The rain lashed against the tall windows of the McDonald’s at Oasen Mall, casting a gray, distorted filter over a world that already felt colorless. Inside, the air was thick with the cloying, nauseating smell of frying oil and cleaning solution. A child was screaming somewhere behind us, and the steady beeping from the kitchen was the soundtrack to our shared apathy.
I sat watching Thea.
It was what I always ended up doing. In the cafeteria, on the bus, in lecture halls, at parties where the music was too loud to talk—my gaze always found its way back to her. It had become a habit I no longer tried to explain to myself. She was absently stirring a half-melted McFlurry with a limp plastic spoon, her thumb moving in a monotonous, endless dance across her phone screen. We’d been sitting like this for close to an hour, trapped in a bubble of total, echoing boredom.
Even here, in the harsh, sterile glow of the fluorescent tubes overhead, she was striking. Her black, tight-fitting sweater accentuated a body that was a perfect balance of lean strength and soft curves. The skin of her throat had a golden tone that made the clinical light seem warmer than it was.
Especially her breasts. They weren’t vulgar, but they were undeniably present—firm, round, with a confidence I could only dream of. I’d studied them hundreds of times. The precise shape under different fabrics. How they moved when she laughed, the small, heavy sway that was barely visible under a thick sweater but impossible to miss under a thin t-shirt. The outline of her nipples through thin cotton on cold days, two small, defiant points that pulled my gaze like magnets.
I felt it again. The slow-burning hunger that had nothing to do with food.
“Seriously,” Thea said, dropping her phone on the table with a slap. “If I see one more picture of someone who’s found themselves on a mountaintop in Peru, I’m going to throw up.”
I shrugged. “The biggest thrill of my life today was choosing between a Big Mac and a McFeast.”
“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It wasn’t even exciting. I chose Big Mac. Like always.”
We fell silent again. This was our life now. A series of uninspired choices and other people’s perfectly curated happiness. Outside the window, a woman with a stroller pulled her gray raincoat tighter around herself, and for a second it felt as though the entire world was wrapped in plastic.
I looked at Thea again. She’d rested her chin in her hand and was staring blankly into space with the expression she got when the boredom began to physically hurt. Her lips were slightly parted, and a dark lock of hair had fallen across one eye. Something in my chest tightened.
A dark, impulsive idea began to take shape in my head. Not born of pure desperation. Born of something deeper, something that had been smoldering far longer than this Tuesday. A way to finally see what I’d been fantasizing about. An excuse dressed as spontaneity.
“I have an idea,” I said, leaning forward across the sticky table.
Thea looked up, her gaze flat and uninterested. “If it involves going to the movies, I can’t be bothered.”
My smile grew. “No. Something more fun. Something more dangerous. Let’s start a game.”
Thea’s eyes narrowed. A tiny spark of curiosity—the first in hours. “A game?”
“The rules are simple,” I continued, feeling my pulse begin to rise. “We dare each other. Taking turns. No limits, and whoever backs down is a coward.”
Thea was smiling now. A real smile. The smile that transformed her face from beautiful to dazzling, that brought small wrinkles around her eyes and revealed the one slightly crooked canine she was so self-conscious about. “Okay, you lunatic. I’m in. You first.”
