"Oh my baby, I'll miss you so much." Violet's mom kissed her cheek, wrapping her arms tightly around her.
"Yes yes, I'll miss you too." Violet hugged her mom tightly. "I wish you didn't have to leave." she grinned, secretly happy that she was leaving.
"Me too, you haven't lived alone before, I hope you'll be fine, I packed some food in the fridge for you, it should last a while." Elisabeth Woodsen let go of her daughter, with a sad look.
"Thank you mom." violet smiled again.
"Take care of yourself, don't go out after 6:00pm, don't eat too much junk. You drink too much soda, try to drink more water, I had your mom buy some fruit, eat fruits. I'll be checking your grades so be serious, don't forget to read." Benjamin Woodsen gave his daughter a side hug before entering his car.
'That's dad for you.' Violet thought with a smile. "Yes dad, I love you."
"Thank you." he replied, shutting the door behind him.
'Yeah, that's dad for you!'
"I love you baby." Her mom waved as she entered the passenger side, while her dad flashed a smile as he started the car and drove away.
Violet had a soft smile on her face as she waved after them, dropping her hands when the car disappeared. Slowly, almost robotically, she closed the gates and entered the house, making her way to her room, standing in front of the mirror. A pretty twenty one year-old with shoulder length black hair, full lips, and dark brown eyes was staring back at her and the smile slowly stretched before becoming a full blown grin that doubled into laughter as she turned away from the mirror, jumping onto her bed and laughing like a hyena. She flopped and flayed her legs and hands all over the bed, extremely happy and excited that she was no more under the watchful eye of her parents.
After about three minutes of violent thrashing on the bed and awful sounding laughter, she sobered up, clearing her throat and trying to maintain a straight face. But she failed as her lips stretched wide, only managing the control her grin, she said to herself. "Violet Woodsen, you are finally going to fall in love." she kicked her legs up and giggled. "I can't wait."
***
4 WEEKS LATER
5:00pm
*Phone vibrates
Violet sprang up, looking around in a daze before realising that she slept off on her table, while typing up her assignment which was due the next day. She groaned, running a hand through her hair before picking the call.
"Violet!" Her best friend Lucy shrieked through the phone.
"Lucy." she replied, trying to return the tone but it came out weak as she fell back against the chair.
"Where are you? I've been calling you since... " Lucy screamed and Violet, still half asleep, took the phone away from her ear to check her call log and sure enough, there were seven missed calls from 'Lucy'.
Violet rubbed her eyes and yawned. "Why were you calling me though?"
"Hello! You said I should set you up on another blind date. I did, contrary to my good sense, after all the other failed ones, I thought, Okay, I want my friend to find happiness and finally fall in love." She paused to breath for a second before continuing to scream over the phone. "What do I get though? You stood him up."
Violet rolled her eyes. "What blind date? Wasn't that supposed to be tomorrow after my 12 o'clock class?"
"No, you idiot. it was scheduled for today."
"Is that so?" Violet said nonchalantly. "Oops. Sorry."
"Oh, you don't sound sorry at all. I'm not helping you again."
"That'll be better." Violet murmured.
"What? You ungrateful friend, I stayed up all night searching for guys-"
"Lucy, I love you so much, thank you, ah what would I do without you?"
"Hmm, so you know. You'll be single forever without me."
"Heheh. Why don't we stop with the blind dates for now? You know," She paused, her eyes lighting up when they caught a piece of of potato chips on her laptop. putting it in her mouth and chewing, she continued. "Maybe it's better to stop looking for love and let it come to you."
"You idiot, what are you going on about? You want to be single forever? You've still not done so many romantic things at your age."
"I've done a lot though," Violet smirked.
"That's minimum fool. What do you know."
Violet rolled her eyes. "Ah, leave me alone, just organise another one for next tomorrow, I'll be working through the night to meet up with submitting this assignment, It's Professor Matthew's course, he keeps going on about how I'm a good student and he has high hopes, blah blah blah. Lord I just want to quit being a course representative sometimes, so much expectations." She cried. "Anyway, I'll be too tired after class to go on a blind date tomorrow so make it the day after. Also, let's agree to stop after this next one." She sighed "I'm already tired of it, none of them make my heart beat fast or give me love at first sight vibes you know."
Lucy snorted. "You and your delusions."
"These aren't delusions." She shook her head with a dreamy smile on her face. "If it can work for Adeline, Mi-soo, Charity and Helen, it can work for me too." she giggled.
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
"Hello, hello!" She took it away from her ear to see that Lucy had hung up on her. Her mouth fell open in surprise. "Ah, this cow actually hung up on me."
Her phone vibrates again to notify her of a new message. It was from Lucy and it read; "Those are fiction characters you stupid b–"
"Ah, what a vulgar woman." Violet closed the message, throwing her phone to the bed. She smiled, thinking about how she met Lucy in her first year at the University of Redwood and how they'd bonded over food. It was had to find girls that shared that interest openly and unashamedly.
Yawning, she stood up to drink some water but her tummy grumbled, letting her know that she needed to eat. Wanting something quick, she made her way to the kitchen to make some instant noodles. Eating in the kitchen since she was the only one at home. Her older sister and brother hardly came home anymore, the latter because she was getting married soon and the former because he just graduated and was trying to get a job. Once the food was ready, she ate and dumped the plates in the sink. Recalling that she was the only one living in the house, she walked back to the kitchen and washed the plates before returning to her room to finish typing her assignment.
She only finished the assignment around 4:30:am as she had been in and out of sleep throughout. The next time she woke up was 7:30am and her class was scheduled for nine. Realising she was late because she had to do a forty minute commute to school as usual, she flew up from bed and straight into the shower.
***
Violet entered the lecture hall only a second before the Psych302 lecturer did and thankfully so because the man had quite the temper and didn't allow any students enter after him.
"Good morning class." The older man greeted, placing his bag on the table.
The class responded, returning his greeting.
"Okay, I'll be back in a few minutes." The lecturer said,walking out the door.
"Yo, you're late." Clyde, Violet's friend with
a buzz cut whispered as she sat beside him.
"Do you think stating the obvious makes you smart?" she glared at him.
Clyde chuckled quietly, raising his hands. "Let me guess, you didn't eat before coming."
"I'm so hungry and sleepy."
"Well we'll go to the lunch hall after this class and you can sleep after the 12:00pm class."
"You mean after you've abandoned me and I have to wait to collect everyone's assignment to submit?"
"Well," Clyde stuck out his tongue at her. "You're the course representative for Professor Matthew. You're such a responsible young woman. Really, you inspire a lot of young women out there. A role model honestly." Clyde laughed sarcastically before adding. "Besides, you're single, I can't live the same life as a single person, I have someone to give all this love and she gives me so much love back. Especially when we're alone. Damn, when is this class going to end?" Clyde smiled like a fool, a fool in love of course.
Violet bit her lip as she struggled to not bite him, glaring daggers. Then she smirked. "My fingers are feeling slippery, I have a premonition that your assignment will slip out of my hands and fall into the abyss that's the trash. Do you feel it too?" her smirk turned into a sweet smile
"Ah." Clyde wiped the smile off his face. "Goddess, please be merciful." he bowed.
Violet smiled just as the lecturer reentered the class.
***
2:00pm
"Violet, collect all the assignments and bring them to my office." Prof. Matthews instructed as he left the class.
"Yes sir." she answered, staying in her seat as her coursemates came to submit their assignments.
A few of them said hi while some simply submitted and left. Clyde had long abandoned her even before the 12:00 pm class which he didn't attend. Immediately after the first class, he made an excuse saying that Olivia–his girlfriend–needed him and disappeared, not even going with her to lunch. Violet had collected his assignment from him even though she didn't want to and helped him with attendance.
"The pain of being the only single one in a friendgroup." Violet sighed, taking all the assignments, hugging them to her chest as she made her way to the Professor's office.
Managing to open the door with her elbow, she entered his office, although the stack of papers blocked most of her view, she caught a glimpse of his outline in his seat when she turned into the open door. "Professor I've brought the papers. The only assignments missing are that of Jolene and Shane," she set them on his desk and looked up at him. "They said-" she trailed off, her eyes widening at the person staring at her. She was very surprised to see someone else sitting in the professor's seat, someone who was a younger and much more handsome version of the professor. "You're not Professor Matthews."
The young man raised an annoyed eyebrow. "Wow. The discovery of the century."
Surprise quickly turned into more surprise at how rude he was. More reflexively than intentional, she shot back. "Look at that, Professor Matthews isn't perfect after all, he unfortunately has a rude shit for a son."
"I agree he's not perfect, he did choose a blockhead as his course representative."
Before she could retort, the door opened, revealing Professor Matthew who smiled. "Oh, Violet, I see you've met my brother."
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