Uncontainable Desire

She is Change

It was mid-May, the season when the air began to smell faintly of exams and restless nights. Next month would bring the semester tests, and Loyd -who could barely care less about grades- had somehow found himself joining Nina’s study group.

He told himself it was strategy, not desperation. But truth be told, he just wanted to see her. Nina had been impossibly hard to reach lately, her phone always silent, her presence like smoke that vanished when he tried to grasp it.

For someone like Loyd, who usually thrived in chaos like parties till late nights. The sudden discipline in his life felt like punishment wrapped in affection. Nina had reordered his world, reshaped it, forced him into patterns he never thought he’d live by. And though part of him admired it, another part quietly suffered.

It had been a week since that night in the café storeroom. A single night that left him wrecked, breathless, and oddly reborn. Loyd had needed time to recover, but from the way Nina had drained every ounce of his strength with a fire he hadn’t known existed in her.

Since then, no other woman had interested him. Not even close. Nina had taken up all the space in his thoughts. She had conquered him, and it stung his pride just enough to make him vow revenge not cruel, but sweet, the kind that would make her beg as he once had.

But fate, or maybe karma, had a cruel sense of humor. After that night, Nina stopped looking at him altogether. Every time he tried to meet her eyes, she’d look away pretending to be busy, pretending he wasn’t there.

It drove him insane.

Worse still, she chose to spend her time with Garry. Garry, the quiet nerd from their department. The one who always carried too many books and wore sweaters two sizes too big. Loyd couldn’t decide if it was jealousy or humiliation burning inside him but he hated how Garry could stand next to her, talk to her, make her laugh, while he, the popular one, stood there invisible.

Seriously, what kind of twisted reality was this?

And the final blow? When Nina told him that it would be better if no one knew about their relationship.

“No one needs to know,” she’d said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

Loyd remembered staring at her then, half in disbelief, half in heartbreak. “Wait, what? You’re hiding me now?”

Nina had smiled faintly, her gaze distant. “Not hiding. Just… keeping things private.”

Private. The word felt like a wall between them, cold and deliberate.

Now, sitting in the middle of her study group, pretending to take notes while Nina discussed formulas with Garry, Loyd felt jealousy mixed with something dangerously close to longing.

Maybe love was a trap, he thought bitterly. Isn’t it strange? Every other girl on campus wanted to show off the fact that she was dating Loyd, as though he were a trophy, a prize to be paraded around under sunlight. But her sweet elusive Nina was the complete opposite. She wanted secrecy and that, more than anything, made him restless.

He kept wondering what went on in that mind of hers. How did she think? What did she really want? Or perhaps the endless questions were only echoes inside his own head, proof that he was losing his mind while she was perfectly sane.

Because, honestly, even when she acted awkward around him, the others in their study group didn’t seem to notice anything strange. Not even Abe, the clown of the bunch, who was usually too nosy for his own good.

“The weather’s perfect today. So bright and cool,” said Tia suddenly, snapping Loyd out of his thoughts. Her tone carried that mischievous excitement that always spelled trouble. “You guys know what that means, right?”

“Picnic!” Abe chimed in, grinning ear to ear.

“Exactly! Picnic!” Tia whooped, giving him a triumphant high-five before the two of them burst into laughter, leaving everyone else staring in confusion.

“I thought we came here to study,” Nina interjected, her voice calm but firm, eyes narrowing slightly as if she already sensed rebellion brewing.

“Oh, come on, Nina!” Abe groaned dramatically, tossing his pen onto the table. “When else do we ever get to go on a picnic together? We spend our entire lives trapped in classrooms. My brain’s about to explode from all this academic torture!”

Nina sighed. “But the plan was to study, wasn’t it? I still remember your dreadful score on Professor Delmar’s exam.”

“Ah, not the nightmare again,” Abe whined, making a face that earned a few chuckles.

“I guess there’s no harm in it,” Loyd finally said, breaking his silence. “We could study while we’re out there, right?”

He spoke casually, but the truth was simpler. He just needed an excuse to ease the strange tension that had been lingering between him and Nina. Maybe a change of scenery, a bit of laughter, could loosen the invisible knots.

“See? Even Loyd’s cool with it, and he just joined our group!” Tia declared triumphantly, seizing the moment before Nina could protest again. Her tone was bright and decisive, like someone who’d already made up her mind long before asking anyone else. “So it’s settled. We’re going on a picnic!”

She flashed Loyd a playful wink, clearly pleased to have him on her side. “I think we can make it more fun too. There’s a river nearby, and it’s full of fish. Imagine, fresh grilled fish for lunch? Once we’ve eaten, we can get back to studying. Sounds fair, right?”

Her compromise was sharp and strategic, a peace offering to keep Nina from storming off.

“That actually sounds reasonable,” Garry chimed in, speaking for the first time in a while. His calm, even voice carried a weight that often made people nod along without argument.

And just like that, the odds were stacked against Nina. Four voices against one. She pressed her lips together, clearly fighting the urge to argue, but in the end, she sighed in defeat.

“Fine. You win,” she said, her tone clipped but not entirely cold. “Just so we’re clear, how exactly are we organizing all this?”