Beautiful.
“And damn - you’re fully whipped over her.”
Whipped?
That sent his cheeks aflame.
Him? Whipped?
It’s impossible. Ridiculous. Stupid, really. He’d only reconnected with her two weeks ago. How could he be whipped? Isn’t that something that happened after you start dating someone?
Seth didn’t do whipped. Or romance, or anything that deep of the sort. He wouldn’t go anywhere near what his parents went through.
Seth’s brows furrowed down, and he glanced back toward Nina. Anywhere but Jae’s eyes.
At that moment, Nina glanced up, as if sensing Seth’s stare. She caught his eyes, and his breath caught. He couldn’t look away now, or he’d look stupid. Instead, he held her gaze.
Not quite smiling, just…admiring. And she smiled at him.
The first thing he thought was, well, he couldn’t think. That was the problem. Nina jumbled up his brain, and nothing ever made sense with her.
He wasn’t one for feelings. For touching anything that would resemble what his parents went through.
But when he saw Nina’s smile, when she looked at him with those brown eyes, pulling out all these emotions he’d never felt before…
Well, shit.
He was whipped.
14
Now
Regardless of Seth’s worries, lunch went by smoothly.
More than smoothly, it wasfun.
Seth laughed more times than he could count, and Nina appeared to be having a great time. Her and Jae bounced off of each other with jokes throughout, verbally jarring as if they were long lost siblings.
Anya looked on with amusement, her eyes shimmering whenever they fell on Jae.
It all seemed to be falling into place, just as it should be.
When they finished lunch, the four of them decided to go for a walk along the nearby Darling Harbour, a part of Sydney he hadn’t visited in a while.
Oftentimes, he only ever went straight to uni, and straight home.
During the first year of uni, when he accepted invites out more often, they usually went drinking at the heart of Haymarket and occasionally Circular Quay, which was nearer to the Harbour Bridge.
Butthispart of the city, he hadn’t been to since…
“Do you remember when we went here for our history excursion in Year 9?” Nina asked, nodding toward the Chinese Friendship Garden that they’d sauntered nearby.
At once, memories of the history excursion flooded through him. Usually, their class excursions were a bit dull, travelling to places closer to their high school in Western Sydney and far from the city that were hardly exciting.
But in Year 9, his history class had the best teacher. She took them to the Chinese Friendship Garden and Art Gallery of NSW for the excursion.
“I do remember that, actually,” Seth responded, his eyes taking in the exterior of the building.
