Call Sign: Siren @cherrycola27 - Tumblr Blog

Method Acting | Part One

SUMMARY Bradley Bradshaw has always been just out of reach, your best friend's brother who you've pined after from afar since childhood. So when he suddenly starts paying attention to you at the end of your freshman year, it feels like something out of a movie where the boy you've loved forever finally loves you back. Little do you know, the relationship you thought you had is actually just practice for someone else. And you're just Bradley's trial run.

CONTENT college au, fem reader (no use of Y/N), best friend's brother Bradley, use of petnames (sunshine), Bradley dates reader as a bet, angst obviously, fluff, Bradley has a sister who is an OC, some sexually content (mdni), Bradley plays college football, I wrote this part when I was 19 and it shows lol--reader can be a bit childish, underage drinking, Bradley is genuinely kind of an asshole but also an idiot that has the emotional intelligence of a walnut, barely edited

WC 22k

A/N this is another fic from my old account but this time I will finish it 😤 !! it was originally titled "the trial run" but I've changed the name because Lizzy McAlpine's album Older (and Wiser) is important to me. anyway please enjoy and let me know what you think!

Giselle sighs, setting down her mascara wand—Dior, you note—and locks eyes with Natasha through her vanity mirror. “It’s the sorority’s last party until finals. You’re going, Nat.”

You giggle when Natasha plops down on the bed next to you with a loud groan and prod her gently with your toe. “It’ll give you an excuse to wear that swimsuit you bought a few weeks ago,” you offer. “And maybe Mickey will be there.”

“As if he’d be caught dead at a Delta Nu party.”

“Reuben’s going, and Bob is too, I think. He’ll probably be there, Nat,” Giselle pipes up from her vanity stool, applying another layer of mascara. From behind her, you and Natasha lock eyes, a mischievous look mirrored in both of your expressions.

“Ooh, Reuben’s going, huh?” You roll forward on Giselle’s bed so that your face is just behind her shoulder. “Is that why we’re going? So you can suck face with Reuuubeen?” You sing out his name, dodging Giselle’s hand that tries to shove your head away as Natasha joins in your laughter.

“‘Suck face’? What are you? 12?” Giselle huffs, cheeks pinkening as you fall back on the mattress.

You let out an overdramatic, offended gasp. “That’s not nice! How would Reuben feel knowing you bully your friends?”

“Okay, that’s it,” Giselle puts down her makeup with a glare, but there’s a smile she can’t fight off her lips. She jumps on you suddenly, grabbing a decorative pillow as Natasha moves out of the way. Letting out a startled laugh, you try to wriggle out from under her when she hits you with the pillow. “How’s this for bullying?”

“Nat! Nat, help!” You laugh, flailing dramatically and knocking a few of Giselle’s Squishmallows off her bed.

Natasha shakes her head with a snort. Having moved away the moment Giselle pounced, she’s now watching the two of you from the hardwood floor. “I’m good.”

“Wow,” you gape at her, ignoring the plush hitting the side of your head as you lean up to look at her. “I see how it is. You guys hate me.”

Giselle scoffs with a laugh, stopping her pillow attack and getting off you. “And you have a victim complex.”

“I see someone’s paying attention in psych,” you quip, stretching out to pick up all the stuffed animals you knocked over. You pluck a piece of fuzz off of Mr. Pickles, a Build-A-Bear frog you’d gifted Giselle for her eighth birthday, brushing off his overalls before setting him down against her pillows.

You gnaw your lip in thought, keeping your eyes trained on Mr. Pickles, before you suck in a breath. “Will, um, will the football team be there?”

“I think so,” Giselle’s back at her vanity, mouth dropped as she finishes applying the coat of mascara you interrupted. “Why?”

“No reason, just… just wanted to know. Since me and Bob are fifth wheeling.”

“If anything, Bob and Mickey are fifth wheeling. I’d ditch Mickey for you in a heartbeat.” Having moved back to sit next to you, Natasha shoves your shoulder with her own good-naturedly.

Giselle, however, narrows her eyes slightly in faux suspicion, turning around on her vanity stool to look at you. “But what’s that gotta do with the football team?”

It seems to register for Natasha too, who perks up beside you, and you grab Mr. Pickles to hide your fluster. It only spurs Giselle on though, as she narrows her eyes further.

“No. Stop it,” you point at her warningly. “I do not have a crush. I was only asking because last time, you guys ditched me and I had to listen to Jake talk about NFTs for two hours.”

There’s a part of you that feels bad about lying to your best friend, but you soothe the guilt by insisting it was a half lie.

You know your friends didn’t purposefully mean to ditch you and, truly, you take no offense to it. They’re just getting caught up in their first college relationships, you can’t say you wouldn’t do the same. But it did mean that you occasionally found yourself alone at the frat and sorority parties Giselle could manage to drag you to.

For a while, you had Bob to keep you company. And usually, for the beginning of the night, he still does. You both catch up on classes and homework, swapping notes about professors—you’re thankful he’s also a journalism major because you’ve been able to register for a few classes together next year. But even he is enticed by the allure of sorority sisters so eventually you wave him off and find yourself sitting somewhat awkwardly in a corner until your friends are ready to go.

And it isn’t like you want to be the tag along—though Giselle and Natasha insist you aren’t. In the beginning, you and Bob had taken the hint of being the last two left single and went on a few dates. They were fun, and you liked hanging out with Bob, just the two of you, but it was clear to you both that you were just friends. You were painfully and childishly in love with someone else and Bob figured that out on your very first date.

Giselle was slightly bummed that it didn’t work out between the two of you, but you assured her you were fine. Though you do get ditched occasionally, for the most part your group of friends all stick together. It’s rare that you honestly feel left out and if you do… There's always Jake and his NFTs.

Finally Giselle relents and you let out a silent breath of relief. “Well, good because, as someone who’s forced to know them, anyone associated with my brother is not worth your time.” Giselle gives her lashes one last check in the mirror before patting for you to sit down on her vanity stool. “Besides, in that suit I picked out for you? I won’t be the only one sucking face, babe.”

You wrinkle your nose. “I’m not sucking face with a stranger, Giselle, have some decorum.”

“But you could though. What about Landon? He’s pretty cute.” Giselle’s fingers glide over her mascara tubes. She had perfected a pool party makeup routine over the years and both you and Natasha indulge her by letting her help you get ready.

Again you wrinkle your nose, looking up as Giselle pumps the mascara a few times—ultimately deciding on a Pacifica one. “Bob had geography with him last semester and, apparently, he spews off some of the stupidest shit. I think I’ll pass.”

“Hmm–Blink–There’s Tanner?” Giselle holds the mascara wand to your eye. From behind you, you hear the door close as Natasha goes to change into her swimsuit. You snort when she shouts a “Good luck!” over her shoulder.

“Giselle,” you laugh, blinking again when she moves the wand to your other eye. “Please stop trying to set me up with every living, breathing man.”

“I’m not!” She protests, and you grab her hand to let her know you’re partially joking.

“I get you don’t want me to feel left out, but I promise I don’t.”

Giselle sighs, looking down guiltily until you nudge her leg with your own. “I just don’t want you to think that I’m going to ditch you now that everyone’s coming back to California with us for the summer.”

“Giselle, please, I’ve long since accepted that I’ve been replaced with Reuben—,” You cut yourself off with a laugh when she whines your name.

“That’s not funny!”

Your eyes crinkle in a grin. “I’m kidding. We’re gonna have a perfect time this summer, and you’re gonna suck all the Reuben face you want, and I’m gonna be fine. Deal?” You stick your pinky out.

“Deal,” Giselle wraps her pinky around yours resolutely before picking up the Pacifica mascara again. “But I’m telling you, you’re gonna look so good tonight that even the football guys won’t know what hit ‘em.”

Bradley’s jaw ticks in annoyance when a downpour of water droplets land on his forearm and chest, the culprit being a freshman who reemerged from his cannonball with a loud holler. Bradley doesn’t understand why Delta Nu even invites freshmen, but then he recalls how they wait on the girls practically hand and foot. He scoffs. Freshman boys are so eager to please.

Still, they’re a nuisance, splashing him with water and encroaching on his time with Makayla. They’re just puppies when he thinks about it, tripping over themselves and practically drooling at the sight of any pretty, older girl in a bikini. Bradley knows he sure as hell wasn’t like that as a freshman. He didn’t need to be, not when he always had girls chasing after him.

Well, except one girl.

Makayla Cunningham had been unattainable to Bradley from the second he stepped foot onto campus his freshman year. And the worst part is that she’s perfect for him. The president of Delta Nu, who comes from a wealthy, recognized family—her dad was a former NFL coach so she’d already know the landscape and how to handle the fame if he ever went pro. Not once had she so much as looked at another member of the football team, hardly ever going on dates with college guys period, and, on top of all of that, she’s the hottest girl on campus. She’s successful, drop-dead gorgeous, and unattainable—it’s like the universe was handing Bradley the perfect girl. Except for the fact that she wants nothing to do with him.

Though he wants Makayla, Bradley certainly isn’t abstinent, and he’s built up a bit of a reputation. A reputation that Makayla isn’t fond of. He’s tried to convince her that she’s different, that she’s perfect for him unlike the other girls he’s slept with, but she refuses to hear it.

But, with his senior year on the horizon, Bradley is determined to have her hear it. He knows Makayla loves his attention, she wouldn’t play this game of cat and mouse if she didn’t, but even she has to admit that they’re running out of time.

It unfortunately seems Makayla’s chosen to play games tonight anyway, as she’s been entertaining freshman since Bradley got here, only shooting him sultry smirks when she can tell he’s losing interest. So now he’s sitting between Jake and Javy, getting splashed by freshman boys doing cannonballs and watching them flirt pathetically with his girl. Stupid fucking freshmen. Bradley can’t believe he’s going to have a whole flock of them staying at his house for the summer.

“I’ve had enough of this bullshit,” Bradley gets up with a growl, interrupting Javy who’s been recounting another party he went to the weekend before. He ignores the protests of his friends, making his way to the keg of beer set up in the backyard.

As if everyone can tell what kind of mood he’s in—or maybe it’s just because he’s Bradley Bradshaw—the crowds part and no one stops him for small talk. It only seems to sour his mood more though. If Makayla wants to spend her night with puny freshman Bradley’s not going to stop her, but he certainly isn’t going to sit there and watch her either. Instead, his night’s panning out the way it usually does and he’s going to wake up with a killer hangover and a random girl in his bed.

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of a couple of freshmen, Bradley.”

Bradley turns around from the keg with a flat expression. Makayla’s standing in front of him, flimsily hiding her smirk behind a red solo cup. His tongue darts out to wet his lips and he rips his gaze away from her to look out at the party surrounding them. “‘M not jealous. Just thirsty.”

“Right,” Makayla teases.

It’s quiet as Bradley takes a sip of his beer, the silence almost uncomfortable as he swallows.

“My answer’s still no, Bradley.”

He hums, his tone slightly bored when he responds. “And why’s that?”

“Because you’re not a boyfriend,” Makayla laughs. “Like, I’d hook up with you—,”

“You know that’s not what I want,” Bradley cuts in.

“Well, I don’t want a boyfriend who’s gonna treat me like a hookup.”

Bradley’s jaw ticks again. “I’m not gonna treat you like a hookup.”

“Bradley, you’ve never had a girlfriend,” Makayla laughs incredulously. “You wouldn’t know how to treat me right.”

“You think that just because I don’t date means I don’t know how to treat a girl?” Bradley scoffs, taking another sip of his beer.

Makayla pauses for a moment, saying nothing for several seconds. Suddenly, she turns to him with a challenge in her voice. “Fine. You think you can be a good boyfriend? Prove it.”

“What?”

“Prove it,” Makayla sounds more resolute and, again, that smirk is on her face. “Seriously, I’ve been thinking about it recently and, if you think you know how to treat me, then prove it to me.”

“And how the fuck would I do that?” Bradley cinches his brows.

Makayla looks around the party, her eyes mischievous as she turns back to Bradley with a sugar sweet smile. “If you can prove to me that you can keep a girlfriend the entire summer, I’ll go out with you. Think of it as a trial run.”

“You serious?” Bradley can’t help the smirk growing on his face. He hardly considers it a challenge, not when there’s a campus full of girls who do just about anything to be called his girlfriend. “I just gotta keep a girlfriend for a couple months?”

“Hold it, hotshot, I didn’t finish. I pick the girl,” Makayla grins when Bradley’s expression drops. Her eyes go back to trailing over the college students swimming and lounging in her backyard. “I know you, Bradley, and I know there’s plenty of girls that would let you treat them like shit and stay with you regardless. No, she needs to be someone desperate enough to get with you before summer, but not insecure enough to stick around.” Her eyes still suddenly, lighting up as they take in your figure smiling along with your friends but still clearly an odd one out.

Makayla smirks. “Her.”

Bradley squints at you, pursing his lips. You’re pretty at least, and there’s something about you that seems familiar even though he’s never seen you before. He watches as you speak animatedly to a girl whose back is facing him. You’re smiling brightly before you throw your head back with a laugh.

“Just the summer? And you’ll go out with me?” He checks.

“You last the summer,” Makayla nods, “and I’ll go out with you, Bradley. Deal?” She holds her hand out.

Bradley looks away from you, grabbing Makayla’s hand in his own. “Deal.”

“Oh,” you giggle to Natasha, looking down at your empty cup. “I’m gonna get another drink.”

Despite your hesitance, you’re actually having a good time. The late spring air feels nice on your skin and the air has dropped a bit to make it the perfect temperature. Though you’ll never tell her, you think Giselle was right, you needed this party to remind you that summer was just around the corner.

You make your way around a group of sorority girls, smiling politely and nodding to the ones who recognize you. When Giselle first told you she was joining a sorority, you and Natasha hadn’t exactly been thrilled about the idea. You’ve come around to it more now—the girls aren’t nearly as mean as movies make them out to be, but you can’t lie that you’re still slightly scared of them.

Shaking off the thought to continue your quest for a drink, you pick up your pace to reach the cooler of beers and soda that’s been haphazardly set on the grassy lawn. You search through the cubes of ice, smiling delightedly when your hands find a Sprite. You grab a straw from the cup beside the cooler, opening your can and popping it in to take a much needed sip of your lemon lime soda.

Maybe there’s a part of you that’s a bit buzzed from the few sips of Mickey’s drink you tried earlier because, when you stand up from the cooler too quickly, you’re knocked completely off balance. You take a couple steps back to catch yourself—your feet trying to catch up with the rest of your body.

“Hey, now,” a low voice sends shivers down your spine, two large hands holding your hips in place and stilling your feet. Calloused skin seeps warmth around the ties of your bikini bottoms. “Careful, Sunshine.”

You take a nervous sip of your drink as if that will delay the inevitable, turning around slowly as your teeth clench down and flatten your straw. The sight before you almost makes you trip again and—somehow worse—reminds you that hands are still holding you up by your hips.

In front of you is a wet, shirtless Bradley Bradshaw, ball cap slung backwards on his head to hide the wet strands of curled caramel that are slicked against his scalp. Your eyes trail down to follow the beads of water rolling across the divots and dips of his abdomen, his relaxed muscles glistening in the setting sun. You can’t look away from the water droplets until they physically disappear, absorbing into the waistband of his swim shorts—which hang so low that his defined hips are completely on display, tan skin taut against his muscles and bones. You swallow thickly.

When you manage to pull your gaze away, Bradley is smirking at you, fingers fiddling with the strings of your bikini, making it very apparent that he’d caught your borderline awe of his body.

“Um… Nice, um, nice bathing suit,” you try to cover and, had it not been more embarrassing for Bradley to see you cringe at your own words, you would have.

Bradley lets out a light snort, shoulders jumping slightly with the air that leaves his nose. “You too.”

His hands are still on your hips, a position far too intimate considering it seems like he doesn’t even recognize you. Your heart sinks a bit at that. For a lot of her friends, growing up with Giselle Bradshaw meant inevitably having a crush on Bradley. You weren’t quite special in that regard, you’re just unlucky enough to have never grown out of it. Even almost a decade later, he still makes your cheeks hot and your knees jelly.

However, you’re still coherent enough to know that, if you let Bradley continue playing with your bikini bottoms, you’ll do something far more embarrassing than just ogle him. Subtly you take a step back, putting some much needed space in between the two of you. Part of you thinks you’re only imagining it, but Bradley almost seems disappointed that you did.

He recovers from it quickly though, taking his hat off to rake a hand through his hair before putting it back on. “Sorry.” You have to physically stop your eyebrows from raising. You don’t think you’ve ever heard Bradley apologize before. “Didn’t mean to almost knock you out.”

“No, it was—It was my fault. I should have watched where I was going...” you trail off quietly, keeping your eyes trained on your drink.

When you say nothing more, Bradley wets his lips. “You got a name, Sunshine?”

“You—?” That gets you to look at him and you hope you don’t come off as hurt as you feel. “You wanna know my name?”

You and Bradley had never been close, you know that and you never tried to pretend that you were. But you’ve been Giselle’s best friend since you were five years old. You spent more summers at her house than you did your own. You never expected Bradley to consider you friends, but you thought he would have at least recognized you.

You don’t know if you should be grateful that Bradley is oblivious to your inner monologue, but he is, a smirk growing on his face as he mistakes your dejectedness for humility. “That so hard to believe?”

You want to say yes. Yes, it is, given that you’ve known him for 14 years of your life. But before you can even begin to piece any words together, you hear a loud shout of your name. Giselle’s feet scamper across the concrete pool deck as she laughs out apologies to the people she’s weaving through to get to you. There’s a bright smile on her face—that quickly dissolves at the sight of her older brother.

“Is he bothering you?” Giselle glares at Bradley accusingly, but the elder Bradshaw doesn’t even seem to notice, his eyes tracing over you in genuine shock as your name falls from his lips in a soft mumble. You watch a flicker of recognition pass over his features.

“Shit.”

Taking a step closer to Giselle, you purse your lips as you realize what’s happened. Bradley’s embarrassed that he tried flirting with you now that he knows it’s you. You clear your throat softly. “Thanks for catching me, Bradley. It was, um, nice to see you again.”

With that you turn around, ignoring Giselle’s pestering questions as you let her lead you back to Natasha and the rest of your friends. Humiliation burns at your shoulders and neck and you’re far too modified to even attempt looking back at Bradley. You try to drown it all out with a long sip of your drink, letting Giselle distract you as you do your best to forget all about her older brother.

Behind you, Bradley watches the back of your white bathing suit for a moment, before he tips his head back and runs a hand over his face.

Bradley groans. “I am so fucked.”

“Sunshine!”

You almost think you're hallucinating when you see Bradley Bradshaw waiting outside the department building your class was in. But you know you’re hallucinating when it seems like he’s waiting for you. You go on as normal, not looking at him as you continue your usual route to the library. He’s certainly not talking to you and you’re not about to make a fool out of yourself for the second time.

There’s a sound of footsteps, though there always is right after classes get let out, so you think nothing of it until there’s a blur of navy blue in your peripheral. You furrow your brows, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and the navy blue slows to a stop with you. Your head has to crane up to look at him and your eyes widen when it finally clicks in your brain that Bradley is standing in front of you in a tight fitting navy blue t-shirt.

“Bradley?”

He grins, running a hand through his hair. His biceps strain against the sleeves of his t-shirt. “Were you just planning on ignoring me?”

“I didn’t—,” You open and close your mouth a couple times, having to take a step closer to Bradley when someone tries to pass you both on the sidewalk. “Is Giselle okay?”

“What?” Now it’s Bradley’s turn to look almost as confused as you.

You genuinely don’t think this could get anymore embarrassing and you look down so you don’t get flustered by Bradley’s honey brown eyes—because that’s the last thing you need right now.

“Sorry, I just assumed… that’s why you’d be talking to me.”

Bradley almost seems to wince at that, but you’re sure you’re imagining it. Really you just want to get out of here and you’re trying to come up with a feasible excuse when Bradley looks somewhere over your head. You’re about to say something when his hands are suddenly on your hips and he’s yanking you into him with a force that has you tripping. You let out a yelp as you collide with his chest, your hands pressing against the firm muscles of his chest.

The answer to this sudden movement comes in the form of a group of three girls walking right where you had been moments ago. Bradley looks down at you, the corner of his lip lifting in a lopsided smile.

“Sorry.” There he was apologizing again. “I got a thing for almost tripping you, huh?” He lifts one of his hands to scratch the back of his neck after a moment when you don’t respond. “So, where you headed?”

“The, um, the library.”

“Me too,” Bradley lights up slightly.

You have to physically close your mouth before you blurt out your surprise at that statement. Because Bradley doesn’t study. Most of the time Bradley doesn’t even go to his classes, Giselle is always complaining about how he just shows up for the exams and somehow always passes.

“Okay…” you trail off. You really don’t want to go to the library with him. Not when you’re still close enough to him that his cologne is dizzying and one of his hands is still on your hip and he’s looking at you with those big, brown eyes…

Yeah, you have to go.

“Oh,” you pretend to wince. “I left something I need in my dorm. I should probably go back to get it.”

Bradley deflates slightly, looking at you with an unreadable expression. He wets his lips. “Before you go, can I ask you something?”

Your grip tightens on your backpack straps and you can only manage a small nod.

“Will you go on a date with me?”

You blink. And then again. And again. “What?”

“C’mon, Sunshine,” Bradley smiles like he hasn’t just destroyed all that you believe to be true about the world in three seconds. “I’ll take you to mini golf, we'll get some food after.”

“Mini golf?”

Bradley’s smile falters. “Or—Or something else, I guess. What do you want to do?”

“No, I mean—,” You try to build up some courage from the fact that Bradley appears to be losing some of his. “You want to go on a date with me?”

“That so hard to believe?” Bradley repeats his words from the weekend and, again, you find yourself wanting to tell him that yes, it is.

Your entire life, Bradley has never once paid you any attention and now he’s suddenly flirting with you at pool parties and asking you on dates. Maybe Giselle really was right about that bikini.

“Okay,” you say finally.

Bradley pauses. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” you nod, letting out a breath to steady yourself. “I’ll go on a date with you, Bradley.”

“No.”

“Hello to you too, Giselle,” Bradley doesn’t look up from his controller, keeping his eyes trained on his God of War Ragnarök character when his little sister storms into his room. It’s almost migraine-inducing how easy it is for her to get into the Football House. Most of the new guys on the team just let her right through the front door.

“No, Bradley,” Giselle stomps over to shove his shoulder. “You’re not going on a date with my best friend.”

Bradley’s head snaps to his sister, video game suddenly forgotten. “She told you?”

“Of course she told me! You really thought she’d keep something like that from me?!” Giselle puts her hands on her hips.

Bradley blinks. “Well… yeah.”

Bradley was banking on it actually. The second he realized he had history with you, he begged Makayla to pick a different girl. Dating his little sister’s best friend presented its own list of problems that had nothing to do with how good of a boyfriend Bradley is—namely his sister herself. But Makayla had only laughed in his face, telling him that she already knew that you were Giselle’s best friend—and then preceded to berate him a bit for not being able to recognize a girl he’s known for most of his life, which Bradley isn’t too proud to admit was probably fair—insisting that, if Bradley really wants to date her, he’d have to make it work.

So he started thinking of how he could use the whole thing to his advantage. Obviously his sister would hate the idea—as she is currently making very apparent—so you’d have to resort to sneaking around. As a result, you’d start feeling guilty about the whole thing and that would get you to start thinking about if your relationship with Bradley means as much to you as your relationship with Giselle. And Bradley would make sure that it does, being the perfect boyfriend to ensure that you unintentionally view your relationship with him with the same weight as your relationship with his sister.

But then you told Giselle.

“Fuck you, asshole!” Giselle shoves his shoulder again. “Obviously she was gonna tell me. She’d never do something like that to me and the fact that you don’t know that proves that you don’t deserve to go on a date with her.”

Giselle ends her words with a finality that chips at Bradley’s frustration. What is with everyone thinking he’s some asshole boyfriend? And, frankly, he finds it insulting that Giselle’s just decided he’s not good enough for you. From what he can tell, there’s nothing glaringly special about you—Bradley deserves you just fine.

“Well, I don’t know if she told you, but she said yes. You gonna dictate who she goes on dates with now?” Bradley scoffs.

Giselle traces her teeth with her tongue, crossing her arms as she narrows her eyes at him. “What do you want from her, Bradley? This entire year–our entire lives–you never paid any attention to her. Why do you suddenly want her now?”

“That’s a shitty way to talk about your best friend, Giselle,” Bradley turns his neck lazily to smirk at her, grabbing his controller again. “You don’t think I could just be attracted to her?”

Giselle’s fists clench and it looks like she’s about to blow a fuse before she bites her lip and takes a breath, letting her eyes flutter closed for a second. Bradley knows he’s enjoying this far more than he should, but Giselle’s been putting a wrench in his plans with Makayla since she first joined Delta Nu—her big mouth is half the reason Makalya knows what she does about his sleeping history—so it’s a bit vindicating to mess with her.

“I told her I wasn’t going to stop her from going on a date with you,” Giselle says finally—calmly.

Bradley’s eyebrows raise. That is not what he was expecting and his fingers stumble on his PS5 controller as he turns back to his sister in slight disbelief.

“But I know you,” she continues. “And I know what you look like when you’re interested in a girl, Bradley. The second I see you’re genuinely interested in her, I’ll step aside. But—,” Giselle jabs her manicured finger into Bradley’ chest. “I. Haven’t. Seen. That. Yet.” She accentuates each word with another jab.

Again Bradley scoffs, catching her finger between his own. “What are you? A fucking polygraph? You don’t know shit, Giselle.”

“I know there’s no way in frozen-over hell I’d let you date my best friend otherwise,” Giselle challenges. “And, as we’ve established, she’ll pick me over you.”

Bradley closes his eyes to stop from rolling them—that’s the last thing he needs his sister to see—and pinches the bridge of his nose. “So… what? I just have to look interested?” He has a hard time believing that Giselle isn’t just using this as an excuse to forbid you from dating him without looking like a bitch in the process.

“Look. For reasons I don’t understand, she doesn’t projectile vomit at the thought of you so—,” Giselle lets out a breath of defeat, ignoring Bradley’s glare. “If you really like her, I… I guess I could get over it.”

This conversation is not at all going the way Bradley thought it would. Briefly Bradley thinks that maybe he was wrong and there is something special about you, if it’s enough for Giselle to be willing to step aside. He knows there’s not a single one of his friends who he’d do that for, if the roles were reversed.

Before he can say anything in response, Giselle’s features harden. “But, if you hurt her, I swear to God, Bradley, I will bash your knees in with your own fucking golf clubs.”

“There she is,” Bradley mutters, getting up. He feels conflicted. On the one hand, he’s getting his sister’s permission to pursue you—which he never thought would happen—but, on the other, he has to somehow convince Giselle he’s genuinely interested in you. And he has no idea how to do that.

“I’m serious, Bradley—,”

“I know you are,” Bradley waves Giselle off, moving to turn off his TV. God of War Ragnarök isn’t a priority right now. “And how exactly are you planning on deciding if I like her or not?”

Giselle bites her bottom lip, rolling it between her teeth like she’s about to say something she may regret. “I’ll bring her to the football game Friday.”

You let out a breath when your professor dismisses you, sliding your laptop into your bag before heading towards the line of students trailing out of the room. With everyone counting down the days to summer, every class seems more draining than the last and—though you know you shouldn’t—you’re planning on taking a nap as soon as you get back to your dorm.

Slinging your bag over your shoulder, you scrub at your eyes, trying to muster up some energy as you push through the building’s main doors. You don’t know why you’re so drained, maybe you just haven’t been sleeping enough. You should convince Giselle to have another sleepover with you soon, her bed at the sorority is way more comfortable than yours.

You’re so caught up in your exhaustion that you don’t notice the large body propped against the front of the science department until it pushes off the wall and makes its way over to you. “Why’re you always ignoring me, Sunshine?” Bradley’s voice is teasing as you whirl around to face him.

To his credit, it does wake you up a bit—fight or flight has the tendency to do that to a person—and you look up at him with features drenched in confusion. Before you can stop yourself, you ask, “How did you know I have class here?”

Bradley almost seems to pinken at that and now you think you must really be tired because, if there’s anything Bradley Bradshaw does less than apologize, it’s blush. “I, um, Kyle told me he’s in your political science class.” He scratches at the back of his neck.

“Right…” You trail off, looking around awkwardly as though that will somehow convince Bradley to stop showing up so randomly. You don’t know what to do with all his sudden attention and—while there’s a small part of you doing cartwheels and happy dances every time Bradley talks to you—he’s not the Bradley you’re used to and you’d like to go back to not embarrassing yourself on a daily basis.

Bradley clears his throat. “Do you have another class after this?”

“No, I was heading back to my dorm.” You fiddle with the straps of your bag.

“Cool,” Bradley slides his hands in his sweatpants pockets, nodding his head. “I’ll walk you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to—,”

“Are you coming to the football game Friday?” Bradley cuts you off and you decide that, at least with Bradley, you won’t have to worry about falling asleep on your way back to your dorm, so you resign yourself to the fact that he’ll be escorting you.

You bite your lip. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Bradley looks down at you with a teasing smile.

“I…” The words come out weak when you realize how pathetic they sound, “have homework.”

Weirdly, Bradley’s smile only grows and he shakes his head at you slowly. “Well, I hope you come. How else am I supposed to get my sister to agree to let me take you on a date?”

You nearly trip over a crack in the sidewalk and Bradley’s hand shoots out to steady you. “You—You still want to go on a date with me?”

Honestly—though you said yes—part of you expected the whole thing to be a joke. And when Giselle explained to you the condition she’d given him, you couldn’t help but think that, even if he was serious, Bradley would decide he was no longer interested. You’re not worth all that trouble, especially not to a guy like Bradley Bradshaw.

“Don’t tell me you changed your mind already, Sunshine,” Bradley throws a hand to his heart.

“No, I—,” You look down to hide your fluster. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

Your dorm building comes into view and Bradley fiddles lazily with the hat sitting backwards on his head. “Good, ‘cause neither have I.”

A comfortable silence falls over you and your exhaustion begins creeping back in. You’re sure you probably seem tired, but Bradley doesn’t mention it, simply slowing his pace to match yours wordlessly.

“You have polisci on Mondays and Wednesdays, right?” He asks suddenly when you reach the door of your dorm building. You give him a small nod. “I can walk with you after if you want?”

While every part of you is screaming to just run away from Bradley and never look at him again, you can’t help but glow under his attention. Because, sure, you make a complete fool out of yourself every time you have a conversation with him, but he’s still trying to talk to you. You’re sure Bradley could have easily grown bored of you by now, but he hasn’t. And you do like being around him.

Your cheeks heat and you glance down at your shoes to compose yourself. “I, um, I’d like that.”

“Good,” Bradley smiles, reaching forward suddenly to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear. “I’ll bring you a Red Bull next time, sleepyhead.”

You feel a tad silly in the jean shorts Giselle picked out for you when you’re sitting on the cold metal of the bleachers. But with the amount of students filling the stands, you think you might have actually been hot in anything else. Unsurprisingly, Giselle had convinced you to come to the football game with her and Bob—Natasha and Mickey have plans which, of course, you teased them about relentlessly.

You were actually having a good time though. Bob was there to explain anything you didn’t understand about football. With Reuben playing, Giselle was very invested, which was honestly more entertaining than the game itself. Though you did your best to understand what Bob was explaining to you, you ended up just staring at Bradley most of the time.

“Come on,” Giselle stands up as soon as the whistle is blown. She picks up a bouquet of flowers she had sitting on the bleachers next to her. “I wanna get on the field before they go back to the locker room.”

You balk when your eyes land on the bouquet in Giselle’s hands, speed-walking after her as she exits the stands. “Wait, should I have gotten Bradley something?”

Giselle pauses, turning around to look between you and the flowers. You’re sure you look like a nervous wreck and that must be the reason she’s taking pity on you because she holds the bouquet out to you.

“Here. Take one, that’s all he deserves,” Giselle jokes.

You smile gratefully, looking over the flowers quickly. You’re not sure if Bradley even likes flowers, maybe he’d think the whole thing was stupid, but you didn’t want to see him completely empty-handed.

You panic slightly over which flower to pick. A rose feels like too much, but the clusters of small larkspur feels like not enough. Aware you’re holding up Giselle and the line of people looking to exit the stands behind you, you gently pull a peony from the bouquet, snapping the stem to make it shorter. You slide it into your back pocket as you, Giselle, and Bob continue to the field.

Reuben’s already waiting for you when you get down there and you congratulate him on the win, before giving him and Giselle their privacy. Bob knows a few of the other football players and offered to introduce you while he went and said hi, but you already have one football player making you forget how to breathe, you don’t need to meet more. So you find yourself alone, waiting for your friends, and normally you’d move somewhere more private, but this time you purposefully stay visible on the field.

“Hey.”

You’re not as surprised when you turn around to see Bradley jogging over to you. He’s still panting from the game, curls of hair plastered by sweat to his forehead and grass stains smudged across his uniform. Again, it hits you how effortlessly handsome he is. He reminds you of the boys in those teen magazines you and Giselle used to gush over when you were younger. But Bradley’s much more handsome than those boyish celebrities they marketed to girls, you think—like an Abercrombie & Fitch model or something.

“You came.” Bradley slows to a stop in front of you and you try to shake off the thoughts of pubescent One Direction and shirtless guys in skinny jeans.

You look down bashfully. “You, um, played really well.”

“Yeah?” Bradley lights up, taking a step closer to you. His large frame blocks out the jealous cheerleaders that are watching the two of you. You can’t exactly blame them, you also don’t know why Bradley’s flirting with a freshman when they’re right behind him. “Well, I had a girl to impress in the stands.”

“You didn’t know I was coming,” you point out.

Bradley grins with a light shrug. “I was hoping.”

You give him a single nod, moving your hands to your back pockets in attempts to hide your nerves. Before you can shove your fingers into the denim of your shorts, something soft hits the palm of your hand.

“I, um, I didn’t know if I should bring flowers or something, so,” you hold up the pitiful peony you’d snagged from Giselle’s bouquet for Rueben and almost instantly regret it when you take in Bradley’s face.

Bradley takes the peony from you with two fingers, looking at the dusty pink petals as he spins the stem slowly between his thumb and index finger. You don’t know what he’s thinking—he’s probably asking himself what the fuck he’s supposed to do with a flower at the end of a football game—his expression unreadable as he holds the peony up to his eye line.

“You know, it’s stupid actually.” One of your hands shoots out to take the flower from him. He’s probably going to toss it away once your back is turned. You don’t know what you were thinking in the first place. “I can just—,”

Bradley pulls the peony back, holding it far above where you can reach to stop you from taking it from his grasp. “You sure you know how gifts work, Sunshine?” His entire face is teasing, a smirk playing on his lips, and your cheeks heat with embarrassment.

“You don’t have to pretend—,”

“Is this—What the fuck is it called? Is it your favorite flower?” Bradley doesn’t seem at all concerned with your fluster nor your mortification over the peony, tucking its stem into the waistband of his football pants so that the bloom peeks out right in front of his left hip. It stands out noticeably against the navy blue and slate gray of your school colors.

You bite down harshly on your bottom lip, swallowing down your embarrassment. It’s not as hard as you thought it would be, not with all the confusion taking its place. “It’s a peony… And it’s not my favorite, no.”

“What’s your favorite flower then?”

“Um,” you shrug slowly. “I don’t have one.”

Bradley lets out a snort of disbelief. The peony ruffles lightly at his side. “You don’t have one? Doesn't every chick have a favorite flower?”

“I—I just like flowers, like, in general, I guess... Why does it even matter?” You furrow your brows.

Bradley dips his neck down to look at you, his tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip before he grins. “What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t know your favorite flower?”

The earth stills on its axis. Traffic comes to a screeching halt. Dogs stop barking. Lions pause mid-wildebeest attack. Every person in every house in every neighborhood stops speaking, lips only parted in shock. The whole world freezes because how else could it react to such shell shocking news?

“Boy—Boyfriend?!” Your eyes widen to saucers as you look at Bradley incredulously. All other thoughts have flown out of your head, including who exactly you’re currently talking to. “I’m sorry, when was that established?”

“You didn’t know? I mean, come on, you brought me flowers, Sunshine. Sounds pretty ‘girlfriend’ to me,” Bradley has the audacity to shrug, a nonchalant expression on his face as he looks down at you.

“I brought you a flower! As in one, singular, flower. What is this? The 1600s? Have some standards, Bradley!” You look at him incredulously, chest heaving from the amount of air you’d pushed from your lungs in your dismay.

Bradley bites the inside of his cheek to hide his smile, though his amusement is entirely visible in the hickory brown of his irises. You may have loved Bradley since you were 10, but even love has its limits. And, right now, you’ve had enough of this entire, unexplained, complete 180 he’s doing with outrageous things like asking you on dates and declaring he’s your boyfriend.

You cross your arms with a glare. “What?”

“Nothin’,” Bradley holds his hands up in mock surrender. “It’s just—This is the first time you’ve made a joke around me.”

You hate this.

You’ll never recover from it, actually. You need to schedule a meeting with your advisor and transfer schools immediately. No, you should just drop out all together. And then you’ll flee the country and change your name, dye your hair or something until you’re unrecognizable. You hate this. You hate this. You hate this.

“I didn’t—I’m sorry, I—!” Every sentence dies on your tongue. Because what is there to say? You just told Bradley Bradshaw that he should have some standards.

This time, Bradley can’t hide his grin, his lips stretching across his cheeks as he watches you fumble entirely with your words. “You’re cute when you’re flustered, Sunshine.”

“I’m not—,” You give up on trying to argue, letting out a defeated sigh. “Just—Why are you suddenly so interested in me, Bradley?” You finally spit out the question that’s been plaguing you since Bradley stopped you on your way to the library.

For a moment, Bradley doesn’t respond. He almost looks nervous, which is a strange change of pace given how nervous he makes you on a regular basis. His thoughts are entirely apparent on his face—which would be helpful if you could actually read any of them. Instead, he runs through about five emotions you can’t pinpoint before he finally lands on some form of defeat.

“Your smile,” Bradley says finally.

“What?”

“Your smile,” he repeats, jaw clenching like spitting the words out is physically painful. “You’re always smiling and laughing when you’re with Giselle. I’ve never made you smile.”

“You… you want to make me smile?” You don’t even know what to say, simply staring at Bradley in utter disbelief. If he hadn’t rocked your world for what feels like the millionth time, maybe you would have paid more attention to the fact that this is the longest you’ve been able to look Bradley in the eye.

Bradley almost sounds like he’s huffing and he looks to the left, prodding his tongue to his cheek. “Yeah, so…”

“I’m not your girlfriend, Bradley.” You tell him and even the words feel unbelievable on your tongue.

“What?” Bradley’s brows furrow and he snaps his head back to you. “Why not?”

Your eyes travel down the peony in his waistband and you suddenly realize that Bradley must have been very purposeful with his arm movements during your conversation because it doesn’t look the least bit crushed.

“You haven’t asked me to be.”

Though Bradley would take it to his grave, he actually prefers the more chill kickbacks the Football House throws over their ragers. Maybe it’s because he’s now the starting quarterback, and watching his teammates doing stupid shit for the sake of it is only fun when you’re not in charge of them. It also helps that kickbacks don’t leave the house totally trashed—only mildly trashed. But the biggest reason is that Makayla is far more likely to come to a Football House kickback than a Football House rager.

With everyone still in good spirits from the football team’s win and Javy’s jungle juice making its rounds, Bradley is in an oddly good mood. Not even the fact that his sister crashed with all her friends is pissing him off and, with another sip of Javy’s jungle juice, he makes his way to Makayla.

She turns around like she’s expecting him, which, Bradley notes, is something you don’t do. You always seem somewhat surprised to see him. That’s something that had the potential to put a damper on his mood.

You.

You rejecting him isn’t something he had been anticipating nor is how much it’s currently vexing him.

You’re here too, with his sister. He caught sight of you closer to the beginning of the party, sipping from a red solo cup of Sprite as you sat with your friends. And, as of now, you have yet to even look at him.

“What are you doing?” Makayla questions him, pulling Bradley from his thoughts.

He turns to her with a furrowed brow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Makalya gestures towards you with her cup. “Is this how you’d treat me at one of these parties? Talking to another girl?”

“I’m literally talking to you right now,” Bradley responds flatly.

Makayla tilts her head at him condescendingly. “I’m not your girlfriend though, Bradley.”

“Yeah?” He grumbles. “Neither is she.”

That good mood he was in just minutes earlier doesn’t seem to be lasting long when Makayla starts laughing at him. “She’s not? That’s a shame. I was actually kinda looking forward to this.”

“It’s been a week,” Bradley tries to reason. It’s ridiculous how everyone’s acting like he should be in love with you. It’s not his fault you hardly seem able to carry a conversation with him.

“Yeah,” Makayla agrees. “And instead of working for it, you’re over here talking to me. I’m not easy, Bradshaw.” She sings.

Bradley bites back the fact that he’s well aware of that, pursing his lips as he glances back towards you and your friends. His brows furrow when he notices how uncoordinated you seem, stumbling and teetering on wobbly legs. You weren’t like that when you first got here.

He shakes it off, getting up. “Fine.”

Instead of heading towards you, Bradley turns to the kitchen. If he was spending the rest of the night with you and his sister, he’s going to need another drink.

Bradley shoulders past the people lingering in the kitchen, moving to grab a beer from the fridge. Opening it against the edge of the countertop, he takes a long sip. Honestly, he doesn’t understand Makayla. How is spending the night flirting with you going to prove anything to her? It can’t be more productive than just spending the night with her instead.

He takes another sip of his beer, slowing when a worried looking Giselle steps into the kitchen and rushes over to him.

“I need your help,” she skips the pleasantries, gnawing on her bottom lip. “It’s—,”

“We should go swimming—Mickey, let go!”

Bradley looks over his sister at the sudden exclamation to see Mickey Garcia trying to wrangle you back down to the couch while you protest with flailing, sloppy limbs.

“She got confused and accidentally drank all of Mickey’s cup instead of hers. She’s never drunk that much before,” Giselle explains.

Bradley sets his half finished beer on the countertop, sparing you another glance while his sister continues.

“She’s refusing to let any of us take her back to her dorm, Bradley.” Giselle follows her brother’s gaze back to you. Her brows furrow in the kind of vexed confusion she used to do whenever Bradley hogged the TV too long when they were younger. “And I have no idea why.”

Bradley lets his eyes dart to Makayla. This is what she wants from him, right? Good boyfriends take their girlfriend home when she’s had too much to drink. And the fact that he’s ditching his own party to take care of you would definitely get him brownie points.

“I’ll take her home.”

Giselle looks back at him in an odd mixture of relief and disbelief. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Bradley prompts them both to start exiting the kitchen. “I know where her dorm is. It’s not a big deal.”

Giselle looks like she wants to say something, but she stops herself, letting out a breath. “Thank you.”

The two make their way over to your concerned friends who seem to still be trying to convince you that right now is not the time to be swimming. Bradley nods his head towards Giselle, signaling for her to go up to them without him while he grabs something. He moves to grab the hoodie he’d left by the front door earlier today. He has a fleeting thought that maybe he should bring you a hoodie too, but you’re already wearing a long sleeve and he knows that, if he gives one to you, he’ll probably never see it again. Throwing the hoodie over his head, Bradley makes his way back to you.

Giselle is calmly explaining to you and your friends that Bradley’s going to take you home and, to the surprise of everyone—including Bradley—you seem to find absolutely no issue with it. Bradley can tell that the rest of your friends are far less trusting of his intentions than Giselle is. Bob is quite literally glaring daggers at him. But they all know that Giselle never would have asked him if she didn’t know for a fact that you’d be fine.

Bradley wants to be offended that they think so little of him, but the fact that it appears you don’t somehow overshadows it. He watches as you talk animatedly with Mickey, a wide smile on your face, as the brunet helps you off the couch and Bradley’s jaw clenches at the sight.

Then Natasha is standing in front of him, cutting him off from the view of you, and handing him your phone while she eyes him suspiciously. “Our dorm’s on the second floor,” is all she says. “It’s the one with a whiteboard calendar on it.”

Bradley nods, pocketing your phone in his sweats. He can feel Makayla’s eyes on him as Mickey finally passes you off.

“Stop it,” Bradley hisses, hand wrapping around your middle to stop you from racing up the stairwell.

He’s managed to wrangle you back to your dorm building—and Makayla isn’t even here to see him anymore—so your sudden spurts of drunken recklessness are wearing on his patience. You pout a little against his hoodie, before slowly relaxing all your weight on his chest.

“No,” Bradley starts, trying to hold you up when you begin sinking. “No, no, no. I am not carrying you.” If you hear him, you aren’t acting like it, continuing your descent to the ground. Bradley lets out a heavy sigh, lifting you by your armpits before the hem of your skirt can touch the dirty ground of the stairwell. “And I’m carrying you. Okay.”

Your legs wrap around his waist, ankles crossing, and you hum in content as you rest your temple on his shoulder. Bradley suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. He tries to reason with himself that this is exactly what Makayla is talking about—him needing to practice boyfriend things like this. And he knows for a fact that she gets drunk way more than you do. Securing his hands under the bottoms of your thighs, Bradley starts walking up the stairs.

To his relief, you’ve stopped moving at least. You’re staying still in his arms instead of trying to lean too far over the railing or bolt up the stairs. It’s also the first time you’ve been this close to him. Hints of your tea tree shampoo fill his inhales, the top of your head just under his chin. Bradley takes a deep breath.

“You’re gonna feel like shit tomorrow.” There’s something about the silence he doesn’t like, so Bradley says the first thing that comes to mind as he carries you to your floor.

He feels you shrug against him as he finally leaves the stairwell.

“Oh, it’s hittin’ now, huh, Sunshine?” Bradley’s racking his brain to remember which room Natasha told him your dorm was, but even that can’t stop him from lightly teasing you. “Yeah, not so fun chugging a cup of Javy’s jungle juice, is it?”

His words cause you to squirm against him suddenly, fighting his hold as he walks through the hallway, and Bradley has to tighten his grip on you so you don’t fall from his arms. “Hey, would you—Stop. What is wrong with you?”

“‘S fun,” you slur angrily and, finally, Bradley finds the door with the whiteboard calendar Natasha was talking about.

Bradley transfers you to one arm as he fiddles with the door to your dorm. “Fine. Sure. It’s fun.”

He steps inside your dorm, putting you down on what he assumes is your bed—if the polaroids of you and Giselle stuck to the wall are anything to go by.

The room is smaller than Bradley expected. He’s been living in the Football House since freshman year so he never really got to experience dorm life. As he turns on a lamp and plugs your phone into the charger plugged in the same outlet, Bradley notes how very you your side of the room seems—not that he would know, but it just kind of makes sense.

Your bed is littered with a handful of stuffed animals, all propped up against your lavender pillows and bed set. A stack of your textbooks sits on your desk, surrounded by small trinkets and cutely shaped erasers. Like Giselle, you have a short chain of fairy lights hanging above your bed, their soft, yellow hue shining down on you as you sit on the mattress. Almost every inch of your wall is covered in pictures, polaroids, photobooth strips, and movie tickets. Like the eggshell white is some kind of scrapbook for your favorite memories.

Bradley steps forward to the closet, awkwardly rifling through your clothes and giving a wide berth to any basket that looks remotely like it houses your underwear. All he needed to do was grab you some pajamas—and just your pajamas—take off your makeup, and get you to sleep. Boyfriend shit.

“Alright,” he tosses a large t-shirt and pair of shorts on your bed. “Change.” Bradley looks at you for a second before pursing his lips. “...Please.”

Then he’s turning his back to you, pulling his phone out to google what the fuck makeup remover even looks like as he moved to search through your toiletries. You seem to have brought less to college than Giselle did—Bradley doesn’t even know how she fit all her shit in a bag, or the use she had for half of it—but it still takes him some time to hunt down the pink cap of your makeup remover bottle and a washcloth.

He doesn’t fully process that he first turned around because you were changing until he’s already facing you again. Fortunately, you’ve finished, your skirt and top a pile on the floor. A boyfriend would probably pick those up too, Bradley thinks, so he makes a note to toss them in your laundry hamper.

“Here,” Bradley holds out the wet washcloth when he reaches you. You just blink up at him a couple times, an innocent expression on your face. He sighs deeply. “Fine. But you can’t whine if I do it too hard.”

Bradley grabs your chin as an anchor, lifting your head up as he starts wiping the cloth over your skin. Contrary to his words, Bradley does do his best to be gentle, tracing over your features with a lighter pressure than his large hands are used to. You practically melt into his palm as he does so, sitting patiently for him while he cleans your face. Despite his frustrations with you over the night, Bradley’s mind drifts to wondering if a drunk Makalya would be as cute as you’ve been.

“There,” Bradley’s voice has lost all its bite, his thumb discreetly brushing your jaw. It’s only for a second though and then he’s pulling away, turning around to put the wash cloth back with your other amenities.

“I knew it was Mickey’s cup.”

Your words cut through the silent dorm room and Bradley freezes. “I drank it on purpose.”

He knows that you’re drunk enough that you probably won’t remember anything that happened tonight, he could leave you now and you’d have no idea. But there’s something about you that just looks so small in your twin bed, curled up against the headboard as you pick at your duvet. He reasons to himself that, if he doesn’t get you to sleep, you’ll probably blab to Natasha when she gets back, so that’s why he can’t leave. Bradley swallows.

“Why’d you do that, Sunshine?” He asks quietly.

You look up at him suddenly with wide eyes and hold your pinky out, scrambling to sit straighter. “You have to promise you won’t tell Giselle. Or Natasha. Or Mickey. Or—,”

“How ‘bout,” Bradley cuts you off, wrapping his pinky around your own. He doesn’t entirely know why he’s entertaining this, but he lets himself sit next to you on your mattress anyway. “I just promise to not tell anyone?”

You nod slowly, before you go back to playing with your duvet. It’s quiet for several seconds.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m no fun.”

Bradley keeps his own eyes trained on your plaid and purple blanket. There’s a sudden air of vulnerability and he knows he should stop you because this seems like something you definitely wouldn’t want him to know in the morning. But he just can’t.

“Like—Like there’s something I’m not doing right and all my friends have to put up with it,” you continue, fingers tightening on the woven fabric of your blanket. “And maybe if I didn’t suck at meeting people, or talking to people, or whatever I’m doing wrong when it comes to guys then… then maybe Reuben and Giselle wouldn’t have to include me in everything. And Natasha wouldn’t have to keep ditching Mickey for me. And Bob wouldn’t have to be my pity friend at every party—,”

You pause, reaching up to wipe your face and it’s then that Bradley realizes you’ve started crying. You let out a shaky breath.

“I am just so sick of listening to Jake talk about crypto.”

Bradley can’t stop the laugh that leaves his lips suddenly. Because you sound so distraught and he knows that you mean it, but it was genuinely the last thing he was expecting you to say. He knows that Makayla—or anyone for that matter—would call him a piece of shit for that though and he really wasn’t meaning to laugh at you. You just caught him off guard. Bradley clears his throat quickly to amend.

“You ever think that maybe they just like hanging out with you?” He offers.

You sniffle, your body slumping against Bradley’s side in exhaustion. “But I’m no fun at parties.”

Bradley hums, settling back on your headboard. “Well, that can’t be true,” he starts. “Tonight you were plenty of fun.”

“I’m serious, Bradley! I’m always so nervous and awkward around people—You literally didn’t know I could make a joke,” you look up at him flatly, a grumpy expression on your face.

Bradley grins, but it falters when your own expression falls again.

“I just don’t want all my friends to start resenting me because I suck at being in college. What if I’m never gonna stop being a perpetual third wheel?”

“Well,” Bradley licks his lips, choosing his words carefully. “You could always find me, Sunshine.” He points between the two of you as if to count. “No third wheeling here.”

Your cheek falls to his chest. “Really?” You ask weakly.

“I mean, you’ll have to deal with Jake. But I already tell him to shut the fuck up about crypto, so I think you’ll be good.”

It surprises Bradley when a watery giggle spills from your lips, your body shaking against his. Bradley’s heard you giggle before—many times, he reminds himself, since you’ve been in the background of his life since he was eight—but he had never been on the receiving end of your giggles. He was always merely a bystander.

And he doesn’t know why it bothered him so much that you never laughed or smiled at him—especially over these past few days. Well, he knows why it bothered him, it was because he was being nothing but nice to you and has more than earned at least a small smile. What he doesn’t know is why he cares so much that you didn’t. Bradley doesn’t entirely know what to think now that he’s finally made you laugh.

You’re low enough on the bed to rest your head on his chest and you lazily throw an arm over his stomach as you get comfortable, legs tangling with his. Something stirs in Bradley at the thought, but he doesn’t linger on it. Instead, he tries to convince himself that if he just stays still and lets you lay on him, you’ll fall asleep faster and then he can go. And that’s also the reason he has for letting you play with his fingers when you reach for them.

“Hey, Bradley?” You ask after several minutes. He hums quietly. “Ask me to be your girlfriend.”

“No, baby,” Bradley shakes his head, the endearment slipping out without thought.

You sit up suddenly, eyes wide and glossy as you look at him in betrayal. “Why?”

Bradley doesn’t exactly make a habit out of comforting girls, especially not drunk ones, or ones who are already crying. And currently you are checking all of those boxes. But growing up with a younger sister did teach him something. Bradley is capable of comforting people when he wants to—it’s just, most of the time, he doesn’t.

Acting on straight instinct, Bradley gently coaxes you back to his chest, petting your head soothingly before you wake yourself up further and he has to settle you down all over again.

“When you’re sober,” he promises.

Bradley refuses to acknowledge how long it took him to actually peel himself away from you after you fell asleep.

You wake up with a pounding headache, pulling your pillow over your head with a muffled groan. Your brain feels like it’s being stampeded by elephants as dull throbs of pain take over your entire skull. You scrunch your eyes as if that will somehow push the pain out of you—it doesn’t of course, but you still had to try. Your mouth tastes disgusting and your tongue feels grainy on the roof of your mouth. You need water.

Another groan is pulled from your lips when Natasha opens the blinds. “Rise and shine,” she sings and you flip her off with a grumble, sucking in a breath before you begin the arduous task of sitting up.

“This is why I don’t drink.” Again, your eyes scrunch as your body protests the movement by sending another wave of pain through your head. You open and close your mouth a few times, the aftertaste of a night of alcohol only tastes worse now that you’re more coherent.

Natasha laughs sympathetically, continuing to move around your dorm room as she gets ready. “Yeah, you were somethin’, all right. Do you remember any of last night?”

You sniff. Biting your lip, you run through all the blurry bits of the kickback you can remember easily, piecing them together like some college party shaped puzzle. You freeze suddenly, slapping your hands over your face.

“Oh my god,” you squeak, and not even the intensity of your hangover can cut through the utter mortification that has dumped over your head like ice water. “I made Bradley Bradshaw carry me home.”

Natasha snorts.

“It’s not funny!” You whine. “I—!” Your voice dies in your throat as more of your antics over the night come back to you. Somehow, it keeps getting worse—making Bradley take off your makeup, crying to him about how much of a loser you are, cuddling him while you did so. You have to stop yourself from screaming into your pillow. You asked him to ask you to be his girlfriend.

“You what?” Natasha prompts you, though somewhat offhandedly as she stuffs her laptop into her bag.

You swallow. There’s no way you can tell Natasha what happened—not unless you also want to tell her that you were feeling so insecure about your place in your friend group that you downed an entire cup of mixed, unidentifiable, alcoholic beverages. No, that’s just a secret for you. And now Bradley apparently.

“I… I’m never gonna be able to face him again,” you say instead. Which is also an entirely true statement. For the rest of your life, you have to avoid Bradley Bradshaw now. Giselle would understand that your only logical next step is to move into a cabin in the woods and go completely off the grid and never interact with another human being again. “I fell asleep on him!”

Natasha scoffs, “You’re so dramatic. If anyone should be embarrassed, it’s Bradley. I mean, you should have seen how quickly he agreed to leave his own party to take you home.” She pauses when she opens the door of your dorm, freezing just before the threshold. With a sigh, she steps aside, a hand sweeping out as if to present the hall to you. “I rest my case.”

You scramble out of bed to see what she’s talking about, curiosity overpowering your hangover for the time being. On the carpeted floor of your hallway, right outside your door, is a 20 ounce bottle of water and a single daffodil. Picking up both objects, you read the sticky note stuck to the front of the bottle.

I was going to get you a Red Bull, but I figured this would be better for your head. — Bradley

Partly to quench your intense thirst and partly to avoid Natasha’s teasing look, you screw off the cap of the water and take several large gulps. Some of the water spills from the corners of your lips and you wipe it with the back of your hand. It’s then that you’re reminded of the daffodil stem between your fingers.

“Yeah, I’m gonna say that Bradley’s not too upset about last night,” Natasha snorts.

You take another gulp of water, staring down at the daffodil. “Do you think that if I emailed my professors and told them I can never leave this dorm ever again, they’d let me do everything online?”

Natasha laughs again, throwing the other strap of her bag over her shoulder and pulling her keys from her pocket now that you’d cleared the items that were blocking her path in the first place. She, Mickey, Giselle, and Reuben were all planning on visiting a new cafe that had opened up near campus. They’d invited you too, but Bob wasn’t able to make it and you know a double date when you see one, so you declined. Given everything that happened last night, it stings a little more than it did when they first brought it up, but you try to push the feelings away. Maybe you’d stop by the campus cafe or something.

Your head throbs at just the thought.

“Well, you let me know if we’re becoming mole women, okay?” Natasha jokes, stepping out into the hallway with a smile. She looks back at you for a second, a smirk soon replacing the smile on her lips as she glances at the eye-catching, orange sticky note on your water bottle. “But, for now, enjoy your water.”

The door closes as she laughs at her own sing-song words and you groan at her teasing. Taking another gulp of water, you placed the daffodil on an empty corner of your desk. For a moment all you can do is stare at it, its bright yellow petals not quite mocking you but certainly confusing you. You flop face first onto your bed with a groan.

And then instantly regret it.

“Ow, ow, ow!” You hiss, eyes squinting shut as your hangover over takes you again. It takes an embarrassingly long amount of time for you to be able to uncurl yourself from the fetal position, but finally, once it no longer feels like your cranium is currently losing a fight to an MMA fighter, you’re able to peel yourself from your bed for the second time this morning.

The water Bradley got for you is already half finished and you take another grateful gulp. It does enough to dull the pain of your head and you wet your lips with your tongue as you screw the cap back on, glancing again at the daffodil on your desk.

Bradley.

If your 10 year old self could see you now, she’d probably hit you. Why are you blowing this?! She’d scream as she threw a shoe at you—and then another shoe, and then probably a very large book—and you’d have to gently explain to her that guys like Bradley Bradshaw don’t usually go for girls like you. And then she’d probably point accusingly at the daffodil on your desk—with a resolute stomp of her foot, knowing her—because guys like Bradley Bradshaw don’t really get girls flowers either, so clearly you don’t know guys like Bradley Bradshaw as well as you thought.

With nothing better to do, you decide you need to get out of your dorm—combat your hangover with some fresh air as you try to figure out what all of Bradley’s sudden new behaviors mean. You were positive he’d lose interest in you after last night, you can’t imagine dealing with you at your drunkest made you more attractive to him. And yet, not even a full 12 hours later, he’s thinking of you and leaving gifts to help you feel better because he seemingly noticed last night that the current Brita filter you have in your dorm is in desperate need of changing.

You throw one of Giselle’s old shirts over your head. Where does someone even get a daffodil anyway? Not on campus that’s for sure. Did that mean that Bradley had driven off campus to get you a flower? You have to shake off the thought before you end up squealing into your pillow like a middle schooler. Your head has learned its lesson that that’s not a fun time with a hangover.

Grabbing your phone and keys—and the bottle of water Bradley had gotten for you—you make your way out of your dorm and down the stairs. You don’t know why you’re even surprised to see Bradley outside your building. Only this time, he seems genuinely surprised to see you too.

For a moment, you feel like that one Spider-Man meme where they’re just pointing at each other. Except your Spider-Man is a scared, little, coward baby who’s five seconds from bolting back into her dorm building and Bradley’s Spider-Man has already recovered from the surprise of seeing you and is making his way over to where you’re standing.

Bradley looks pretty relaxed for a Sunday, dressed in a fairly light looking, green hoodie. From the depths of your memory, you can almost place it as the hoodie he wore last night. It looks soft, like it’s been through the wash a fair few times, and you can remember Bradley’s hoodie being soft against your cheek.

The hem of his chino pants stops a few inches above his white converse and you’re reminded again just how tall Bradley is. And big. Bradley is very big. Your eyes drift down to the athletic tape wrapped around his index finger and you can almost feel the ghost of it against the back of your thigh from when he had carried you with one hand.

“Hey,” Bradley pulls you from your thoughts—which mainly consist of you screaming like a feral cat because you probably drooled on this man. Bradley laughs. “You didn’t drool on me, Sunshine.”

You made jokes about moving away and changing your name, but now you mean it. You mean it more than you’ve meant anything in your life. You cannot believe you’re legally considered an adult—you can’t believe people trust you with the responsibility of voting! Because you just accidentally told Bradley Bradshaw—to his face—that you probably drooled on him.

Maybe it’s the hangover, but you can feel your 10 year old self throwing a dictionary at you.

“I don’t know why I said that,” you blurt finally, keeping your eyes trained on the two bands of athletic tape on Bradley’s finger so as to not have to look him in the eye. “But, um, thank you for the water. And flower. And getting me home last night.”

Bradley shrugs like it isn’t a big deal. “Figured you probably didn’t wanna go skinny dipping in front of a bunch of strangers.” You must look absolutely horrified because Bradley laughs again. “I’m kidding… sort of.” He grins cheekily and you decide that you don’t even want to know.

Besides, something far more pressing comes up in your mind and you finally look up at Bradley hesitantly. “You didn’t—You didn’t tell Giselle about… about what I told you, did you?”

Part of you assumes that Bradley didn’t, he and Giselle aren’t exactly the closest siblings. But he also isn’t that close with you and here he is asking you on dates and bringing you flowers, so your current perception of what’s true in the world of Bradley Bradshaw is a little up in the air.

“You might not remember, but you made me pinky promise,” Bradley teases, before he catches sight of how anxious you are. “I didn’t tell her.”

His words fill you with relief.

Giselle’s your best friend and you love her beyond belief, so you know that if she catches even a hint of hesitance from you, she’ll burn the whole world down to make you feel comfortable again. Which is the last thing you want. You don’t want Giselle to ever feel like she has to choose between you and Reuben—because she doesn’t. You like Reuben, and Mickey and Bob too. You just sometimes can’t help but feel like no one seems to like you.

But that’s not Giselle’s fault and you think you’d hate yourself if you ever made Giselle feel bad for being happy.

“Thanks,” you tell Bradley, and you mean it.

Bradley only nods, shoving his hands into his pockets. At this point the two of you have started walking—where, you’re not sure as you hadn’t even realized you left your dorm building. It’s quiet as you both enjoy the nice, late spring weather. The air smells like flowers and you like watching the birds swoop down to the green patches around campus.

“You don’t gotta worry about me telling my sister, Sunshine, but you have to promise me something,” Bradley speaks up suddenly, stopping on the sidewalk to look at you. “Don’t do that shit again.”

You turn to him questioningly.

Bradley sighs. “I mean, don’t go around drinking random drinks, okay? It’s not safe. And Giselle told me that’s the most she’s seen you drink too. You didn’t know your tolerance and you didn’t know what you were even drinking—I don’t need to tell you why that’s stupid.”

You look down like a scolded child. Because Bradley is right, it was stupid and, had you thought about it for a second longer, you probably wouldn’t have done it at all. But you felt so boring and you thought maybe you should loosen up like everyone secretly wishes you would. So you drank Mickey’s cup and you worried your friends because of it.

“You wanna try drinking something, you ask me,” Bradley continues, his index finger coming under your chin to tilt your head up to meet his gaze. “And I’ll take care of it. But I don’t want you taking drinks from anybody else, okay?”

You swallow thickly, nodding against the pad of Bradley’s finger. “Okay.”

Bradley’s eyes dart between your own for a moment before he nods again, dropping his finger from your chin. There’s something unreadable in his expression, and it’s not scary but it is difficult to understand—like this is a side of Bradley you’ve never seen before. But that doesn’t make any sense because, these last few days, he’s been nothing but nice to you.

Whatever the look was washes off Bradley’s features quickly and he’s back to his usual soft smirk as he runs a hand through his hair. “So, where am I taking you, Sunshine?”

You blink, looking around unsurely because you didn’t really have a plan of where you were going when you left your dorm. All you knew was that you needed to get some fresh air and get your mind off all things Bradley…

Only one of those things is currently happening.

“I don’t know,” you admit. “Giselle and Nat are at some cafe, so…” You trail off.

You’re sure Bradley’s probably mildly aware that you don’t have many friends, but you don’t really feel like telling him that you can pretty much count them on one hand.

Instead of saying anything about it, Bradley just grins. “All I’m hearin’ is that means you’re mine for the day.”

Mine.

There’s an eruption of butterflies in your stomach at the word that you discreetly try to trample. Now is not the time to do something stupid—you’re still recovering from the last stupid thing you did. You chew on the inside of your lip to stop the heat rising to your cheeks, but it hardly helps.

“Is… Is that what it means?” All you can manage to do is echo Bradley dumbly.

“I’m telling you, Sunshine, I’m a seasoned pro when it comes to mornings after,” Bradley smirks proudly and the two of you start walking again. “I’m about to make your hangover my bitch.”

You can’t stop the surprised giggle that spills from your lips. “What?”

When it’s been a moment and Bradley still has yet to respond, you turn to look at him. Weirdly, he’s already looking at you—that unreadable expression back on his face. You scrunch your nose a bit, brows furrowing.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Bradley nods finally, wetting his lips. “Yeah. I’m good.”

You nod, not wanting to push the topic when it’s clearly not a big deal. Besides, you don’t want to tell Bradley that you’ve been inadvertently studying his facial expressions for the last decade. That’s a level of embarrassing you’ve not reached yet. Instead, you let Bradley continue leading you wherever you guys are going—looking around, you realize that he’s taking you to your campus’s main hall.

“What have you eaten today, Sunshine?” Bradley questions, holding the door open for you as you enter the ground floor of the large building.

You look up at him sheepishly, biting your lip. “Um… Water?”

Bradley gives you a look—and finally it’s one you can read - he looks entirely unimpressed with you and your lackluster self care habits. Between two of his large calloused fingers, he gives a strand of your hair a gentle tug.

“You wanna try that again? Water’s not on the food pyramid.”

“Yes it is,” you argue, snatching your hair from Bradley’s fingers and he gives you another look. “Yes it is! It’s off to the side. Like, there’s the plate and then a cup of water.”

As you’re saying all this, Bradley is ushering you up the stairs, looking at you in amusement as you try to defend yourself. “Oh, so it’s next to the food pyramid. As in, not on the food pyramid?”

Your mouth snaps shut, your defiance now dwindling, and you look down. “No,” you mutter.

“Right,” Bradley grins as you both take the last step to the second floor. The cafe is just to your left and, without having to speak about it, you and Bradley both stand next to each other in line. “Well, no caffeine for you, but I’ll get you a banana.” He looks down to the almost empty bottle of water in your hand as he pulls his wallet from his back pocket. “And another water.”

You don’t even bother hiding the fuzzy feeling that bubbles up in your stomach. And maybe you should have higher standards, you know what he’s doing isn’t exactly noteworthy. Breaking News: Local College Guy Makes Sure Girl Eats and Drinks. But you never in your wildest dreams thought that Bradley Bradshaw would care about your potassium intake. So you decide that it’s okay to be just a little excited.

You don’t say anything until Bradley is leading you out of Main Hall, your bottle of water and banana in hand as he finds an umbrella-ed table for you both to sit at. He’s gotten himself a blue raspberry Body Armor and all three of the items he bought are completely dwarfed in his left hand.

You swallow. “You didn’t have to pay for all that… Thank you.”

“The pleasure’s all mine, Sunshine,” Bradley winks, opening your banana for you before handing it to you.

You take a bite from the yellow fruit, chewing slowly as Bradley sits down across from you, drinking his Body Armor. Unable to pull your eyes away from his bobbing Adam’s apple, you take another bite.

“How’s your hangover?” Bradley asks suddenly.

“Okay,” you admit once you’ve swallowed your bite of banana. “The water helped.”

Bradley nods and opens his mouth to say more when your phone ringer cuts him off. Looking down, you see Giselle’s contact photo. It’s a picture from your sophomore year of high school. Giselle was trying to recreate the Mamma Mia beach scene and got entirely wiped out by a wave. You managed to snap a somewhat unflattering photo of her drenched in water and pulling a face as she was trying to dry off.

You’re pretty sure that she should still be with Natasha, Mickey, and Reuben, and you can’t help but think the worst when you see that she’s calling. You look up at Bradley guiltily.

“I’m sorry,” you bite your lip. “I should probably take this.”

It only takes one look between you and your ringing phone for Bradley to nod. He gets up, securing the cap onto his drink and his tongue darts out to wet his lips.

“Yeah, I should probably go anyway.” You know it’s ridiculous, but you can’t help but worry that it’s your awkward inability to communicate that’s making Bradley want to leave. Before you can process the thought more, Bradley’s looking at you sternly. “But you better finish that banana, Sunshine.”

You give him a hasty nod and, before you can stop yourself, you’re holding your pinky out. Bradley wraps his around yours before you can pull it back. “Thank you—Thank you for lunch.”

You give Bradley another wave, watching him walk away as you finally answer your phone.

“Reuben asked me to be his girlfriend!”

“Oh my god! Really?”

You feel awful about yourself for thinking it, but you can’t help but wish you ignored your phone and stayed with Bradley instead.

With finals wrapping up, Bradley’s getting antsy. It’s been a few days since his impromptu hangout with you. Honestly he had no ill intentions when he ran into you—he wasn’t even meaning to—but he had nothing better to do and Bradley knows an opportunity when he sees one. He didn’t entirely expect to like talking to you as much as he did, but he reasons that he’s excited because it means you’re getting closer to him. And the closer you get to him the more you’ll want to date him.

But he hasn’t seen you since and, if he can’t even get you to agree to be his girlfriend before the school year’s over, it's hardly a good sign for the length of your relationship. Logically, Bradley thinks this shouldn’t be this hard. It’s your first year of college. You’re still trying to chase that freshman cliche of “the college experience” that hasn’t lost its allure yet. And you don’t exactly have many friends, you should be jumping all over the chance to get with Bradley Bradshaw. And yet here he is buying you flowers, and taking you home, and getting excited about spending a single day with you. Bradley could almost applaud Makayla’s ability to fuck with him, but he knows that it was probably on accident.

Bradley’s already in a sour mood when students start filtering into the Football House and they all already know to give him a wide berth. Jake laughs it off somewhat awkwardly and then everyone is distracted by him, rolling their eyes at his over-fascination in the stock market. Bradley just gets up with a huff, making his way into an emptier room of the house.

He doesn’t even feel in the mood to drink, nor look for Makayla—for the first time in almost three years, he’s not even sure she’s here. Instead, Bradley’s grumbling because he can see the backyard through the window and catches sight of you throwing your head back with laughter by the fire pit. Bradley’s never made you laugh at that, even when he has made you laugh it’s a giggle at most, and he knows for a fact that Bob Floyd can’t be that funny. He just doesn't get it.

“Can I talk to you?”

Bradley turns around to see his sister looking at him curiously, a red solo cup in her hand as she stands in the threshold of the room. He suppresses an eye roll, reminding himself that he needs to stay on his sister’s good side if he wants any of this to work. Instead he nods silently, prompting her to continue.

Giselle takes in a breath. “I’m stepping aside.”

Bradley’s brows furrow as he racks his brain for what his sister is talking about. Giselle looks slightly pained as she stands in front of him, the grimace on her face clearly evident even though she’s trying to hide it. Bradley squints his eyes slightly.

“What?”

“I’m—,” Giselle lets out a huff at the fact she has to elaborate. “If you really want to, I am giving you permission to go out with my best friend.”

Bradley blinks.

“I mean, I thought for sure you’d fuck up, but—You haven’t even tried anything with another girl for the past two and a half weeks. Really, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.” Giselle runs a hand of disbelief through her hair.

Bradley can’t believe this either. It’s like everything in the universe is somehow perfectly aligning in order to make sure he dates Makayla. While he first saw it as a negative, you being Giselle’s best friend means that he’s guaranteed to have you with him for the whole summer. It’s a lot easier to keep a girlfriend when she’s two doors over. And while he thought Giselle herself would be an obstacle, somehow he’s gained her approval without even trying.

Her words hit him for a second time and Bradley pauses. Had he really not talked to any other girls since pursuing you? Even with Makayla, Bradley had no issue playing the field—it’s the main reason he’s doing this in the first place—he hardly went a single party before flirting with someone else. Bradley reasons that he’s been so focused on planning his “perfect boyfriend” routine that he hasn’t even had time to think of other girls. And the impromptu celibacy ended up working in his favor in the end, with Giselle finally giving her blessing because of it.

With his confidence renewed, Bradley readies himself with another interaction with you. He had to do something sweet first. A “be a boyfriend before he is a boyfriend” kind of thing. Something that makes you think he’s thoughtful. Girls like that.

Bradley turns back to look at you and sees you get up from where you’re chatting with Bob at the fire pit. This is his chance. Something halts his feet though as he catches sight of his sister again and he hesitates before asking, “When did you know?”

“What?” Giselle doesn’t seem to follow.

“You said I have this look. When I like a girl,” Bradley explains. For some reason he needs to know the answer to this. “When did I do it?”

Giselle looks up at him for a moment, before turning around with a teasing smile. “Bye, Bradley.”

“The drinks are in the kitchen.”

You look up from where you’re fishing through the ice cooler to see Landon Jahney staring down at you, a beer bottle in his hand that he’s guzzling lazily as he looks at you. You smile somewhat nervously.

“I know, I was just looking for a Sprite,” you clear your throat so your voice comes out stronger.

It’s not often that you’re made to feel bad about the fact that you don’t really drink. Most of the time, people just shrug it off and move on with their lives, not all that invested in how much alcohol you consume. You’re grateful for that too. You know your friends like drinking—Mickey and Reuben especially—but they’ve never made you feel bad for the fact that you prefer a carbonated soda over a Whiteclaw.

Assuming Landon will be the same, you turn back to the cooler. You’d have to let the football team know that their Sprite supply is severely lacking. As you continue pushing through the melting ice, you realize that Landon has yet to leave.

He holds his beer out. “You can have some of mine.”

“Oh, no thank you, I don’t drink—,”

“You don’t drink?” Landon almost scoffs in disbelief. “You’re friends with Mickey Garica and you don’t drink?”

You try not to flinch at his accusing tone, eyes flitting around to find any one of your friends. Landon’s certainly not drunk, but he is a bit buzzed, and maybe that’s why he’s failing to read the clear signals you’re giving off. Because you don’t want to drink a beer, especially not his, you want to drink a Sprite. And you promised Bradley you wouldn’t do something stupid like that again—which is a promise you intend to keep. The remembrance of Bradley helps you calm down a bit. Regardless of how inebriated Landon is, you’re positive he would back off at the threat of angering your university’s star quarterback Bradley Bradshaw.

Landon holds his beer out again and some of it sloshes onto the skirt of your dress. “Just have a sip—,”

You let out a startled yelp when an arm wraps around your middle and lifts you from where you're squatting in front of the cooler. Your back presses into a tautened chest and you look up to see the underside of Bradley’s clenched jaw. He’s glaring at Landon with a hardly subdued fury, holding you firmly to him as a wordless warning.

Without looking away from Landon, Bradley puts a can of Sprite in your hand. “There a problem?”

“Nah, man,” Landon pulls his beer back and you watch as his throat bobs nervously. “I was just trying to help her find something to drink, that’s all.”

Bradley nods stiffly and Landon looks like he’s trying to figure out the fastest way out of the backyard—and perhaps your college campus all together. Your eyes feel like ping pong balls darting between the two.

Bradley nods his head to the Sprite in your hand. “I got it covered.” There’s a finality in his words that has Landon nodding hastily, relieved that the conversation is ending without Bradley’s fist against his face.

“No, yeah, I—Totally,” Landon fumbles over his words as he agrees with the older boy.

It’s quiet for just a second longer, before Landon makes his smartest decision of the night and decides to walk away. His feet pivot in the grass in attempts to slow himself down so he doesn’t just entirely tuck tail and run. He only makes it a few steps before Bradley calls out to him again.

“Hey, Jahney?” It isn’t until Landon faces him completely that Bradley continues, his grip around your middle tightening. “You offer my girl alcohol again, we’re gonna have some problems, got it?”

You think Landon’s head might fall off with how fast he’s nodding. “G-got it.”

It isn’t until Landon’s out of sight that Bradley’s grip on you relaxes and you glance up at him hesitantly. His eyes are still hard, trained on the back of Landon’s head and you’ve never really understood the saying “if looks could kill” until now. You look down at the cold can of Sprite in your hand.

“Thank you.”

Bradley nods wordlessly, gently ushering you to a more private part of the backyard. You don’t know why, but, even though Bradley was the person to tell you not to drink, you feel the need to defend yourself. You’re not an idiot, while you’ve personally never really seen Bradley drunk before, it’d be stupid to assume that he didn’t drink at all. Clearly he does and, given the circles he runs in, so do most of the girls he likes too.

“It’s—It’s not—I can drink, I just don’t really like it,” you try to explain as he leads you to the porch swing in a quiet corner of the backyard. “Also I’m 19. Like, I’m not even supposed to drink, if you think about it—Not that I think I’m better than anyone! I don’t think that I’m better than anybody for not drinking, I promise. I mean, you know what happens when I get drunk. I just—,”

The large, calloused hand that cups your cheek causes the words to die in your throat and you finally look up to see Bradley watching you bemusedly. “Sunshine.” You can hear the smile he’s biting back. “I don’t care.”

You deflate a little, embarrassment heating your cheeks. “Right.”

“No–fuck–I mean—,” Bradley drops his hand from your cheek with a wince. “Why should I care if you drink or not? It doesn’t matter. Like, it doesn’t change anything.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah ‘oh’. Now drink your Sprite,” Bradley juts his chin at the can in your hand.

You open the tab with a satisfying click, taking a small sip of your favorite lemon lime soda. Both you and Bradley are standing in front of the porch swing, out of sight from most of the party guests but still able to get a pretty good view of them. You notice that Landon seems to have moved inside.

Another sip of Sprite slides down your throat and you shoot a glance back at Bradley. He’s fiddling with the backwards hat on his head, arms stretched so his shirt rides up enough to reveal a sliver of tanned skin. You have to force yourself to take another sip of your soda to pull your eyes away.

“How’s—?” You clear your throat. “How’s football?”

Bradley looks mildly amused. “You really wanna know?”

Truthfully, you don’t. You barely know anything about the sport, so you’re sure you wouldn't even understand what he’s saying. But it was the first thing you could think of and it’s not like standing in silence would have been any better.

“Well, I just… I know, like, NFL scouts have been watching you this year. And that’s a big deal, right?”

What ever teasing Bradley had in store for you seems to die on his tongue and he almost looks surprised. He cocks his head slightly, looking at you almost intensely, before shaking it.

“I guess, yeah,” Bradley says finally.

It falls to silence again—the very thing you were hoping to avoid. You nod awkwardly. “Well, congratulations.

“I think most people usually wait until after someone gets drafted to congratulate them.” That finally gets Bradley to laugh. And maybe you’ve made a fool of yourself, once again, but at least you aren’t being suffocated by awkward tension anymore. “But thank you… I appreciate it.”

That lopsided smile you’ve only seen a couple times makes an appearance on Bradley’s face. Of all his expressions, you think that smile is your favorite. It’s not quite as sharp or charming as his smirks—like he’s trying to convince you that he’s those things. But his smile is softer and unintentional. Bradley’s smile doesn’t try to convince you of anything, it just is.

“Are you excited for the end of the year?” Bradley’s question pulls you from your thoughts and you hope you haven’t been staring at his mouth this entire time.

You take another sip of your soda. “I am. I think Giselle’s got the whole summer planned.”

“Damn.” Bradley lets out a light whistle as he sags overdramatically. “How am I supposed to take you on dates and life changing romantic experiences if my sister is hogging you the whole summer?”

You hide your laughter with your hand. “Was that what you were planning on doing this summer? Not, like, golf with Jake and Javy?”

Bradley wrinkles his nose as an answer and you can’t help but giggle again.

“Alright, maybe when Giselle’s busy getting lost in Reuben’s eyes, I’ll sneak off and find you,” you joke, eyes darting over to your best friend to confirm that she’s doing just that. When you turn back, Bradley’s just looking at you, and it hits you suddenly that he’s been staying here with you and your Sprite for a fair amount of time by this point.

“You can—You can go back to the party if you want,” you offer. You doubt Bradley planned on babysitting you—again—and you don’t want him to think that he has to. You didn’t even know there was a porch swing at the Football House, so, really, you’re set.

Bradley glances at you. “I’m right where I wanna be, Sunshine.”

“Oh,” you purse your lips slowly, averting your eyes to scan the various college students littering the backyard. Giselle and Reuben are curled up on a lawn sofa, all too lost in each other, and for once, there isn’t that slight, underlying sting you usually feel when you smile at the sight. Mickey and Natasha are laughing at each other while they play cornhole. Bob is chatting with some girl you vaguely recognize from one of your classes, a genuine smile on his face. And you’re standing next to Bradley Bradshaw, drinking a Sprite that he got for you unprompted. “I think… I think I am too.”

You can’t look at Bradley when you say it, so you’re unsure what his reaction is, but suddenly his arm is brushing against yours as he leans on the patio railing next to you. You turn to watch his profile as he wets his lips slowly. “You know, I promised you something else that night.”

The night in question—the night Bradley took you back to your dorm—comes to the forefront of your mind and you furrow your brows. He promised you something else? For the life of you, you can’t figure out what. You remember him promising not to tell Giselle about your confession. You can remember him trying to comfort you…

It hits you suddenly and you know Bradley can tell because, when you whip your head to face him, he’s already looking at you. There’s something almost restrained in his features, his pupils dilated as he stares down at you, his swallows practically audible.

Slowly, one of his hands comes up to your cheek, his head dropping as his other hand finds purchase on your hip. You’ve only been kissed by two boys in your life—and both had been mediocre experiences. Your first kiss was just embarrassing, you didn’t know what to do and you’d just met the boy at your first high school party. At the time, you just wanted to get it over with. You didn’t want to be the only freshman that hadn’t kissed anyone yet.

And it certainly didn’t help that Bradley had just gotten his driver’s license and suddenly more girls wanted to kiss him than ever before. So you kissed your dreams of Bradley Bradshaw being your first kiss goodbye—quite literally—and settled for Michael Prescot instead. It had been wet, and weird, and embarrassing, and you never saw Michael again.

Your second kiss was somehow worse. You kissed Elliot Carver in his car after a date because you didn’t know what else to do and then he tried to pull you over the center console and onto his lap because apparently that’s what happens after kissing. When you stopped him from doing so, he made up some flimsy excuse that he had to leave and you were stuck waiting in a parking lot listening to Olivia Rodrigo until Giselle picked you up.

But neither Michael nor Elliot cupped your face as gently as Bradley is, only the weight of his hand feels familiar on your hip. Your head tilts up as Bradley gets closer, eyes fluttering closed, and then his lips are on yours. And part of you freaks out—because you really aren’t a great kisser—but Bradley almost seems to swallow the hesitation, moving his lips slowly against yours as he coaxes you out of your nerves.

You hardly even register your Sprite can dropping to the wooden porch and rolling onto the grass, the clear liquid spilling out onto the green blades, as your hands wrap tentatively around Bradley’s neck. Your nose nudges against his cheek, breathing in the sandalwood scent of his cologne, as your fingers find the base of his hairline under his ball cap. A sudden hunger takes over Bradley at the action and he pulls you closer to him by your hip, his tongue darting out to explore your mouth further when you gasp in surprise.

Michael and Elliot had always made you feel like you were a bad kisser. You hardly moved at either time and, during the time you were kissing them, you couldn’t help but wonder if you’d be done soon. But in kissing Bradley, you realize that it’s not that you’re a bad kisser, you just didn’t like Michael or Elliot. Kissing them was awkward and uncomfortable because being with them was awkward and uncomfortable. But you like Bradley. You like kissing Bradley.

Which is why you can’t help but chase his lips slightly when he pulls away, lifting onto your tiptoes though that hardly helps you reach him. Bradley chuckles quietly, wiping some of his saliva from your bottom lip and your eyes flutter open.

“You still gonna make me ask, baby?” His voice comes out raspy and you have to suppress the shivers it elicits from you.

You give Bradley a small nod, unable to do anything but look up at him through your lashes.

He grins, his thumb still tracing your lip as his own lip rolls through his teeth slowly.

“Will you be my girlfriend, Sunshine?”

“Boyfriend?” Natasha almost tests the word out on her tongue, saying it slowly as if somewhere in the syllables she’ll find something to clear up her hesitance. “Bradley Bradshaw’s your boyfriend?”

You’re lying on your bed across from her, fiddling with one of your pillows as you look down bashfully. “I guess so… But, I don’t know, he’s sweet, Nat. And thoughtful. Plus, when we kissed, he—,”

“Alright, ew,” Giselle pipes up from next to you on the mattress. “Please do not go into detail about sucking face with my brother.”

“I knew that’d catch on!” You grin at her verbiage.

Natasha rolls her eyes teasingly, waving her hand to get your attention again. “Back to the subject, you’re just okay with this, Elle?” Natasha looks at the other girl with something that borders on disbelief.

To your left, Giselle shrugs. “Weirdly, yeah. I thought I’d hate it, but… I don’t know. We did always want to be sisters.”

You choke on your spit, eyes widening as your head whips around to look at her incredulously. “What is with you Bradshaws and just declaring relationship statues?!”

When Giselle only laughs, you hit her lightly with your pillow.

“A girl can’t dream?” Giselle defends herself, propping up on one side to look at you better. “If I have to have my best friend dating my brother, I might as well get something out of it.”

You turn to Natasha, who’s biting back a smile at the two of you, and shake your head. “Am I being peer pressured into marriage right now?”

“Unimportant—,” Natasha waves you off again before turning to Giselle. “Giselle, cover your ears.” Your best friend does just that, pressing her palms against the sides of her head as Natasha brings her attention back to you. “Okay,” her voice drops to an excited whisper. “How was it?”

You feel your insides turn to jelly at just the thought of kissing Bradley, a goofy grin threatening to spread across your face. For reasons currently sitting next to you with her hands over her ears, you hadn’t really had the chance to talk much about your kiss with Bradley, but you’ve been thinking about it nonstop.

Somehow, though you’ve fantasized about it for years, kissing Bradley was better than you ever could have imagined. You never expected him to be so gentle, yet domineering, taking control of every movement while still holding you tenderly. Kissing Bradley was soft. There was nothing rushed or dizzying, it didn’t take the air out of your lungs like all the movies say it should. And, while you thought that would be a bad thing, it wasn’t. Kissing Bradley was comforting—if anything, he was putting air into your lungs—his hands on your body felt familiar and safe. You didn’t think you could even feel all that from just one kiss. And then you’re spun into another lovesick spiral when you remember that now you get to kiss Bradley whenever you want to.

But you can’t imagine that’s something Giselle wants to hear. If you’re honest, though you’ve always felt comfortable talking to her about boys, you don’t really want to tell her about Bradley either. You can totally understand how weird it would be for the both of you and it’s made you a little hesitant to say anything about Bradley to any of your friends. And the longer time went on, the longer you realized you didn’t necessarily hate that. It’s kind of nice to know that only you know what it feels like to kiss Bradley Bradshaw.

You bite your lip to hide your smile. “He’s a really good kisser.”

It’s also nice to talk about though.

“Yes, bitch!” Natasha high-fives you and you can’t help but giggle, hiding your face in your pillow as your cheeks heat.

“Hey, wait a sec,” Giselle drops her hands when she sees you and Natasha laughing. “That’s not fair! What did you say?”

“That your brother’s a good kisser.”

“Nat!” Giselle throws a pillow at the brunette, making a face of complete disgust.

Natasha catches the pillow easily, a shit-eating grin on her face. “You asked!”

“That is—,” Giselle mimes retching before turning to you. “Look, I’m really happy that you’re happy with that shithead, but if I didn’t know you as well as I do, I would think that you agreed to date him as a form of self-punishment.”

“He’s nice, Elle,” you defend your boyfriend.

Boyfriend. Bradley Bradshaw’s your boyfriend. And he kissed you. And he’s going to keep kissing you. Because he’s your boyfriend. And…

“Ow!” Your hand flies up to your nose in shock, the pillow that was just chucked at your face bouncing onto the floor. “What was that for?!”

Giselle narrows her eyes and points at you accusingly. “You were thinking about my brother, you sick freak. You had that gross look on your face.”

Natasha burst out laughing, falling back onto her bed as you gape at Giselle dramatically.

“You mean the look you have whenever Reuben so much as breathes? That look?” You counter, sticking your tongue out at your best friend.

It only takes a second for Giselle to pounce on you, pillow in hand as you both bounce on your mattress in a fit of giggles. After a couple pillows to the face—some of which from Natasha who had also joined in your pillow fight—your fingers curl around one of your own and you retaliate. You’re sure your dorm will look a mess by the time you all finish, Bradley, Reuben, and boyfriends all but forgotten as you laugh with your best friends.

Finally Giselle puts her pillow down, panting with a wide grin as she collapses on your bed. “Okay, okay. Let's call it a tie and watch Clueless now.”

“Deal.” You and Natasha put your pillows down with a nod.

The three of you do your best to cram onto your bed as you open your laptop. Giselle rests her head on your shoulder while you prop the computer onto your thighs, queuing up Clueless while Natasha settles on your right. And everything is just like every movie night the three of you have had before. You can’t help but smile softly as a young Alicia Silverstone appears on your screen.

Part of you worried that things would change once you started dating Bradley, that dynamics would shift and things wouldn’t be the same with Giselle or Natasha. But with Natasha laughing quietly to your right and Giselle about to fall asleep on you on your left, you realize they haven’t changed. You have your best friends and a boyfriend.

On your chest, your phone buzzes and you tilt it up to glance at it curiously.

Bradley: Goodnight sunshine 😘

Bradley’s beginning to think that this boyfriend thing is way easier than most guys make it out to be. All he has to do is let you know that he’s thinking about you, text you good morning and good night with some cringey emojis, and flirt with you whenever he can. In fact, he can’t help but feel like he’s the clingy boyfriend because you don’t entirely reciprocate any of it. You respond simply to his text messages and he only ever gets a small smile from his flirting. You seem happiest when he tells you that he’s thinking about you, but then he sees you with Bob or Mickey and suddenly they’re blowing him entirely out of the water.

Bradley does not consider himself to be a jealous person, but when two literal freshmen are getting you to laugh until your stomach hurts and he can barely get you to smile, it’s a blow his ego can’t stand. So, even though it's something he never does, Bradley invites you over to the Football House for a chill date night. Maybe you’re just not a text message girl.

And that might honestly be a good thing. Bradley’s learned through Makayla’s constant pestering that he’s not much of a text message guy either and, though the insincere emojis are easy, they’re starting to become a bit of a chore. As of now, Makayla’s actively belittling his attempts—with far too many emojis—by stating that he should have taken you to dinner or something more impressive, but you always seem a little overwhelmed if you’re in a public place without Giselle so, much like constant texting, Bradley doesn’t think you’ll even want that.

Instead, he raids the house kitchen for snacks, finds a movie he thinks you’ll like on Netflix, and calls it a day. And he’s so sure that this will work, that this will finally be enough to get you to treat him like you treat Bob and Mickey because Bradley is capable of being a good boyfriend. But then it’s 7:00 pm and you have yet to show up. And then 7:30. And then 8:00. And Bradley’s checking his phone again, grumbling over the fact that he just got stood up in his own bedroom. Just when he’s about to call it for the night, the door to his room flies open and you stumble in out of breath.

“I’m so sorry,” your eyes are lit up in panic, backpack slung haphazardly over your shoulder. “I completely lost track of time, I swear I didn’t mean to be late.”

“Well, you—Were you crying?” Bradley squints when the dim lights of his room reflect against your wet cheeks and waterlogged lashes.

You swallow, wiping at your eyes hastily as you shake your head. “No, I think it’s allergies. I—,”

“C’mere.”

You listen to Bradley’s words instantly, padding into his room softly until you're right in front of him. From this distance it’s obvious to Bradley that you have been crying, your cheeks and nose puffy and your eyes red, and it appears his mention of it has brought the tears back, as your eyes have become glassier with every step. Bradley gives your hair a gentle tug.

“You wanna try that again?” He asks softly.

Your shoulders rise and fall in a pitiful shrug. “I take my political science final in two days and I’m pretty sure I’m gonna fail it.” You go to wipe at your cheek again, but Bradley does it for you, wiping the tear away with the pad of his thumb. “I’m really trying too, I just… I looked at the study guide and I didn’t understand anything.”

Bradley nods slowly. He wants to be mad, you embarrassed him—granted not publicly, but still. He set up this whole thing for you and you were an hour late. But he can’t be mad, not when he knows that you’ve been crying over a textbook that whole time.

Carefully, Bradley takes your backpack off your shoulder and holds it in one of his hands. You’re looking up at him with doe eyes, head cocked in confusion, and he wipes another tear from your cheek. “You wanna change, Sunshine?”

You’re in jeans and t-shirt that don’t look entirely comfortable and his closet full of clothes is right there. He can’t imagine you’ll be very comfortable sitting on his bed in denim. You glance at his closet.

“What do you mean?” You’re only more confused when Bradley lifts your bag up to open it.

“Well, problem number one is that you’re studying in jeans.” Bradley sets your bag on his bed, murmuring offhandedly as he flips through your textbook. “Where’s your study guide?”

You sniffle, pointing at the folder peeking out of your bag.

With the hand not holding your open textbook, Bradley reaches for it, scanning the stapled pieces of paper. “The bathroom's the next door over.”

“What…” Your eyes dart from his closest to him to the textbook and study guide in his hands.

“You can stay in your clothes if you want.” After looking through them briefly, Bradley sets your textbook and study guide on his bed and brings his attention back to you. “I just figured you’d be more comfortable studying in something else.”

You swallow, looking up at him as you roll your bottom lip through your teeth. “You’re helping me study?”

“Perks of having a boyfriend who’s already taken this class,” Bradley grins.

It takes a moment for you to look anything but confused and internally Bradley feels a tinge of panic because maybe this isn’t what boyfriends do. And if it’s not then he has no idea what he should be doing instead. Right when he’s about to say something that he’d figure out when he opened his mouth, you lunge forward suddenly and hug him tightly.

“Thank you,” you say against his cotton t-shirt.

Your voice is shaky and Bradley can tell that you’re starting to get overwhelmed like you do, so he wraps his arms around you slowly. “You don’t gotta thank me, Sunshine.”

“Can I… Can I change?” You look up at him and something stirs in Bradley’s stomach. “I think you’re right that my jeans aren’t that comfortable.”

Bradley shakes off whatever he’s feeling, releasing you gently to grab an old shirt from his closet. He holds it up for you as if to ask if it’s okay and you nod with a small smile, taking it from him before slowly leaving the room. Bradley waits for the door to close behind you before moving to sit on his bed, lost in thought.

He feels weird, like something fuzzy in the pit of his stomach. It’s a feeling he’s only mildly familiar with, it happens when he makes you laugh too. It could be accomplishment. This feeling means he’s getting somewhere with you. And getting somewhere with you means he’s getting somewhere with Makayla. And that’s why he feels this way.

Bradley flips the page of your study guide.

But what he’s feeling about you isn’t important, not when he’s finally been given boyfriend status. Because you came to him, not Bob or Mickey or Giselle. You got overwhelmed with school and you chose to come to Bradley. In fairness, the two of you already had plans, but Bradley Bradshaw counts his wins.

The door of his room opens again and you shuffle in, your clothes balled up in your hand as your bare feet step onto his floors unsurely.

“You can—Uh,” Bradley stutters a bit when he looks up, that weird feeling coming back and he has to blink a few times to clear his head. “You can put those anywhere.”

The t-shirt of his you have on reaches your mid-thigh and something sparks in Bradley’s mind at the sight. The whole thing looks like a dress on you and Bradley knows there’s a good chance he’ll never get this shirt back, but just the thought that you’d be the one wearing it fills Bradley with thoughts he knows he should not be having about you.

You make your way over to the bed after setting your clothes down on an empty chair, gnawing at your lip as Bradley fights with his endocrine system to try and stay composed. “Thank you for studying with me. You really don’t have to.”

“If anything I should be thanking you.” When you look confused, Bradley leans back with a smirk. “For the view.”

“Oh… thanks…” You look down, fiddling with the hem of Bradley’s t-shirt you’re wearing.

When you don’t say anything more, Bradley internally sighs. Why doesn’t that work with you? Bradley doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to do. He flirts with you and it only seems to make you uncomfortable. Maybe he’s too corny. Hell, he feels corny when he says shit like that.

Bradley just nods it off, clearing his throat as he looks down at your papers.

It’s quiet for a beat, out of his peripheral Bradley can see you glancing at him every few seconds. You scoot closer to him. His shirt rolls up a bit at the movement and reveals more of your bare thighs.

“I, um, like the view too.”

Bradley’s head snaps up but you’re looking down sheepishly, unable to meet his eye as he grins suddenly. Moving the papers and book between the two of you, Bradley shifts to shorten even more of the distance between you.

“Yeah?” He teases. “I don’t know if I believe you when you’re not even looking at me.”

You groan, covering your face with your hands as you shake your head slightly. “Stop.”

“What?” Bradley laughs, gently wrestling your hands from your face despite your light protests.

When he finally gets your hands captured in his own, you’re much closer to him, a small pout on your face as you try to hide your embarrassment.

“You’re mean,” you say simply, pout deepening.

“Oh, I’m mean?” Bradley pulls you by your wrists until you're straddling his lap. Your eyes widen in surprise and Bradley’s grin only grows as he presses a kiss to one of your knuckles. “Lemme say sorry, baby.”

Your faces are close enough that he only needs to drop his head just a little more before his nose is nudging yours and his lips are moving against your own. Bradley releases your wrists in favor of letting his hands trail up and down your sides and your fingers quickly get lost in his curls. Bradley doesn’t know if you’re aware of just how crazy you drive him when you tug on his hair, but his hands squeeze your hips in response as he pulls you even closer to him.

His shirt on you has ridden up to your hips, fully exposing your bare thighs to him and Bradley lets his hands travel down to explore the new territory. You sigh against his lips, fingernails scratching at his scalp, and a groan reverberates from his throat. Bradley was pleasantly surprised to learn that he enjoyed kissing you the first time he did in the backyard of the Football House. Enough so that he wanted to do it again.

In a way, it makes him feel like he knows things about you that someone like Bob or Mickey doesn’t. He knows that you wear the sweetest smelling vanilla chapstick. He knows that if he holds you just right, that you’ll completely melt into him. He knows that sometimes when he pulls away too quickly, you’ll subconsciously chase his lips for more.

Bradley’s mouth travels down to your exposed neck, breathing in your lavender chamomile body wash as he testingly takes a spot of soft skin between his teeth. When you sigh again, tilting your head to expose more of your neck to him, Bradley sucks the spot gently, soothing the area with his tongue once he feels your fingers tighten between his curls.

Trailing kisses up to the underside of your jaw, Bradley lets his eyes flutter open to see your own closed blissfully. Your lips are swollen, shining against the dim lights of his room, and Bradley decides he likes it better when this is the reason you look disheveled and not because you’ve been crying. He trails his lips down to your pulse point, kissing it softly a few times before sinking his teeth into the skin.

Bradley likes to think that he’s a pretty composed guy. He’s well versed in making out with girls, knows when to go slow and when to heat things up. He knows how to make it enjoyable. And Bradley is certainly capable of staying in control of himself. But then he sucks against your pulse point and he hears you whimper softly.

There is nothing Bradley wouldn’t do to hear you make that sound again.

Without warning, Bradley flips you onto his bed, swallowing your noise of surprise as he hovers over you. He kisses you deeper, one of his hands trailing down to trace circles on your hip. Just when his fingers begin to brush the hem of your shirt, you pull away, gently putting your hand against his chest to stop him.

You swallow thickly. “Wait…”

“Right, studying. Sorry—,” Bradley pants. Letting his hand fall away from your hip as he sits back to give you more room.

“No, it’s not—I just—,” You sit up yourself, fiddling with your fingers, and Bradley can’t take his eyes off the lip you have trapped between your teeth. “I’ve never… done this before.”

Bradley’s eyes widen just slightly. “Oh.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to or anything. I just—I want it to be special, I guess…” You trail off, looking up at Bradley through your lashes.

“Sunshine, it’s okay,” Bradley does his best to smile reassuringly. “We don’t have to do that shit if you don’t want to.”

You nod offhandedly, like you only partly believe him, glancing down at your fingers again. “We could—We could keep kissing though,” you suggest shyly.

Bradley chuckles, leaning forward as you scoot back down on his mattress. There’s a lopsided smile on his face as he hovers over you again.

“Mmm, I’m pretty sure someone needs to study.” Bradley presses a kiss to your nose and you scrunch it in response.

Your nose stays scrunched, an unhappy expression taking over your face as you look up at him. Bradley’s unfazed, only pinching your nose lightly before sitting back up to find where your textbook and study guide have ended up after your earlier evening activities. When he finds them, you’re still laying on your back and Bradley looks at you knowingly.

With an exaggerated huff, you sit up, shuffling over to the end of the bed where Bradley’s already opening your textbook. Bradley pulls you in for a praising kiss when you're close enough, only pulling away when you start giggling against his lips.

“What?”

You smile. “Your mustache tickles.”

Bradley scoffs lightheartedly. “Yeah, alright.” He grabs your study guide from the bed, flipping through a few of the stapled pages. “Now what questions are you not understanding?”

You leave hours later with a completed study guide and a bright smile on your face. And Bradley finally feels like he’s done something right all on his own, because he knows you enjoyed this way more than you would have enjoyed any restaurant. And when you leave still wearing Bradley’s t-shirt, there’s a chance he secretly hopes he never gets it back.

please don't copy, repost, or feed my work into ai, thanks!

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