The Captain's Backup Girlfriend

Apparently I'm Famous

*Sierra's POV*

I knew something was wrong before I even got to the campus cafè.

It was the way people were looking at me.

Not the regular kind of looking. The quick glance you get when you're walking and people are deciding whether to make eye contact or stare at their phone. This was slower. The kind where you could just feel like you're being talked about.

I had experienced this exact situation once before, in middle school, when I accidentally sent a voice note to the wrong group chat. That had been a week.

I walked faster.

I found out about the video from a girl I have never spoken to in my life.

She stopped me outside the campus cafè, grabbed my arm like we were friends, and said. “Oh my God, are you okay?” with the energy of someone who absolutely did not care if I was okay and just wanted to be the first one to bring it up.

“I'm fine,” I said,

“Have you seen it?”

“Seen what?”

She looked at me like I'd said something fascinating. Then she showed me her phone.

Forty two seconds. That's how long the video was. I know because I watched it four times standing with a stranger's phone in my hand with a specific feeling of the ground shifting slightly beneath my feet.

The angle is bad or good , depending on how you look at it. Whoever filmed it was standing near the back of the room , which means you can't really see Jason. You can't see the girl. What you can see, very clearly, in full HD , is me winding up and releasing a cup full of punch across the room and hitting Ethan Hayes directly in the face.

It had nineteen thousand likes already.

I handed the phone back to the girl. “Thanks,” I said.

“Are you and Ethan Hayes like… Is that why you…”

“I have to get to class,” I said.

I did not have class for another two hours. Mia was waiting inside the cafè with two coffees and phone already extended toward my face before I had even fully stopped walking.

I sighed. “I already saw it.” I looked irritated.

She stopped.

I took the coffee from her hand. Took a long sip. Looked around us. The campus was still very much moving. The people still glancing over. People heading to go for morning lectures. The low hum of a campus that had found something to talk about and was going to talk about it all day. The specific noise of a Monday that didn't know or care about my problems.

“I need to text Jason,” I said.

Mia's expression changed into something that was not quite a smile. “Finally,” she pressed my palms together.

I did it on a bench outside the library. Mia sat beside me without being asked , close enough that our shoulders were touching , far enough that she wasn't reading over my arm.

I typed it and read it back twice.

We're done. Don't reach out. I mean it.

I sent it and put my phone face down on my knee.

“Done?”

“Done.”

She nodded.