Page 14 of The Cuffing Game
He was about to write down Mia’s response when someone hammered on his bedroom door. Noah opened it to see Thad, who was all out of breath. His Little’s usually slicked-back brown hair was a puffed-out, tangled mess, like he’d been running around the house.
Noah raised his eyebrows.
“Hey,” said Thad. “Sorry. But did you tell Kyle that he can have a party in the backyard?”
“Just a sec,” Noah told Mia. He put himself on mute before responding to Thad. “What? No. I haven’t seen him all day. I just came back from campus a short while ago.”
“That son of a...” Thad let out an exasperated groan. “Ithoughtit was weird that he said youout of all people wanted to throw a party.”
Noah smirked. Out of all their fraternity brothers, Noah was known as the “antisocial” one. Thad and Brent, who were now both officers, didn’t pester him to come out to events he didn’t want to attend, and, in exchange, Noah helped them with recruitment every year. It was a nice trade-off.
“Is Kyle giving you a lot of trouble?” Noah asked. “I didn’t know he was that kind of guy, to be honest.”
Thad exhaled. “I hate to say it, but yeah. He keeps lying and trying to get away with stuff. Man, being a Big is hard stuff. Was I this bad, too?”
Noah shot his Little a fond smile. “Nah, you made things easy. I was in the middle of something, but let me know if I can help out in any way.”
“Appreciate it, bro.” Thad nodded and left.
Noah unmuted himself and said to Mia, “I’m back. Sorry, fraternity business.”
“Er, okay,” she replied. “Anyway, the SPC wants us to have a concrete plan on how we’re going to crowdfund by next week. They also said we won’t be able to officially cast anyone else until we raise enough money to make everything happen.”
“I’ll start promoting the show on my social media then. The sooner we get started the better.”
Noah got out his phone from his pants pocket, his head already swirling with ideas.
“Yup,” said Mia. “Do you want to brainstorm together?”
“No. Just send me the sign-up link for the show.”
There was a pause. Mia’s voice pitched higher, like she regretted asking Noah for help. “Uh, okay. Good luck, I guess?”
“Thanks.”
Noah opened up his apps and got started.
Chapter Six
Mia
Mia stared, transfixed, at the video playing on Alex’s phone.
Since Noah had told her he’d “get started,” she’d just assumed he’d have some kind of update for her by their next production meeting at Carlisle. What she didn’t think would happen was... whatever was happening on the phone screen right now.
Noah danced to a cute, poppy girl-group song, swaying his hips and making heart signs with his fingers. Instead of smirking or playing it cool like he usually did in his videos, Noah smiled, so brightly that Mia sat back down in her conference room chair. And immediately got back up again. Because her friendscould notfind out about her crush on Noah.
When they started working together, whenThe Cuffing Gamewas stillCampus Crush, she didn’t tell any of her friends about her feelings because they simply seemed irrelevant. But now, this was all just embarrassing. What kindof showrunner would they think she was if they knew she had a crush on one of their contestants?
Mia willed herself to calm down. She glanced around the room, but luckily her friends hadn’t noticed her overreaction. In fact, they were too busy reacting to Noah themselves.
“This is the first time Noah has ever smiled like that in his content before,” Alex said in an awestruck voice. “Even in the funny videos, he always keeps a straight face. Wow, I’m in love.”
“He’s notthatgreat.” Damien rolled his eyes.
“Agreed,” Kallie replied. “And judging by the comments, this video is rather polarizing. But I think that’s intentional. Given the over-a-million view count.”
“Posting a video that’s so shocking and out of character that people debate about it in the comments,” Mia said, trying her best to keep her voice flat and sound only mildly interested. “That’s a smart way to make sure your content gets pushed onto a lot of people’s feeds.”
