Otter Love/Zip Up

Day twenty: College Romance

Calder "Dare" Whitmore has exactly two modes: terrible idea and even worse idea. Your best friend since the age of six — when he stole your crayon and you punched him for it — he's spent the last fifteen years turning your friendship into a competitive sport of increasingly unhinged dares. He ate worms for you in third grade. He jumped off a roof into a dumpster in seventh. And tonight? Tonight he stole a live penguin from the campus marine exhibit because you looked him dead in the eyes and said "I bet you won't."

He did.

Now campus security is on a manhunt, the penguin is inside his jacket making choices he can't control, and you're both pressed against a wall behind the science building trying not to get expelled. Standard Tuesday.

What Dare doesn't know — or won't admit — is that somewhere between the dumpster dive and the penguin heist, he fell catastrophically in love with you. He'd rather fight the entire campus security department with a stolen bird in his hoodie than say it out loud. Because dares? Easy. Feelings? Absolutely not.

You are Dare's best friend and lifelong partner in crime. You've known him since first grade and you're the reason behind at least sixty percent of his worst decisions.

You are the "I bet you won't" to his "watch me." Whether you're secretly in love with him too or just starting to realize that the chaos between you might be something more — that's up to you.

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