Sinner Part 3 [EN]

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“What time is it?” Cat asked sleepily, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Eight-thirty. I didn’t want to wake you. You looked so peaceful.”
With an adrenaline jolt, Cat jumped out of the rocking chair.
“Jen will kill me! We were supposed to meet before the lecture.”
She rushed into the apartment, pushing past Ben. With frantic energy, she threw heaps of clothes from her wardrobe onto the bed.
“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “I already called her. She said she’d cover for you.”
Ben grinned as Cat stopped, a blouse in one hand, and pants in the other.
“You did?” She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him deeply. “What would I do without you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, the faint trace of a smirk appearing on his lips. “Probably not a career in clothing arrangement.” He nodded towards the disordered heap of clothes on the bed.
Cat blushed and giggled, rushing over to the bed and grabbing a hand full of clothes. But as she was about to drop them haphazardly into the closet, she stopped and sniffed.
“Mmm…” She noticed a pleasant scent wafting through the air. “Do I smell pancakes?”
Cat released her hold on Ben and raced through the apartment like a starving dog, following the smell of homemade cherry syrup and fresh coffee.
“Jen can wait!” Cat said as she saw the mountain of steaming pancakes and bowl of red syrup on the small dining-room table. Sitting, she poured every bit of syrup onto the tower of pancakes before stabbing it with her fork.
“I have practice at nine, so I’ll leave you the car,” Ben said.
She looked up, mouth stuffed with pancakes, syrup dripping down her chin. In that moment she saw a warm expression on Ben’s face. All of her feminine traits disappeared when it came to pancakes: she turned into a total beast. From the tenderness in Ben’s gaze, she knew he felt the same way about her quirks that she did about his.
Maybe this relationship was actually going somewhere.
“Msshr sol, a out ring to bbe me?” Cat asked, fragments of pancake falling from her overstuffed mouth as she spoke. She swallowed quickly and raised her voice so Ben could hear her in the bedroom where he was getting dressed.
“Mister Stoll, are you trying to bribe me? You know, my birthday is in two days.”
Ben laughed loudly from the room at the end of the corridor.
“Maybe!”

It was the first day of the semester. Hordes of students crowded the university corridors as they rushed to find their lectures. They stared at print-outs of their schedules as they awkwardly navigated towards their destinations.
Cat took a quick look at the schedule on her phone which Jen had sent her. She was pretty sure that she was in front of the right door.
It’s now or never, Cat told herself as she walked in.
Wooden desks and benches covered the floor of the classroom, connecting opposing walls in a straight line. At both ends were stairs leading down. Opposite this cinema-like layout, the professor’s lectern stood lonely in the center with a large three-wing whiteboard behind it. The room was chaotic as students flooded in and found their seats.
“Cat, over here!” Jen called from the middle row. Her blonde hair fell in ringlets around her shoulders and she wore a skimpy white dress that barely covered her butt.
Cat made her way through the crowd. As she approached, a fat purple-haired boy with ears lined with piercings, scooted in to take the seat Jen had been saving for her.
“Excuse me, can’t you see it’s reserved?” Jen said harshly. She pointed to her purse, which the boy had almost sat on. “Idiot!”
The boy, looking surprised, moved on.