The Ripple Effect
Chapter 7: Pizza
Declan’s fingers traced lazy patterns across her back as they lay tangled together, the afterglow still warm between them. Sarah’s head rested on his chest, her breathing slow and content, the wrecked schoolgirl outfit little more than a few scraps of fabric now. He let the quiet settle for a moment, then spoke.
“Let’s order pizza,” he said. “Take a longer break. Talk. We can save your other costumes for next time.”
Her face did something complicated—pleasure and disappointment fighting for dominance before settling on warm acceptance. “Next time,” she repeated, testing the words. “I like that. Yeah. Okay. Pizza sounds good, actually. I’m starving.”
She sat up, attempted to straighten the ruined blouse, gave up, and simply pulled it off entirely. For a moment, she was topless on his bed, unselfconscious, reaching for her phone in the pocket of the discarded plaid skirt. Then she grabbed his T-shirt from where he had thrown it on the floor and pulled it on. It hung to mid-thigh on her, transforming her from pornographic schoolgirl to something softer, more domestic.
“Angelo’s okay?” she asked, already opening the app. “I have a coupon code. Half off if you order before nine.”
“Sure.”
“Pepperoni? Mushrooms? What do you like?” She was scrolling through options, her wet hair—the pigtails fully undone now—falling around her face. “I’m a vegetarian, but I don’t care if you want meat. I can just pick it off.”
“Pepperoni’s fine,” Declan said.
“Two medium pepperoni pizzas,” she decided, tapping the screen. “And breadsticks. Oh, and they have this chocolate lava cake thing. Want dessert?” She looked up, grinned. “Work up an appetite and then satisfy it. That’s the whole plan for tonight, right?”
She placed the order—thirty to forty minutes for delivery—and set her phone aside. Then she crawled back onto the bed, tucked herself against him, her head on his chest. The gesture was startlingly intimate, different from the aggressive sexuality that had characterized every other moment of the evening.
“This is nice,” she said quietly. “Just being close to you. I know I’m a lot—all the costume stuff, the sex—but this matters too. Being able to just exist together.” Her fingers traced idle patterns on his stomach. “Ji-won said I’m shallow. Like, I only care about looking hot and getting attention. But she doesn’t get that I can like both. I can like dres and fucking, and also like this. Quiet stuff. Talking. Pizza in bed.”
She tilted her head to look up at him. The smeared makeup had dried into dark smudges beneath her eyes. “Tell me what you are thinking. Be honest with me.”
The question caught him off guard. He hadn’t really thought about what came after this—after everything that had happened. About the fact that Sarah—this version of her, or maybe just the part of her he was finally seeing—might actually want more than just what they’d been doing; something real.
She wanted his reassurance and approval; maybe even his permission.
“I think…” he started, then paused, choosing his words carefully. “I think Ji-won’s wrong.”
“You’re not shallow,” he continued. “You just… know what you like. And you don’t pretend otherwise.” He hesitated, because the rest of it—the part he couldn’t say—sat right behind his teeth. You didn’t used to be like this. Or maybe you were, and I just never saw it. Either way, it wasn’t something he could explain without sounding insane.
Declan met her eyes. “And yeah, I like it. The way you dress. The way you act.” An honest, genuine answer, even if it left out the most important details.
“I like you.” He continued
Her eyes were wide, smeared mascara giving her that just-cried look that somehow only made her prettier in the soft lamplight. The T-shirt—Declan’s T-shirt—had slipped off one shoulder, exposing the curve of her collarbone. She was still tracing slow circles on Declan’s stomach, like she was memorizing his shape.
It wasn’t just desire anymore; she was leaning into the idea that he could be hers. And now she wanted the version of Declan Sawyer who wasn’t part of the fantasy—the one who could actually be her boyfriend.
Declan shifted slightly, adjusting so he could see her face better. “Tell me more about you,” he said. “Tell me about your life before Hartfield. What was Seattle like?”
She blinked, clearly not expecting the redirection. For a moment, something flickered across her face, but then she settled into it, her fingers still tracing patterns on his stomach.
“I’m from Seattle,” she said, as if testing how much she can say. “God. It feels like forever ago already. I mean, it’s only been two months, but college does that, right? Makes everything before feel like a different life.”
She shifted her head on his chest, getting comfortable. “I grew up in Capitol Hill. My parents have this tiny craftsman house—like, genuinely tiny, my bedroom was basically a closet—but it’s in a good neighborhood. Walking distance to everything. My dad teaches music at a community college. Classical guitar. My mom’s a physical therapist.” She paused. “They’re… fine. Normal. Kind of boring, honestly. They wanted me to stay closer to home. Apply to UW. But I needed to get away, you know?”
Declan nodded, letting her talk, then glanced down at her. “What do they think about…” he hesitated, choosing his words, “…how you dress?”
Sarah stilled, and for a second her fingers paused against his stomach. “I mean…” she started, then stopped. “They— They don’t really… see it?” she said finally, though it didn’t sound fully convincing even to her. “I mean, I’ve always dressed how I want,” she said. “They just…” Her expression flickered again. “They trust me.”
Declan caught it—the hesitation, the way her answer didn’t quite land. “You’re really lucky,” he said lightly, shifting his tone. “To have parents who trust you. Can you tell me more about them?”
“They were good parents. They didn’t ignore me,” she said quickly, her voice picking up a defensive edge anyway. “Sometimes… suffocating. My mom, especially. Always asking questions. Always wanting to know where I was going, who I was seeing.”
She made a small face, half-annoyed, half-embarrassed. “She never said it directly, but I could tell she didn’t like any of the boys I was into. She thought I was too young to be dating. Which, I mean…” she added with a small shrug, “she was probably right. But that’s not the point.”
“Anyway, I applied to schools on the East Coast because I figured if I was leaving, I should really leave. Hartfield gave me decent financial aid, and it seemed far enough away that my parents couldn’t just drop by whenever they wanted.” She laughed, brittle. “My mom cried when I left. Like, full-on sobbing at the airport. It was mortifying. My dad just kept hugging me and telling me to call every week.”
She went quiet for a moment, then: “I do miss them sometimes. The house, I mean. My room. There was this coffee shop two blocks away where I’d go to study. They knew my order. The barista—this guy named Trevor—he’d have it ready before I even got to the counter.”
Ji-won is from Seattle, too,” Sarah added, turning the subject away from her own family. “Different neighborhood, though. We didn’t know each other before college, but we bonded during orientation over being from the same city and both being Korean. I thought we’d be close, you know? But she’s…” She trailed off, her expression tightening for a moment, then shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t want to talk about her right now.”
She tilted her face up to look at him. “Your turn. I answered. Now you have to tell me something real about you.”
Declan held her gaze, the smeared mascara and open expectation in her eyes pulling at him.
He exhaled slowly, deliberately, and slid his hand up under the hem of the T-shirt she was wearing, his palm settling against the small of her back. The grounded him. His T-shirt hung too loose on her frame, slipping to reveal extra skin, not that Sarah seemed to mind. A few minutes ago, the physicality of it would have been all he could think about. How lucky he was. And whether he was doing something wrong—
shaping things in a way she hadn’t really chosen.
Now it felt different. The moral questions felt distant, and the physicality felt natural…easy and unforced. Like he was experiencing something that was meant to happen. He was looking at her, and somehow, without him noticing exactly when it had happened, that had started to matter more.
“Something real,” he repeated, nodding once. “Okay. I’ll match you. My parents are academics at Yale. They have… expectations.”
He let out a small breath, somewhere between a laugh and something more tired. “Like, not the kind they say out loud all the time. It’s just… always there. My dad’s a historian. My mom’s in political science. They met at a conference, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the type of people they are. Dinner conversations growing up were… intense. Like, actual arguments about things I didn’t even fully understand yet.”
The smile faded slightly. “I was always supposed to keep up. Or catch up. Or get ahead. There wasn’t really a version of me that didn’t do that. They had it all planned. Ivy League. Grad school. Yale, ideally—but they would have accepted Harvard or Princeton. But I didn’t want that…I wanted my life to be about me and what I wanted. Coming here was… kind of my version of getting away. They weren’t thrilled when I didn’t apply to the places they expected, but they couldn’t really argue with it either. So yeah. That’s my big rebellion. Doesn’t sound like much when I say it out loud,” he added.
It occurred to Declan that he could say more. A lot more. He could tell her about the headaches. About the way things had started to feel… different. About the thought he couldn’t quite shake—that he might have changed her into the teenage boy’s fantasy of what a girlfriend should be.
He was afraid that she didn’t actually like him. That the real Sarah wouldn’t want to be with him. The idea sat there for a second, heavy and impossible. He glanced down at her, at the way she was looking at him now—open, trusting.
Sarah was quiet for a moment after he finished, her fingers still resting lightly against his stomach. “Thank you for telling me that,” she said softly. “Can we just… stay like this for a minute? Not talk. Just… be here. I like this,” she said quietly. “Us, just… appreciating each other for a second.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It felt full, steady, like something had finally clicked into place. The earlier intensity had softened into something warmer, quieter, a kind of ease he had never felt before. Sarah’s weight against him, the slow rhythm of her breathing, the absent movement of her hand, all of it felt grounding in a way that went deeper. He wasn’t thinking about what came next or what any of it meant anymore. He decided at least for tonight, he didn’t need to analyze it. He was just going to be there, aware of Sarah in a way that felt like its own complete moment in time.
“Okay,” she said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Reset. We have food coming, we can’t fall asleep. Let’s talk about something lighter,” she continued. “Low stakes. No pressure. What’s your favorite food?”
Declan blinked. “What?”
She gave him a small, patient smile. “Favorite food. And don’t say pizza, because that’s cheating.”
Despite himself, he almost smiled. “Steak,” he said after a moment. “Medium rare. Simple. No complications.”
“Of course it is,” she said lightly, but there was warmth in it. “Very on-brand.”
“And yours?”
She tilted her head, considering. “Probably tteokbokki. Spicy, messy, kind of addictive.” A small grin. “Also very on-brand.”
A faint sound broke the quiet—footsteps in the hallway outside, uneven and unhurried, moving towards their door. Voices followed, low and male, growing clearer as they moved closer to the door. One of them laughed—an awkward, familiar sound. Declan’s head snapped toward the door.
Sarah went still for a second, then looked up at him. “Is that your roommate?” she asked quietly.
The footsteps stopped just outside the door and then the metallic scrape of a key sliding into the lock and the handle shifted.
Sarah’s eyes went wide. “Declan,” she whispered, scrambling instinctively toward him, grabbing at the edge of the blanket. “You said we had until eleven.”
The door rattled once, like someone testing it. And then—knocking.
Declan moved before the knock came a second time. He slipped out from under the covers and crossed the room in a few quick strides, intercepting the moment just as the handle shifted again from the outside. His hand closed around the doorknob and pulled it open.
Skye jerked back, caught mid-motion, his key hovering awkwardly in front of the lock that was no longer there to receive it. Behind him stood another guy—tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a faded Radiohead T-shirt—already grinning like he’d walked into exactly the situation he’d hoped for.
“Oh,” Skye said quickly, eyes darting past Declan’s shoulder for the briefest fraction of a second before snapping back down. “Hey. Sorry. I didn’t want to interrupt if you were still—I mean, we heard voices, so I thought maybe—”
“Skye was being a gentleman,” the other guy cut in, grin widening. “Didn’t want to accidentally cockblock his roommate. I told him it’s his room too, he’s allowed to exist in it, but—”
He stepped forward slightly and extended a hand. “Jordan Reese. Down the hall. You must be the mysterious Declan.”
Declan took it automatically, aware of everything at once—the lack of a shirt, the heat still clinging to his skin, the fact that behind him Sarah was definitely still on the bed wearing nothing but his T-shirt.
“Yeah,” he said evenly. “Declan.”
“We were just coming back from the dining hall,” Skye added, words tumbling over each other. “Emma Vasquez walked with us but she went back to her dorm because she has an early class, so it’s just us, and I didn’t want to…I mean, if you need more time to, uh…study, Jordan and I can hang out somewhere else—”
“Study,” Jordan echoed, with unmistakable amusement.
Skye’s face flushed. “Shut up.”
“It’s fine,” Declan said, still planted firmly in the doorway, his body doing exactly what he intended—blocking the room behind him. “We ordered pizza. It’ll be here soon. We were just talking.”
“Pizza in bed,” Jordan said. “Very academic.”
“Jordan—”
“I’m just saying,” he continued, clapping Skye on the shoulder. “Priorities. Anyway, I should get going. Nice to meet you, Declan.”
He started backing down the hallway, grin still intact.
“Don’t forget you’ve got that study session Thursday, Skye. With Emma. Who was definitely not flirting with you at all.”
Skye made a strangled noise.
“Goodnight, gentlemen,” Jordan added, before disappearing around the corner.
The hallway quieted, leaving Declan and Skye standing there.
Skye stared very deliberately at the floor. “So,” he said to his shoes. “Should I… come back later? Or…”
Declan shifted just enough to keep himself squarely in the doorway, blocking the room behind him without making it obvious.
“Hey,” he said, lowering his voice, steady and controlled. “I appreciate that. Could you give me maybe fifteen minutes? Just to clean up, get dressed, make the room… presentable. I know it’s your space too.”
“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Of course.” Skye nodded quickly, already stepping backward. “I can just—I’ll go to the common room. Or grab something from the vending machine. Whatever.”
“Thanks, man.”
“No problem. Fifteen minutes is cool.” Skye was halfway down the hall now, relief practically radiating off him.
Declan gave a small nod and closed the door.
Sarah was still on the bed, wrapped in his T-shirt, watching him. Her expression had shifted over the last minute, the earlier nerves settling into something warmer, almost impressed.
“That was smooth,” she said. “The way you handled that. He was so uncomfortable.”
“He’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” Declan replied, already moving toward the closet.
“I know.” Sarah slid off the bed, the oversized shirt falling loosely around her as she crossed to her bag. The movement wasn’t performative anymore—no edge of teasing or deliberate provocation. Just a practical necessity. “And I should probably get dressed too,” she added, unzipping the bag. “I can’t exactly meet your roommate like this.”
She pulled out a clean outfit—shiny black leggings, a soft grey sweater
Declan grabbed a shirt and pulled it on, glancing back at her as she tugged the sweater into place and smoothed it down.
“But I’m staying for the pizza, right? I mean, if that’s okay,” she added, sitting on the edge of the bed as she pulled on the leggings. “I could leave after we eat. Give you and Skye your space back. But…” Her gaze lifted to his. “I kind of want to stay.”
She stood, adjusting the hem of the sweater, then turned slightly toward the mirror on the back of the door. For a moment, she just looked at herself. “I like being here with you,” she said, quieter. “Besides,” she added, a hint of brightness returning, “if I meet him, that makes this more… official, right? Like it exists outside just us.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Stay for pizza. Meet Skye.”
“Okay,” she said quickly, already moving. “Okay—then I should fix my makeup.”
She grabbed her small cosmetic case and stepped over to the mirror, glancing at her reflection and letting out a soft, self-aware laugh. “I probably look like I got railed, which—I mean, I did, but Skye doesn’t need to see the evidence quite that obviously.”
Sarah examined her reflection critically, tilting her head. The mascara beneath her eyes had smudged into dark crescents, her lipstick was completely gone, and there was a sheen of sweat across her forehead. She set to work wiping away the old makeup, then carefully reapplying foundation with a small sponge. Her hands moved with the precision of someone who had spent considerable time on this.
She applied eyeliner with steady hands, drawing a sharp wing at the corner of each eye. Eyeshadow came next—a smoky grey that deepened her eyes, made them sharper, more deliberate. She finished with lipstick; a deep berry hat defined the shape of her mouth. She moved with such focus and efficiency that after only ten minutes, she was done. When she turned back to Declan, she looked like a different person and exactly the same person simultaneously.
The baseline sexual magnetism he had come to associate with her was somehow cranked higher—not through costume now, through fitted clothing and dramatic makeup. A careful woman could wear this outfit to a casual dinner and blend in. On Sarah, it felt impossible not to notice.
“Better?” she asked, running a hand through her damp hair, fluffing it slightly.
She did not wait for his answer. Instead, she pulled out her phone and checked the time. “Skye should be back soon. Pizza too.” She sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing slightly with nervous energy. “Do you think he’ll like me? Skye, I mean. Is he the judgey type? Because I’m not great with people who judge.” She paused. “Actually, I’m probably not great with any people. This is—this is the first time I’m meeting someone from your life. What if I say something stupid?”
“You look beautiful,” he said, meaning it in the safest way possible—as an observation, not a confession. “Skye will think you’re great. There’s nothing to worry about.”
She turned from the mirror to face him. The compliment, simple as it was, landed exactly where she needed it to. Her shoulders eased, tension slipping out of her posture. Her hand rose to his chest, resting lightly over his heart, and her expression softened into something almost fragile. Declan felt it—the way she responded to him, how easily his words seemed to settle something in her. It should have made him hesitate. Instead, he liked it.
“Yeah?” she asked quietly. “You really think so?”
“Yeah.”
She stepped closer and kissed him, a gentle thing without performance behind it. When she pulled back, her eyes were bright. “Okay. Okay, I can do this. Meet your roommate. Have pizza. Be normal.” She laughed. “Is this what normal couples do? Just... exist together in front of other people?”
Declan huffed a quiet laugh. “I think that’s the idea.” He reached for her hand without thinking, lacing his fingers through hers. It felt simple. Easy. “We’ll figure it out,” he added.
Another sound from the hallway, footsteps again.
Sarah squeezed his hand once, quick and grounding. “Okay,” she said under her breath.
Declan glanced at her, then at the door.