chapter 003.
{ real life, instagram }
୧ ‧₊˚ 🥣⋅ ☆

✿˖° # ʳᵉᵃˡ ˡⁱᶠᵉ

THE MOONLIGHT THAT COMES THROUGH THE SMALL GAP from the curtain of Nelly's room gives her some light and more security as she tries to get safely to her bed in the middle of the night.

She has just gotten herself a glass of water and is sipping it a bit, carefully, as she holds out her other arm to protect herself from running or tripping somewhere and spilling the water.

The brunette lets out a sigh of relief when she finally feels the soft, familiar mattress beneath her. The bed linen is a bit cold because she hasn't sat on it since this morning, making some goosebumps form on her legs that are just covered with short sleeping shorts.

She puts the glass on her bedside table and rubs her legs a little for the heat until she gives up and realizes that it won't help. The girl lifts the blanket and her legs up onto the bed. Not a second later she had snuggled up in bed and covered the blanket.

Her eyes fall on the almost transparent curtains where she sees that it is already pitch dark outside. With a small sigh she grabs her phone from the bedside table to look for the time. Penelope's eyes immediately close at the completely turned up brightness, which she immediately turns all the way down and rubs her eyes a little, which are clean from the mascara she wiped off about an hour ago in the bathroom after coming back from dinner with nat and bee.

00:18

Her with lip balm caressed lips pout a little as she realizes that she's not even a little tired, yet. She definitely needs to get her sleep rhythm back under control when the courses start again.

Otherwise it will destroy her schedule or take up time and that is exactly what she wanted to avoid this year.

But she doesn't have a single tired spot in her body, and now when she lies down she just lies around for hours trying to fall asleep. When she's on her cell phone/tablet she gets tired more and more quickly, she doesn't know why.

So she decides not to put the phone away yet and snuggles up in the blanket before she turns her attention back to the iPhone in her hand already more warm hands.

She turns it back on and a picture of her, her mom and her grandma on Christmas comes to her which puts a small smile on her with lip balm caressed lips. It's been a while since she's seen them both, and she always saw Christmas as a time with them, which is why she looked forward to it as a child.

This year it's different, but she tries not to let it get to her, to make the best of it and not to think about it too much, even though she knows that in some moments that won't work.

There are still a few months until the holidays, maybe something will change and she can come after all, even though she doesn't think much about it because she doesn't want her hopes to be unnecessarily high for it to don't work at the end.

Her fingers swipe up and she quickly types in her code because the Face ID doesn't recognize her in the dark.

Her dark red painted fingernails tap on all sorts of apps, which after a few minutes suddenly gets really boring until she surprisingly ends up on Instagram out of all apps.

She wants to scroll through her feed until the red follower sign catches her attention by notifications. Nelly licks her teeth a little as she clicks on it without thinking twice to see who it is, but immediately regrets it when she remembers, before its popping up on her screen.

Matt's profile picture and user immediately comes to her attention, it's not the first time she's seen it as he's often under suggests, or "people you might know" or even in the comments of a posts from people she follows.

The brunette pauses before going to his profile and seeing that it is public. His bio, which people she follows that follow him, his 3 highlights and his two posts jump straight to her eye, which makes her stop in surprise.

If she's being completely honest, she was always somewhat interested in what it looked like but never got around to going to his profile, 1) she thought it was private and and would rather die then request him, 2) she actually couldn't careless.

But now she's on it and can see everything, which means she doesn't have to accept or follow him back. However, she has no interest in wasting her time on it for a long time, she has to take a look at it at some point.

Her eyes only land on his two posts, which she then clicks on with an annoyed sigh. The rest like the highlights don't interest her the slightest, the fact that she's here at all is an exception that will only happen once.

✿˖° # ⁱⁿˢᵗᵃᵍʳᵃᵐ

mattsturnnii

chrissturnioo

mara_elsh

nicolassturniio, nikovablake

chrissturnioo, niccoluca21, leopolcunc

archiemil

chrissturnioo, nicolassturniio

liked by natalia.reyes, nicolassturniio and 21.902 more

mattsturnnii gonna need some more caption ideas this shits hard

ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵉⁿᵗˢ:

leopolcunc slide 5 was not needed
↳ niccoluca21 right like... yall im no cutie pie gangster princess 🫤🫤

archiemil bros tuff
↳ mattsturnnii i will bann the word bro from my comments

archiemil bro loves his toothpicks
↳ mattsturnnii bros a huge fan

archiemil bros a cutie pie
↳ archiemil slide 5 kawaii asf
↳ mara_elsh yall be getting the whole slide show

user im gonna say many bad things

niccoluca21 imma get you pregnant #genderrevealparty #boymom
↳ mattsturnnii no ❤️

mara_elsh guys can we agree that my hands look better.. cringe who doesn't wear rings ☹️☹️
↳ mattsturnnii absolut insane coming from you when you were the one that stole mine
↳ mara_elsh haha i think you accidentally replied

nikovablake is it joking
↳ nikovablake next post i want a whole slide cause wth
↳ mattsturnnii complaining like you ain't on the post

nicolassturniio rawr 😍😍
↳ mattsturnnii am i supposed to rawr back
↳ archiemil bros growling
↳ nicolassturniio i'm flirting

leopolcunc you looking a little too good lately #nohomo tho
↳ mattsturnnii appreciate it

ᶜˡⁱᶜᵏ ᶠᵒʳ ᵐᵒʳᵉ ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵉⁿᵗˢ

mattsturnnii

liked by mara_elsh, leopolcunc and 34.890 more

mattsturnnii 👖

ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵉⁿᵗˢ:

archiemil bro could've used some hard shit like 🥶 instead of pants
↳ mattsturnnii my bad, next time king

user i have a crush on a... man

chrissturnioo opened the app and got mogged

nikovablake opened the app and got jumpscared wtf

niccoluca21 what is bro cheesing about

user plz stop existing for my own safety

nikovablake WAITT why them nails lowk ate
↳ mara_elsh right like who made them must be so talented and awesome and cool and pretty
↳ mattsturnnii right! @archiemil

archiemil bros teeth white asf

user if you look closely you can see me foaming behind the couch

leopolcunc matt, lets keep this between us
↳ mattsturnnii bet

user delete this rn

mara_elsh cunt lord

user hey babe ❤️😍💦
↳ niccoluca21 sorry guys forgot to switch accounts

nicolassturniio haha do you fw me
↳ mattsturnnii absolutly

ᶜˡⁱᶜᵏ ᶠᵒʳ ᵐᵒʳᵉ ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵉⁿᵗˢ

✿˖° # ʳᵉᵃˡ ˡⁱᶠᵉ

Penelope's eyes linger on the posts until she's had enough and wants to swipe away, when she does so a red heart catches the corner of her eye and the brunettes face drops as she realizes what she did.

She liked one of his posts.

"No, no, no" she whines out quietly and instantly unlikes. Her lips part after her eyes widen but as she realizes it won't change anything and he will see the notification anyways. she hangs her head down in frustration turning her phone off.

After a few minutes of thinking about what to do, she sits upright and unlocks her phone again.

Her fingers automatically find their way back to his account and click on accept his follow request. She can't take the like back anyway because he sees the notification, maybe he'll overlook it but she doesn't want to risk that 50/50 chance, he shouldn't think that she stalked his account.

What she in fact did but it's not like that so he doesn't have to know that.

With a sigh she then clicks on the follow button.

Meanwhile, her face makes a small grimace and she immediately swipes back to feed. She doesn't follow many people from that friend group. nick, leo, mara, nikki and now matt.

She has nothing against the girls, but she hasn't exchanged a single word with them so far which is why she cant say anything about them. But they look pretty and nice, she has to give them that, which is why she followed them back.

She has thought about, whether she should follows the rest, but she doesn't have any reasons to it, and doesn't want to either.

What is the worst that can happen?..

The worst she feared has exactly happened for Penelope. The brunette looks around the area a little uncomfortable as natalia talks to people. And not just with any people. Leo and Archie are standing in front of the two of them and talking to their friend and have been doing this for 5 minutes.

Where the two are, there is also the rest of the group who lets their faces fall. Matt and Chris both walk next to each other over to the other three. Since Nelly isn't waiting for Nat further away, but rather right next to her, she can't be missed.

She cussed under breath as her and Matt's eyes met and a small grin forms on his lips as his eyes spot her there too and she focused again on the others' conversation.

However, this is interrupted by the identical-looking boys who dab each the others up as they arrive. Matt wraps his arm around Archie's shoulder as his eyes land directly on her and she has to suppress a sigh. "Well, who do we have here" his blue eyes scan her up and down the grin still on his lips but she doesn't react to it and just tilts her head at him. Making him chuckle lightly.

The others were engrossed in the conversation that Chris was now joining. Leaving them both alone. Matt removes his arm from Archie's shoulder and puts them in his pockets giving her his full attention.

She was uncomfortable and he knew exactly why. From his face she could also tell that he was very happy to see the notification yesterday.

"Hope you had a good sleep"  The grin on his lips gets bigger, which is why she presses her lips together. "I did" she mumbles quietly. She actually did and in this situation she is glad that she followed her gut feeling, which she really doesn't do often, and followed him because he definitely saw the notification.

"Looks like you're always up late at night, thought you get your 9 hour beauty sleep everyday" The choice of words and the sarcasm in Matt's voice make her eyebrows furrow a little. She makes the gesture very often, but each time without creating a wrinkle.

How do you respond to something like that? She just doesn't answer at all, knowing he got her.

His eyes shamelessly scan her for a few seconds before his gaze returns to hers. "Never knew you had a little brown in your eyes."

She raises her eyebrows at that. "That was a compliment you know, you have pretty eyes" the same cocky voice comes out of his mouth as he presses his tongue against his inner cheek.

"Thank you" she mumbled, she would have preferred to stay quiet and dont react at all, but she wasn't completely rude. Specially when it comes to compliments because they're actually good things, even though she doesn't deal with them very well, which is why she responds to them somewhat awkwardly.

She just didn't like him. There are different reasons, the two of them barely talked so it's not that. But it's slowly becoming too much for her, twice a week is not in her structured weekly schedule.

"So" she purses her lips a little when he starts talking again. Her eyes go down on him. Black pants and black tank top that make his tattoos stand out even more, just like his eyes piercing through her, still focused on her.

When she realizes what she's doing, she stops moving and looks up at him again, but it doesn't go unnoticed by him, how could it not. His ring-decorated hand goes through his messy brown hair, which is still a little wet from probably a shower and that stupid smile still on his pink lips.

"Yo Matt" Archie's voice interrupts the conversation, which Nelly finds so unfortunate and her eyes lock on the other guy too.

"You coming to Elliot's on Saturday?" the whole group looks at him expectant. "Obviusly, but isn't that on Friday? its Sunday." Nat waves his a little confused grimace off.

"We're just planning grump" with that the two are excluded again from the rest of the group in seconds, which is why the girl hangs her shoulder in annoyance.

"You going?" Matt's voice sounds again. "Where?" "elliots."

Elliot's is someone who is almost finished with his bachelor's degree, which is why he has one of those houses for the older ones or almost finished ones, where the parties are always thrown.

Nelly shrugs a little, probably not. "Still have time to think about it, huh" Matt's hands are back in his pockets as he looks down at the brunette which eyes are on him too.

"Right" she nods, she won't go. Only expectation Nat forces her because she wants Abby to meet new people and not alone because she's probably the first one to get wasted.

Abby was here for her first week and doesn't know everything and everyone yet. Plus classes start tomorrow and she would feel bad leaving the new brunette alone.

However, it looks like Chris had other plans when its about the new brunette.

"What's her name again?" she hears chris whisper. "nelly" "yo nells" the brunette turns her head from one brother to the next.

"Do you know where abs is?" "abs?" She raises her eyebrows at Chris. "abby" her eyes widen a little but not just hers nat is suddenly all ears too. "abby? why?" "just asking" the guy says a little defensive.

"Oh my god" "don't start" leo is the only one standing around, a little lost, looking around. "Who's Abby?"

"The new girl Chris didn't stop talking about yesterday" Archie turns to him with a little chuckle. "ohhh" "oh don't ohh me, nothing oh, that didn't happen" Chris scoffs punching Archibald in the shoulder to get him to shut up making the guy leave a little "ow".

"I just think she's nice, that's why I asked" Nelly and Nat give each other a look at that. "right" Nat draws out the word very long and clicks her tongue, "What's so nice about her?" "her eyes"

Chris instantly presses his lips together as he realizes his dumb mistake that blew his cover, "Ha got ya" Archie points at him and laughs.

"okay topic change" he makes a grimace and looks around as he puts his hands in his pocket, definitely feeling awkward because he lets out a little sigh and purses his lips.

"So.. what's your guys favorite color?"

"that's so embarrassing" "green!" "what" "he trying to distract or" "why is nobody helping"

Nelly just looks around with a little grimace that Matt notices as always, but now there wasn't time to talk anymore, sadly. It was obvious that Chris wanted to leave after this making Natalia snicker at his annoyed face.

She would like to go too but she has to wait for Nat. Bee is currently in the library picking up the books she needs for her courses, which is why she has no other choice than stay here.

"See you in class doll" with a small nod he says goodbye, leaving with chris, and leaving her standing there a little dumbfounded on the spot taking a little to realize that he's right.

Right. She totally forgot about that.

She stops a frustrated Groan, she already had class with him last year. the two study the same topic, psychology.

Means she won't get rid of him any less, like last year. Even tho the two of them have talked almost as much this week as they did last year and for some reason it really bothers her. Maybe he noticed it because she kept her sentences or rather words really short and didn't always answer.

It was kinda obvious

He always sat one row behind her in class last year. Mostly talking, drawing in some sort of book, coming in late or not even showing up at all, but he always had an answer when the teacher asked him and it was clear that he was smart. Everyone at this school was at least a little smart, thats what it's known for.

But she didn't have a class with anyone else except Matt. She doesn't know if they both want to do the same things after, but they're both studying psychology. Nat is studying art and Bee medicine where you can see that the three girls are going in completely different directions.

However, everyone has a reason for their choice, even if you don't see it at first glance. That's how her mom always said it.

After the two brothers left probably making their way to the third brother who just walked out of the building, the conversation didn't last long until the other two finally said goodbye leaving the two girls alone. Which follows to Nat finally turned her attention back to Nelly after what felt like an eternity.

"You wanna go look after bee? I have the feeling that the girl is lost again, it can't be real that she needs an hour to pick up books"

marie speaks! 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔

heh.. lets go we lowk starting 😈
sorry yall i #promise im back and gonna lock in 🤞🤞