The first morning of class, I woke up restless and irritable.

Every time Ellie rolled over in her sleep last night, which was quite a lot, her air mattress scrunched and groaned on the hardwood floors. At one point I was surprised she hadn't popped it with how much she tossed around. While those noises had been my motivation when I insisted she not have any guy in the apartment, I felt bad that's how she slept.

Of course I'd feel better if she slept next to me in bed.

For more reasons than one.

Our conversation through dinner had also kept me awake while it replayed over in my mind after Ellie had gone to sleep. I wanted to be fully honest with her but my pride and, for the first time with Ellie, uncertainty held back the truth. I wanted to fess up but wasn't sure how she'd take the news that I'd learned how to cook from her videos and instructional blogs. I'd had some disasters for sure but I'd gotten the hang of some basic recipes. I was definitely better than Mom and impressed her when I'd cooked for her after Brody's games.

Another area of my self-improvements, which I also wasn't ready to admit, was also Ellie-inspired in that I solidified my most important personal relationships. After I went to college, Mom still worked a clerical job in a doctor's office, but switched to one closer to Santa Cruz. Before my spring semester freshman year started, she'd sold her townhouse, downsized to a two-bedroom condo, and tossed out half her belongings. Like when she'd first chased Dad from Sudbury, Ontario to Santa Cruz, that city's houses were still out of her price range but she moved further out from the beach in nearby Scotts Valley.

His junior year, once he drove, my younger brother Brody transferred from Santa Cruz to Scotts Valley. He still split his time between both houses but the arrangement was much better for him. Selfishly, when I drove back there every Friday and watched his football games, I'd appreciated sitting in Scotts Valley's stands and not Santa Cruz's since that was Ellie's alma mater.

The night before my first class at UW though, the fact I'd miss Brody's games this year hit me with obvious disappointment. Even with a direct flight, one-way travel was about six hours, so by the time Huskies' practice ended I didn't have enough time to make his games. Mom promised she'd FaceTime me during them but I wasn't convinced she wouldn't forget, put her phone away, and gave me a view of her butt pocket the entire game.

Ellie herself also distracted me from sleeping. I knew some things about her had changed but the fact she got flustered when I flirted with her definitely hadn't. And I intended to use her blush barometer to my full advantage. I felt slightly bad that I'd teased her about the marital status mix-up but surprised both of us when I'd leaned over and gently kissed her good night.

While Ellie just gasped in surprise and laid there in silent shock, I'd had a different reaction. Disappointment rose inside me at how her forehead wasn't where I actually wanted to kiss her. The contact resurfaced the first conversation I'd had with the Prakashes, where I confessed why I lived across the hall, alone in married student housing. For two years, they'd encouraged me to chase my 'sōl sahacaruḍu,' as both Saswhin and his wife Nallini called Ellie my soulmate.

After a few hours of restless sleep, loud banging sounds in the kitchen woke me up. I groaned and dragged myself around the small bedroom until I was dressed. While I brushed my teeth in our closet-sized bathroom, the smell of a hot breakfast hit me.

"You're right," Ellie called out to me from inside the kitchen. She held a gallon of milk in one hand and wore an oven mitt on the other. She put the milk in the fridge, shut it, then opened the stove.

"This does bug me." She smiled and took out, of all things, a tray full of bacon strips that sizzled like they called my name. The smell hit me instantly and my stomach growled in agreement.

"I whipped up some quick omelettes too, but you're allowed to have six pieces of bacon," she added while my eyes tracked over the kitchen.

Ellie was an interesting cook. Her food was amazing but she also destroyed the kitchen in the process while she made it. My eyes looked over at the giant piles of bowls and utensils spread over every inch of the small counters, along with wrappers and egg shells. Right when I remembered dishes were my duty, my eyes landed on the already full sink.

"Allowed to, huh?" I grinned at her bossiness and crossed my arms over my chest. "How long have you been up?"

"A while," was all she replied and moved the bacon onto a plate lined with paper towels.

I just watched as Ellie climbed right onto a counter, pulled out another plate from an upper cabinet, then shimmied down. Before I teased her, she grabbed an omelette from a pan on the stove, set it on a plate with exactly six pieces of bacon, then handed me the plate with a glass of milk and a fork.

"It's spinach, mushroom, and feta." She nodded at the omelette when I took the plate.

"For the rest of the week, I made low-carb breakfast burritos." She pointed at a pile of wrapped-up log-shaped somethings on the counter near the fridge. "You can just reheat those whenever you want, two per day."

"Thanks Ellie." I smiled at her over the slight amount of steam that lifted from my plate.

Definitely can get used to this.

"We'll have to do leftover lasagna again tonight," she spoke like she was sorry about that. "I don't start at the library until Wednesday because they're training new people, so I'll go to the grocery store tonight after I stop by your practice."

"You're stopping by practice?" I echoed while I sat down and destroyed Ellie's bacon bite by bite.

"Not for you, sorry." Her lips twitched into a faint smile. "Monique texted me about Darrius so I need to chew him a new asshole about his slack in eating."

"I'd like to see that." I chuckled at the mental image of Ellie's tiny frame while she took on a 6ft6, 260-pound offensive lineman who probably weighed more like 275 now. While I sure hadn't seen a softer side to Darrius, Emmitt had told me that Ellie had a special place in the big man's life.

I have to see this. Ellie chewing out Darrius Williams is probably like watching a chihuahua snap at a Saint Bernard.

"I can go with you to the grocery store," I offered between bites of a ridiculously good omelette. I wasn't sure how Ellie had made ingredients that I didn't like separately taste good together, but I had no complaints. Within a few bites, I'd inhaled that too.

"We'll play it by ear," was all she replied and grabbed her backpack from the floor. "Have a good first day of class, Logan."

"Wait up," I reached down and grabbed my bag from where I'd left it near the table. "I'll walk with you."

"But you don't start until nine." Her dark eyes looked curiously up at me.

"I'm going to walk around, make sure I can find all the buildings." While Ellie had shown me vaguely where the science buildings were, I wanted to make sure I got to the right one.

"Makes sense," she said calmly.

Ellie helped me while we cleaned up the kitchen and washed the dishes. After we exited the apartment building and crossed over a few streets, the familiar brick and cement-detailed buildings came into view. Campus looked a lot different now that the rest of the student body had shown up, although I assumed the sidewalks would be much more crowded for classes later than eight.

Our conversation was light, about upcoming classes, but at one point Ellie asked me, "How did you end up with a Bioengineering major?"

"It kind of chose me," I shrugged my shoulders. "I was a bio and chem major at UCD and took a lot of math and statistics and seemed like a good fit when my adviser here mentioned it. I looked over the course descriptions and they seemed pretty interesting. I only have lecture classes this semester though, I'll have to double up on labs after the season ends."

"Ahh..." She nodded then fell silent. A few steps under some giant cherry trees later, she looked up at one of the quad buildings. "This is me, PCar. Thanks for the... company."

"Thanks for breakfast." I grinned down at her. Even in the earlier morning, the sun glossed over her dark hair with golden highlights. In true Ellie fashion, she'd dressed in a UW T-shirt, black leggings, and comfortable shoes. I wasn't much fancier, in a Huskies' football T-shirt and jeans.

Her face fell at my words, until she looked crestfallen. "I'm so sorry, I didn't make anything for your lunch. Both my nutrition classes are in Raitt Hall, so I'd just -"

"Ellie, it's okay," I quickly assured her. "I'll grab something on campus."

She threw me a fleeting smile but I saw a sense of relief in her eyes. Since I hadn't actually done anything about her rental amount, my scholarship had, I wasn't going to strictly hold herself to whatever she felt like she'd owed me. If anything, I felt like the lucky one that she was not only back in my life but front and center.

"See ya later." One of her hands offered a small wave before her beautiful smile wished me goodbye.

Once she walked up the steps to her classroom building, I turned and walked in the direction of Foege Building for my first class, Biotransport I, at nine. I took leisurely steps but the lightness that carried me down the sidewalks was almost comical.

With the exception of the Biology department's Human Anatomy class that Ellie and I shared, all my other courses were in the Bioengineering department. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I had Biotransport at nine am, Solid and Gel Mechanics at ten, and Introduction to Biology III at noon. The last class confused me since I wasn't sure how an intro course had a third part but I'd just gone with my advisor's recommendations.

All three classes were in the W.H. Foege building, a massive glass-front building with red brick sides located in between Pacific Street and the water's edge. The building dwarfed over me while I walked under its giant glass awning. Inside, some of the walls were solid glass, along with the railings on the stairs I climbed to the second floor for Room 210. I followed a wide hallway with light gray carpet until I found the right room.

Inside the room, I internally groaned at the small, cramped single-student desks. My first day of classes at UCD, I learned my frame was not built for lecture halls. I'd made the mistake once when I'd sat in the front row and stretched my legs halfway out like speed bumps for the instructor, so this morning I took a desk in the back row and moved it as far from the desk in front of it as I could.

Not like I can't see over everyone's head anyways.

At the loud sound of my desk movements, all eyes in the room drew to me. A slight grin tugged on my mouth at how I looked nothing like anyone else here. Most of the kids looked like they were Asian, either from China, Korea, or India, which wasn't surprising given my previous STEM-class experiences, and my blonde hair stuck out over a sea of black-haired heads.

As for my size, I groaned out loud when one and half ass cheeks fit into the small, gray seat. My discomfort must have been obvious because three girls who sat ahead of me burst into quiet giggles.

While I opened up my backpack and pulled out my laptop to take notes, a kid with spiked black hair took the seat next to me. His dark brown eyes stared at me from behind his large, round glasses, then he blurted out, "Are you in the right class?"

"Biotransport, right?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said slowly with an accent that reminded me of the Prakashes.

"Yup." I chuckled more to myself and extended one hand. "Logan."

"Santanu," he replied with a slight nod. His mouth opened but the professor came in and commanded everyone's attention. A tall, thin woman with gray hair stood at the front of the class with both hands tucked into the pockets of a full-length, white lab coat.

"Good morning everyone, I'm -" Her gray-blue eyes rested on mine briefly, then perused around the room. "I'm Dr. Taylor, welcome to Biotransport One. I know that sounds like a really cool sci-fi adventure or newly launched space rover but we're actually introducing the fundamentals of mass transport related to biomedical or living systems."

At a smattering of quiet laughs, she pulled up what looked like a course syllabus on the overhead projector screen at the front of the room and absently waved one hand at it. "We'll spend a few weeks on mass transport by diffusion, two lectures on the effects of convection, a term paper assignment on the effects of chemical reactions, and by the final exam, you should be able to describe the fundamental principles pertaining to momentum, heat, and mass transport."

Dr. Taylor started her introductory lecture, during which a few curious looks were tossed in my direction. I simply nodded and smiled tightly in return, although I sensed I'd have similar reactions in my next two classes.

I look forward to proving all of them wrong.