hard boiled egg mixed with dill and mayo and a little bit of cheese if she has it on hand and if not, a sunny-side up will do but the yolk shouldn’t be runny) and finally, never skip lunch because you need our midday boost. She suddenly misses her so much, her heart constricting painfully in her chest.
“I believe you,” he hums, “So burger or pizza?”
“Huh?”
“Dinner,” he clarifies, “burger or pizza? We can do anything you want, to be honest, but these do are the closest to where we are on campus but I get us out of here and go to that Thai place nearby. Have you tried the noodles? They are to die for. Unless you don’t like the texture of noodles then, you can choose anything else.”
“Haven’t you had dinner?”
She knows he has dinner at seven every night — she’s heard Samira complaining about how he’s on a restricted diet of ‘chicken breasts, vegetable and boring ass beans like a loser’ because it’s near the track team’s first competition.
“I’m a growing boy, I can eat again,” he shrugs. “Plus the coach is killing us with his meal plan and I need some good old greasy american food in my system. With a shake. Melissa, have you ever had fries with shakes?”
She shakes her head.
“How are you an American who has never had fries with shakes?!” his eyes widen, his eyebrows very nearly hitting his hair line like she’s personally offended him. “Well, we have to fix that, then. To the diner!”
She wants to argue with him, to tell him that it’s fine and she’ll just have something when she goes back to the dorms. To remind him of Samira in some way (perhaps suggest they pick her up or something). She’s sure if she says ‘no’, if she thinks of a good enough excuse, then Frank will let it be and just drop her off home as usual. But she finds that deep inside, she doesn’t want him to. She wants to let Frank Langdon take her to wherever he wants and throw that crooked grin around as she tries to work the exact mechanism his jaw moves, the exact prediction of the place the loose strand of his hair will fall this time. Selfishly — horribly — she wants him all to herself which she’s pretty sure makes her a bad person.
A horrible, terrible person. Considering his girlfriend is her friend and she’s been nothing but kind and lovely to her.
But she’s not the one asking. He’s offering and he keeps dropping hints that Samira is aware so maybe they have that kind of relationship (she doesn’t exactly know what kind it is, but she’s pretty sure it’s not her place to dig around that). So she doesn’t say anything when he moves the car in the exact opposite direction of her dorms and she doesn’t say anything when he starts talking about his day and complaining about a particularly low score on a recent assignment. She just listens, looking at the curve of his neck as he gets the words out, dizzy with something she can’t quite name.
—
He’s right. Fries and shake — a combination that she’s reluctant to try because she’s not good with new texture and flavors — does ‘slap’ (he uses that word a lot). He watches her intently — eagerly. Almost like an overexcited dog — waiting to clock the exact moment she realizes what she’s been missing out her entire life. He almost blooms like a flower when he sees the recognition as she swallows. “Right?!”
“Right,” she nods. “It’s pretty good. The salty and sweetness of the fry is really nice.”
“Yes!” he says like he’s just hit a homerun (sport metaphor. She knows sports. Sort of. Her dad used to watch a lot of baseball, so…), “and you know, when you’re done with a good portion of the fries and you take a sip of the shake, that’s gonna change your life, too! Because it’s salty and sweet, too, but different. It’s great.”
“You’re very passionate about this,” she laughs, taking another fry as he bites into his burger — it’s messy and bigger than he can chew of and he almost moans like he misses the burger already when he bites into it and it should be off-putting but for some reason something flips in her stomach.
“I’m passionate about a lot of things,” he says, probably gunning for ominous but coming off as… Well, he’s saying those words with lettuce poking out of his mouth (which thankfully he pushes in with his fingers so that’s less disgusting) and his cheeks filled and his voice muffled so… it’s not that.
When he swallows (‘fuck, that was a lot more than I could chew off,’ he quips, pausing like they are in a sit-com and the laugh track should play now and almost grumpy when Mel doesn’t laugh) (she’s focused on her food!) (also it isn’t one of his better jokes, to be honest. Especially when he starts explaining it when Mel doesn’t laugh which just makes it a little bit funny just for the effort), he says, “So how do you like it here, Mel? After almost two months.”
“It’s really nice,” she replies and finds that she really does mean it, “I mean, I’ve never been apart from my mom and Becca for this long and sometimes I just want to go home but… the classes are good, the lab is really good.” You are really good. Obviously she doesn’t say that last part.
“Hm, you’re really close with them, right?”
“Yes,” she nods. She loves talking about her mother and sister. “Becca’s really cool. I think you’d really like her. She’s older than me by a few minutes so she always calls herself the ‘older sister’ and my mom is just the best. She used to homeschool us until middle school because she was a biology teacher before we were born and she had to quit. She teaches again nowadays. She started part-time when we went to middle school and she didn’t have to be home in the mornings but then she had to quit again because Becca used to call her from school and have meltdowns on the phone but I got pretty good at handling those so she went back full-time when we started high school.” She doesn’t realize that she’s been talking for a long time — she doesn’t realize that Frank probably doesn’t know much about Becca and her mother and dropping information like that is perhaps not the wisest thing in the world.
“A meltdown?” he raises an eyebrow and she realizes then.
“Oh,” she gulps. “Um, Becca is on the spectrum.” She waits for the usual response — ‘Oh, I’m so sorry’ like something’s inherently wrong with Becca or ‘But you look so normal!’ like her sister being on the spectrum could make her abnormal in any way or her personal favorite (see? She knows sarcasm!) ‘Oh, that explains it, then’ like Becca’s thing is her thing. Like they are inherently linked together and therefore broken.
“Oh, cool,” Frank opts for a secret fourth option, “They seem so cool. You’re lucky to have them.”
“Oh, thank you,” Mel replies, feeling like her insides are raw. This scenario, she’s not prepared for. “What about you?”
“Four siblings — three brothers and one sister. She’s younger than us and my brothers are all older. Sort of like my mother wanted a girl and she didn’t stop until she got what she wanted. She was so disappointed I was a boy she cried when they found out the gender,” he says it like it’s a light joke, shrugging. “Yeah, we’re not that close. When you are five children growing up, you don’t get that close, to be honest. That’s what I think.”
“What about your dad?”
“I mean he’s there,” he shrugs. “Even though I sometimes think he doesn’t want to be there, they have five kids together so at least something works right about them, huh?” That last part is a bit bitter — like it tastes strange on his tongue to say those words out loud. He shakes his head. “What about yours?”
“He passed away last year,” she says.
“Oh, shit, right you had said that,” he slaps himself in the forehead. “Sorry, Mel, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” she shakes her head, feeling the familiar know that settles in her throat whenever she talks about him. “I really love talking about him, you know. Like he’s still a part of my life. But whenever I mention it, people get weird and quiet because I still can’t not cry when I talk about him which I think is natural because grief lingers. I actually read papers about that. But I think others haven’t done that… so… they just — get really weird and then I get weird.” She sniffles, stiffening as she realizes that a tear is slipping down her cheeks. She quickly moves to wipe it away but before she can, Frank’s thumb is there, catching it before it slips further down. When she looks at him with wide eyes, he catches himself.
“Sorry, shit, I know you don’t like people touching you,” he pulls back his hand like it’s on fire. “I just — you can talk to me about that if you like. Your dad, I mean. I probably won’t understand what you’re going through but I can promise not to get weird.”
But he is weird. He wipes away her tears and picks her up from the lab three days a week (sometimes four is she’s being particularly pushy) and buys her dinner when she hasn’t eaten all day and remembers things about her that she’s mentioned in passing and his pupils dilate when he’s near her and…
It’s all weird.
So she clears her throat, looking at her half-finished fries, suddenly feeling full. “Yeah, um, thank you for that,” she mumbles, not feeling grateful at all.
—
The pounding on the door doesn’t stop. Who would be pounding at the door on a Sunday morning? Sundays are God’s days (she’s never been particularly religious but she opts to be especially when it means catching up on much-needed sleep) so why on earth would someone wake her up at… eight-thirty? “Coming,” she calls as she stumbles out of her room, her shoulder hitting the doorframe as she miscalculates her aim. “Ouch,” she hisses under her breath.
When Samira said she’s be going home for the weekend, Mel had first felt jealous (she should really hustle to get a car so she can drive home when she can. Facetiming her sister and mother doesn’t seem to be enough, she needs to melt into them) and then relieved because she’d have the room all to herself and she could do things… She wasn’t sure what things.
(She can sit around naked though that would probably overstimulate her and be very unfortunate. She can have a dance party, probably with all rap songs — that always makes her feel better. But eventually she settled on peaceful, uninterrupted deep sleep. That seems very unlikely now, doesn’t it? And very much interrupted.)
Standing on the other side of the door — looking agitated, disheveled and ticked-off — is one Frank Langdon. “Is Samira here?” he asks hurriedly, moving past Mel to invite himself in. She blinks, trying to wrap her head around the situation.
“It’s eight-thirty in the morning.”
“Yeah, sorry about that, is Sam here?”
“No,” Mel shakes her head, trying to wake up completely. This is something that seems to need her to be fully awake for. “She, um, went home for the weekend. It’s her dad’s memorial day.”
“Oh, shit,” Frank hisses, kicking his forehead. “I completely forgot about that.”
“Yes,” she shifts on her feet, unsure of what to do now. “So, she’s… um…”
“She was supposed to help me study for this quiz,” Frank says, almost writhing into himself. “Fuck — I’m so screwed.”
“Can’t you just… study by yourself?” she blinks. How is that an issue?
“I can’t,” he shakes his head, looking pained as the words leave his throat. “I just — I really need to do well on this one or they’ll really kick my ass for it. Fuck — I can’t believe she’s not here.”
“Why can’t you?” Mel crosses her arms on her chest. This just seems very childish. She studies on her own all the time and she’s fine. Many people do. Not everyone is so attached that they need to study with their partner all the time.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he winces.
Mel takes a step back like the words physically hit him, opening her mouth to say something, feeling her cheeks flame up. He’s the one who woke her up — the one who’s standing in her room — telling her that she doesn’t understand! But then again, maybe she doesn’t. She’s never had anyone she loved so much that she’d be useless without them, so… “You’re right, I don’t,” she nods. “Anyway, she’s not here, so…”
“I just — I can’t study alone,” he repeats the sentiment, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. “I tried. I tried all night last night and I tried to read the papers we’re going to be tested on and I can’t. It’s like my brain refuses to read them and when it does read them, it refuses to retain information and it’s just all over the place and… I can manage it when I’m studying with her because she keeps me focused and on track and she explains things to me. She says it’s like she’s reviewing for the exam. But — fuck. I’m going to fail this one and then I’m going to flunk out of school and—” he interrupts himself, wincing. “Sorry, um, I shouldn’t… Sorry for waking you up.”
She should let him go, really. She doesn’t understand his problem and it sounds really hard when he describes it — it also sounds a lot like unmedicated ADHD which she doesn’t mention — and she’s not Samira or someone who’s in his major, really, so… So she says this instead, “I can help you if you want.”
“What?”
“I mean, I can’t explain the concepts to you but I can help you make charts and flashcards and stuff. I’m really good at that.”
“No, Mel, I can’t ask that of you. It would be too much.”
“You’re not asking,” she shrugs, “I’m offering. Do you want me to or not?”
He hesitates — it’s like his pride and his need to pass and his inability to focus are battling inside and in the end, desperation wins out — before nodding, looking a little flushed and unable to meet her eyes. “I really really do.”
“Okay,” she nods. “Give me thirty minutes to shower and get ready and we’ll get started.”
“I can get us breakfast,” he says.
“That would great, I’ll have a—”
“Black tea, two milks, one sugar with a dash of cinnamon,” he completes. “And I’m guessing today is croissant day since it’s the weekend.”
It tights her throat to hear her usual order recited back to her. “Yes.”
“Good,” he grins, the air of hopelessness washed away. “Be right back.”
—
It takes a few adjustments and one near-brawl to get Frank to finally stop bouncing and instead start focusing on the reference book open in front of him, reading through it out loud so Mel can make flashcards. “Say that part again,” she orders him and he obliges. It also helps that the material is really interesting.
“You know AI could make all that.”
“You know using AI is a horrible thing and it hurts the environment so much more than driving a one-person car does,” she quips back. “Plus, you learn and review things when you say them out loud and explain them to someone else.”
“Duly noted, ma’am,” he says. “How much longer?”
“Until you finish the chapters you need for your quiz.”
“But I’m tired.”
“We took a break an hour ago.”
“Exactly. It’s been a long hour.”
“An hour is an hour. It can’t be long or short.”
“Emotionally it can,” he quips. “Come on, Mel. I need a break. Let me take a break.”
“You lose momentum when you take breaks,” she sighs, tilting her head.
“I swear on David Bowie’s grave that I won’t.”
Mel frowns. “Are you a big fan of David Bowie?”
“I don’t know, but he seems like a big enough person to swear on,” Frank shrugs. “Mel, come on. I can go out and get us pumpkin spice chais in like ten minutes and then you’ll have a warm beverage and I will have moved my legs and everything will be great and I will be back making more flashcards. My throat is dry as fuck and I can literally see the blisters on your fingers from writing.”
“There are no blisters.”
“Mel, I’m almost a med student, I assure you there are blisters.”
That gets her to fold — not the none-sense logic, she knows that’s flawed — but the fact that he always says her name with some weight behind it. Like it’s precious. Important. Lovely. Mel. he sometimes calls her Melissa and she’s never liked her name in its full form — it makes her feel old and wrinkly and like she’s her own great grandmother — but the way he says it makes her come alive and dance.
And who is she kidding? When it comes to Frank, she always folds. “Okay,” she sighs and the syllable haven’t left her mouth fully yet but Frank is already on his feet, putting on a jacket to run out of the door. “But you have to be back in ten minutes!”
“Fifteen!” Frank negotiates. “I need a smoke, too.”
She frowns. She’s never seen him smoke around the room or when he was picking her up. She prefers to keep it that way — keep the stench of cigarettes out of her nostrils and all. “You smoke?”
“Sometimes,” he shrugs. “I’m not a smoker or anything but nicotine helps keep me focused. Among other things.”
“Can you, um, not?” she chews on her bottom lip. “I really hate the smell of smoke.” She hates everything about cigarettes. She hates that her dad used to smoke them, she hates that her dad had a heart attack, she hates that he mistook the onset of heartburn for MI as the heartburn cigarettes caused him, she hates everything about them. Most of all, she hates that Frank smokes. “I mean, obviously, I can’t tell you what to do but—”
He pulls out the pack from his pocket and throws it on the counter. “Throw that in the trash for me, won’t you?” he grins. “See you in ten, Mel.”
He runs out the door, leaving Mel and the pack of cigarettes behind and she really, really shouldn’t but she smiles, her insides feeling warm.
—
“Oh, my god,” she hums, taking another seep of the chai and practically moans. She really doesn’t mean to but only now does she realize how exhausted she had been from studying materials she didn’t know all that well all morning. “You’re a genius, Frank,” she compliments, taking another sip.
Frank, to his credit, is staring at her, a blank, distant look on his face but at least he’s not teasing her about the sound that slipped her throat. Still, she can’t look him in the eyes as she puts the chai aside and busies herself, going through the notes they do have up until now. “Yeah,” he clears his throat, reaching for the book, clears it again. “Anytime. Where were we?”
Well, at least he keeps his word about getting back on track quickly.
—
She can barely see in the dim light of the evening but she doesn’t have the mental capacity to get up and turn on the lights. She doesn’t have the mental capacity to do much else, if she’s honest. Still, she tries to read her own handwriting — which had started out neat and clean and by now it’s just a bunch of symbols thrown together — and ask him a question. “How does genetics determine the likelihood of brain tumors?” she asks, her voice scratchier and deeper than normal, the way it gets when she’s sleepy and her mother points out it’s bedtime.
She’s not twelve anymore and she can’t tell Frank who is just getting through his flashcard that she wants to sleep — not when they are so close to the finish line.
“Genetics influences brain tumor risk through rare high-impact inherited mutations and common low-impact variants, but for most people genetics is not the primary driver. Fewer than 10% of brain tumors are linked to known hereditary syndromes. Genetics sets susceptibility; it does not determine destiny. Overestimating genetic causation is a common conceptual error,” he recites robot-like. “Or you know, something like that.”
“Nailed it,” she smiles lazily.
“Do you want to take a break?” he asks, his own eyes just as glassy as hers even in the dim light of the room. She wants to shake her head — to tell him that they are going to see this through and he only has… twelve flashcards to go. That’s basically nothing compared to the mountain they have gone through piled on the ground. But her back aches from sitting on the floor all day long and her throat is scratchy and her eyes are watering and she’s pretty sure she needs a painkiller and the thought of it makes her eyes fill up and so, Frank softens, standing up, taking the flashcards from her.
“But we’re so close,” she argues, sniffling. “I don’t want to stop now that we’re so close.”
“It’s twelve flashcards, Mel,” he counts them, puts them to the side. “I’ll go through them in the morning. You already did so much. We can take a break.”
“You promise me?”
“Promise you what?”
“That you’ll go through them in the morning?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he dramatically draws a cross on his chest, sitting on the couch. Mel is leaning against the couch but she doesn’t have the energy to reach up and sit next to him. She needn’t worry about that, though, because before she can whine about that, Frank hooks his arms around her armpits and pulls her up, practically straddling his hips. She’s too tired to care.
“C’mere, baby,” he says, his voice honey, melting her inside out. He’s so close and because of the lights coming out through the curtain — cars driving by, the lamppost in front of their dorm, people coming and going — she can see the faint outline of a barely grown beard. He must’ve skipped shaving today because he was stressed. She can see him so clearly now — his blue eyes are bright, snapping to and from her lips and eyes, his nose is angular, his chin dimple so tempting. She just wants to poke it, nothing dangerous. Nothing line-crossing about that, right?
“Mel,” he croaks her name.
“Yes?” she breathes out. He doesn’t reply. “I’m comfortable like this, gimme the flashcards.” He obliges, leaning forward to get the remaining twelves. She reads through them, easier to focus on the words than on the way Frank slowly makes her comfortable against her, pulling her legs into his lap and supporting her back into his arms and now that they are close, neither of them needs to talk loudly. They just need to whisper to be heard. It drives her crazy. A little bit. Or a lot.
“Last one,” she says after another hour, her voice very nearly giving out, “which genetic mutation increases the risk of glioblastoma.”
“Turcot syndrome,” he replies, correctly, “APC mismatch repair genes. Can also increase the risk of medulloblastoma.”
She hums happily, letting the remaining flashcards fall in the space between them, closing her eyes, allowing her head to tip backwards. They did it — he’s ready to ace the exam and save his score or whatever it was he was so desperate to do in the morning. He breathes against her skin, his fingers tightening around her, pulling her flush against him so that her head is resting on his chest, her legs on either side of him. She knows, vaguely in the back of her mind where her neurons haven’t been rendered useless by an entire day of studying and the overload of information and sensations, that this is wrong. That she should put a stop to it. But she doesn’t want to — not when he’s so warm and so soft and when he gently lifts her head to look her in the eyes, he looks like a man possessed. However can she stop him?
Mel’s eyes are half-closed and so are Frank’s. She realizes that his lips only look small from afar. They are perfectly big now — pink and puckered and so soft. She knows because her index finger reaches out to touch them, making Frank close his eyes with a pained expression on his face. Perfectly something.
He nudges his nose against hers, pulling her closer. She can breathe the air he exhales this close. She can—
He kisses her.
Or maybe she kisses him. She can’t decide in that moment who moves first and why.
His lips are soft, his mouth already open. He’s all lips and teeth and tongue and fingers intertwined in her loose braid. She wants to open her eyes — wants to get a better look at his too-dark eyebrows, wants to admire his jawline, wants to check if there are faint freckles splattered across his cheeks because she’s pretty sure there aren’t and she’s pretty sure this is never going to happen again and it might ruin the only good thing she has going on friend-wise in her life so she wants her eyes open so she can at least bear witness.
But she is so tired.
And his mouth is so soft
And nobody has ever kissed Mel like this before. Well, only Jaden had ever kissed her before (prom) and with him, it was like getting pushed squarely on the mouth and pushing back.
Frank’s kiss is all taking. Like he is drawing something out of her with soft little jabs of his chin and demanding to be felt in all his glory. Like he’s trying to memorize her and to etch himself into her memories as well. Like he’s present right here and now, uncaring about the rest of the world going on around them and all that matters is finding the ins and outs of her mouth, to get to know it as well as he’s gotten to study his materials today. Like she’s a test he needs to ace.
She lets her eyes stay shut and pushes her fingers through his short, cropped hair, pulling a little bit. If she is going to ruin her life, then she’ll make sure to take everything she can from him too. Every little noise that escapes his throat, the soft groan against her neck as he moves down to leave a bruise there, sucking and biting, before moving on to his lips when she gasps, swallowing the small gasp with a smirk.
She lets herself stay in this moment, soak it up, pushing and pulling and giving and taking.
Eventually, she can’t stay awake anymore.