"Fuck."

The curse word slipped from her lips before Holly's brain could stuff it back down her throat. The papercut on her thumb stung as she waved her hand in the air to soothe the urn.

Staring around at the ancient library, she saw a few heads dart back to laptop screens before she made eye contact. Holly glanced over her shoulder. A cluster of undergrads poked their heads over the edges of their laptop screens like modernized prairie dogs, searching for the swearer.

Before any of them could lock eyes with her, Holly turned back to her dusty Shakespeare biography and hunched back over the table, littered with papers and a couple of pen that had rolled out of her faded black Jansport backpack. Her blush warmed her cheeks. Her embarrassment was the only thing keeping her warm in this drafty library. Slivers of natural light streaked across the yellowing pages of a book that was published ten years before she was born.

She slipped the tip of her sliced finger into her mouth and sucked, trying to ignore the erotic tingle of sucking on flesh. A shiver of excitement pulsed through her body, collecting in a sticky pool between her thighs.

"Ahem," someone coughed across from her.

Holly blushed deeper, not realizing she'd closed her eyes. How long had she been sitting there, sucking her thumb like a child across from—

"Hey Nikki," Holly smiled with relief. Holly said a silent prayer of thanks that the person she'd embarrassed herself in front of was her best friend.

Nikki's thin eyebrow arched over the rim of her charcoal tortoise shell glasses as her lips pursed. "Do I want to know what you were thinking about?" she asked. She nibbled on a fleck of stray cherry lipstick as she shook her head at Holly. Her crimson ponytail flicked back and forth between her shoulders.

Holly shrugged as she pulled her thumb from her lips. The fresh breeze of cold air sent another dull pain rippling through her finger just below the skin. She rummaged through her bookbag, pulling out a travel sized bottle of lemon scented hand sanitizer and squirted into her palm. She rubbed the cooling gel onto her hands, careful to avoid the cut on her finger. "So, where are you coming from?"

Nikki toyed with the cardboard rim on her to-go latte cup. "I just had to sit through an Abnormal Psych lecture with Professor Reinstein."

"I'm not sure which is worse," Holly said, "his name or the subject matter. Ow! Mother heffer!" Alcohol slipped over the papercut. A hot stinging sensation burned over her thumb, only growing hotter and wider as Holly waved her hand in front of her, trying to cool the burn. The tip of her thumb felt like it was doused in boiling water for a moment before the stinging subsided to an uncomfortable tingling.

Nikki flipped off someone over Holly's shoulder before her hand fell back to her cup of coffee.

"What was that for?" Holly asked.

"The blonde behind you was giving you that stern, disapproving librarian look. I wonder if she's a library studies major. She's got the perfect temperament for it." Nikki coughed and raised her voice as she wagged her finger. "No swearing in the library, Holly." Nikki smirked as she tried to sound like a stern school disciplinarian and failed miserably.

Holly rolled her eyes. "Oh, children. When will they learn to respect their elders?"

"So true," Nikki added. "And to think, only two years ago, we were like them. Young, Ignorant. Full of hopes and dreams."

"And then we went to grad school," Holly chuckled.

"Where they smash all of your hopes and dreams to smithereens."

"All for the reasonable price of your soul."

"And your first born," Nikki added.

"But that's only if you're a doctoral candidate." Holly took a sip of tap water from her University of Pennsylvania water bottle, a gift given to all the graduate students at orientation. "So, Rumpelstiltskin, what do you have planned this afternoon?"

Nikki cringed. "Another Doctor Lupin lecture."

"Doctor Lupin," Holly repeated. "He sounds like one of crotchety old men who chiseled his dissertation on stone tablets."

Nikki laughed laud enough to get a shush from the undergrads around them. "Oh, that's too perfect."

Holly's eyebrow rose as she waited for an explanation. None came.

"So, why haven't I seen you in two weeks? Have you been hiding from me?" Nikki asked before tipping the Styrofoam cup between her lips and draining the last of her coffee.

Holly's heart squeezed like it was being crushed between a rock and a hard place. "Well, you know Victor and I aren't together anymore." Her airy voice was barely audible over the hum of the heater trying in vain to keep the old library warm. "I'm still getting over that breakup. It was rather unexpected."

Nikki reached across the table and patted Holly on the top of her arm. Her thin fingers and surprisingly warm touch against cold skin left Holly's arm covered in goosebumps.

"I know," Nikki said, "but moping won't do you any good. You need to go out and enjoy yourself. Pat and I are going to Brimstone tonight and I'm making your mind up for you. You're coming."

"I have to work the bookstore tonight," she grimaced.

Nikki shrugged. "Oh well. You're coming after work then. I won't take anymore of this self-deprecating behavior. I'll help push you through the five stages of grief in one night so you can move on."

A small laugh, more like a puff of air, escaped from her lips. "That's not how grief works. You should know that, miss future psychologist."

Nikki shrugged as she stood, the sounds of her chair muffled by the checked pattern carpet. "Whatever you say, miss know it all. I'm going to be there, and you better not stand me up. I'm very creative with my revenge."

Holly waved at Nikki as the redhead winked before rushing to the front of the library. With a small weight off her shoulders, Holly returned to the dusty pages describing Shakespeare through his arguably last work, The Tempest.

Time tickled by in long lulls as Holly occasionally glanced up other the pages and scribbled down a note or citation from the book.

As she skimmed over yet another repetitive feminist criticism of the play, a small wad of paper landed between the folds of her book. Her gaze rose as she caught the looks from three undergrads, two of whom snickered while the other's face fell in horror.

Holly rolled her eyes and bit the tip of her tongue to hold back her smartass remarks. She flicked the paper ball out of her book. "Hell is empty and all the devils are here," she murmured to no one. Annoyed at the interruption, her concentration broken, Holly glanced at her watch.

"Shit!"

A dozen study groups stared at her as she bolted up from her seat. Holly crammed her books into her bag with one hand as she struggled to pull on her leather jacket with the other. She fisted a few sheets of paper in her bag, zipped it, and zoomed out of the library like the white rabbit.

"Watch it!" An undergrad in a Penn hoodie huffed as she passed. Holly's shoulder collided with his lacrosse player's stick, poking out from his gym bag at an odd angle.

"Sorry, I'm late," she apologized without glancing over her shoulder. Definitely the white rabbit. If only she had a pocket watch… though who owns pocket watches anymore?

The cold air seeped into her lungs, filling her chest and chilling her to the bone. As her chest ached in protest, Holly slowed her pace to a walk, deciding that if she was already late, she might as well enjoy her stroll through the campus.

As she approached the corner of 32nd and Walnut Street, Holly shifted her backpack further up her shoulder as she walked up to the corner. Traffic whizzed past, loosening strand of golden hair from behind her ear.

Traffic stopped and a moment later, the little green man blinking at her, allowing her to walk like some neon gate keeper. Holly blended into a small crowd as the green man almost immediately turned into a red hand with a timer. Thirty-five seconds to cross.

Holly slowed her pace as she ended up stuck behind a chattering couple, holding hands as they wandered down the street. They gazed into one another's eyes with a spark that irritated Holly. She didn't need to be reminded of love and happiness and chemistry and sex appeal right now.

The last thing she needed on the brain before a mind-numbing bookstore shift was sex. Her mind was in constant danger of wandering away into the gutter as she restocked shelves and rang up customers buying the latest John Green novel.

She sidestepped around the couple just as someone sidestepped around her.

A small clattering caught Holly's attention, like someone shouting behind her. She glanced at the man beside her, his shaggy blnde hair catching her attention. He passed her and continued to stroll towards the main campus, his hands wringing in the cold air.

Holly froze in the middle of the walkway as the toe of her boot nudged something. Glancing down, she noticed a phone in a thick gray case gleaming up at he. A small crack like a spider web trickled out of the corner.

She bent to pick it up and glanced at the light. Twenty-three seconds.

"Sir," Holly said as she picked up the cracked phone. "Sir, you dropped your phone."

The man paused, the air around him turning with him as his pale grey eyes shimmered in the sunlight.

Holly held the phone out to him, like holding out a biscuit to a strange dog. Would he take the treat, or would he bite her?

The man pulled the phone from her fingers and shoved it back into his pants pocket without a word.

Holly froze, waiting. The air crackled, as though he was about to—

A car honked at her and she glanced over the man's shoulder. Two seconds. Once second.

The man said nothing as she turned her back on him and hurried across the street, picking up enough speed that her hair flew behind her like a superhero's cape.

She performed her Good Samaritan duty for today.

With a small smile—and a pinch of annoyance at not receiving so much as a nod from the man in the coat—Holly continued her way down 32nd Street, late to work and weirdly self-satisfied. Those twinkling gray eyes stuck in her mind like a song she couldn't get out of her head. Those melancholy eyes and that distant stare.

Holly shook her head, relieved to hear the brass bell tinker overhead as she stepped into the bookstore.

Time to focus and keep her mind out of the gutter. And keep her mind off the man with the storm grey eyes.