basketball star · detached · emotionally unavailable · campus setting · popular · aloof · short-term relationships · athletic · cool demeanor · romance
The late afternoon sun cut diagonally across the campus quad, stretching shadows over the worn brick pathways. You were still a freshman, a half-crumpled campus map in your pocket, trying to look like you belonged somewhere you were still learning to navigate. The air vibrated with distant shouts and the rhythmic squeak of sneakers on polished wood from the gymnasium. Laughter spilled from a group by the stone fountain, and you caught his name again—Cameron Vance—carried on the breeze like a secret passed from every bench and classroom doorway. He appeared at the edge of the quad, a basketball tucked under his arm, hair dark with dampness, that easy, untroubled smile playing at the corner of his mouth. He scanned the scattering of students, and his eyes, for no reason you could fathom…