Cider Kiss is a steamy romance novella of 14,900 words, blending Contemporary Romance with New Adult College Romance and Psychological Fiction. Set against sticky-floored pool halls, late-night coffee shops, and a rain-soaked music festival, this friends-to-lovers story follows two traumatized college students who keep getting drunk and sleeping together—neither believing they deserve to be chosen. Perfect for readers who want emotional grit wrapped in passionate, messy, very human romance.

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Pangur has always been the backup friend—called only when someone better was busy. She's internalized the math: you are valuable until someone better arrives. So when she keeps ending up drunk and tangled with Ed, her quiet, tattooed classmate from the tutoring center, she assumes she's just convenient. He was drunk. She was there. That's all.

Ed has his own math. After years of bullying that turned his tormentor's voice into his own, he believes he's a curse—that anyone he loves will be destroyed. So when Marcus, his best friend, asks point-blank if something is happening with Pangur, Ed panics. "No. Nothing. Never."

Pangur hears every word from behind an exposed brick pillar.

She doesn't confront him. She doesn't scream. She just walks out into the rain and waits for the other shoe to drop—because it always does. But when the truth finally explodes in Campus Square under dripping green maples, she cries in front of him for the first time. And he has to decide: is he actually a monster, or is that just the lie he's been hiding inside?

They've kissed behind equipment trucks. They've fumbled in a nightclub bathroom. They've made love in his unmade black sheets. But they've never done it sober. They've never said the words. And when he finally shows up at her apartment, wet from the rain, with no alcohol in his system and nowhere left to run—will she let him stay? Or has the backup friend finally learned to walk away first?

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Cider Kiss doesn't pretend love heals trauma. It shows two broken people who keep choosing each other badly—drunk, scared, fumbling—before they learn to choose each other well. This is for readers tired of perfect heroes and healed heroines. Pangur's abandonment wound and Ed's self-loathing aren't fixed by a kiss. They're fixed by a ferry ride, a sober promise, and an engine humming beneath a too-small bunk. You'll close this novella feeling seen, not saved. And you'll want to read it again immediately. Don't miss the messiest, truest romance of the year.

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