The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden

in.”
     
    “I’ll be fine.” I lift up a stack of textbooks in search of my notebook. Honestly, I’m feeling a little down after Kayden never returned my text. He’s probably just busy, though. “You’re totally looking into this Kayden thing too much.”
     
    He sits down in front of the computer, swiveling the chair as he scrolls through his Facebook page. “You haven’t been the one looking at your sad puppy dog eyes for the last two days.”
     
    I drop the stack of books and put my hands on my hips. “Where the heck did I leave my notes?”
     
    “You left them in your room,” he says. “Remember we dropped them off while…” He trails off and then promptly shuts the screen down. When he swivels the chair around to look at me, his brown eyes are enlarged. “I have a brilliant idea. Why don’t you and I just go out? I can blow off Greyson and you and I can go see that silly movie you’ve been wanting to see.”
     
    I flop down on his bed. “No way. I’m not going to ruin the first date you’ve had in almost forever.”
     
    “Please Callie, just come out with me and have some fun.”
     
    I prop up on my elbows. “What’s wrong with you? You’re acting like a weirdo.”
     
    “That’s because I am a weirdo.” He stands up from the chair without looking at me and shoves boxes aside with his foot so he can open the closet door. “I think I need to tell you something that you might be upset about, but that I feel you need to know.”
     
    “Okay… what is it?”
     
    He removes a hanger from the bar and takes his jacket off of it. “You know what, let’s just go out and do something crazy.”
     
    I ease out of bed and stand up. “Seth, please tell me what’s going on. You have me worried.”
     
    He sighs, leaning back into the closet to put the hanger back on the bar. “Please don’t let this ruin your progress, but while I was on Facebook, I saw that Kayden had tagged himself with Daisy McMillian at the homecoming dance.”
     
    I bite down on my tongue until it hurts. “Okay.”
     
    He zips up his jacket and picks up the keys off the desk. “Do you want to change first, before we go out?”
     
    I grab my bag off the bed. “I think I’m just going to go back to my room and study.”
     
    “Callie I—”
     
    “Seth, I’ll be okay. Now go on your date and have a lot of fun for the both of us.”
     
    I dash out of the room before he can try to persuade me. I’m not sure how I feel about Kayden. I thought I was getting somewhere with my life. I thought I could smell the possibilities in the air.
     
    Guess I was wrong.
     
     
     
     
     
    Kayden
     
    I slip into my dorm room in the middle of the night, still wearing the tux with my bag in my hand. When I turn on the light, Luke sits up, blinks his eyes, and shakes his head.
     
    “Okay, we have got to come up with a system where you quit waking me up.” He studies my tux. “So that tag was right? You really went with her?”
     
    “No, I picked her up and while I ran inside to pay for the gas, she took my phone and did that herself.”
     
    “You didn’t go to the dance with her? You just what? Wanted to get dressed up for fun?”
     
    I tug the bowtie off my neck. “No, I made it to the parking lot, before I had a revelation.”
     
    He glances over at the clock. “I’ve heard those are pretty life changing.”
     
    I shuck off my jacket and toss it on the floor. “This one might have been… maybe. And you’ll be pretty happy about it.”
     
    “Why’s that?”
     
    “Because part of it was that I realized Daisy is a bitch.”
     
    He grins. “Finally. Took you long enough. You know, you’re kind of slow.”
     
    I sit down on the bed and start to untie my shoes. 
     
    The revelation was actually simple. During the drive to the school, Daisy had been yammering about how the manicurist messed up her nails. She kept rambling on and on and I started noticing little details about her, like the way her nose scrunched when she was talking or the dryness of her hair. She kept making her voice sound ditzy and when she reached over to touch my leg, I felt like flinging it off my lap.
     
    She kept insulting everyone, so I tried to change the subject and make a joke, but she didn’t laugh. In fact, she looked at me for a second like she was wondering what she was doing with me. Then I began wondering what I was doing with her.
     
    I dropped her off at the school and shoved the shifter into park. “Have