Is this about the coffee-shop asshole/professor/man with eyes that could set paper on fire?
Edwina:
Maybe.
Aster:
Tell me everything later. Gwen and I are going for drinks tonight. Join us?
Edwina:
I’ll see.
I tucked my phone away and kept walking, the glow of the screen fading into the steady rhythm of my footsteps.
My apartment was only a few blocks from campus, a quiet space I had found during my second year, when the dorms had begun to feel too crowded with voices, too heavy with other people’s expectations. It wasn’t much, small, spare, and often too still, but it was mine. I used to tell myself I preferred solitude, that I needed the silence to think. But sometimes, I suspected I had simply learned how to survive it.
Inside, the air greeted me with its usual stillness. I hung my coat on the rack, kicked off my boots by the door, and sank onto the couch with a sigh that felt heavier than twenty-one years should allow. The quiet pressed against me, soft yet absolute, and for a moment, I just let it. Still, there were times I couldn’t quite grow used to the absence of sound. Not after the home I had left behind.
My family lived in New York, in one of those towering glass penthouses that caught the sun during the day and reflected the city’s lights at night. A name on the building polished enough to make people smile with practiced admiration. We were the kind of family others admired from a distance. Well-known, well-dressed, well-behaved. On paper, it was perfection. Butperfection is only a well-rehearsed performance, and I had been performing since childhood.
My mother had trained me in it. She believed affection was something to be earned, that approval came in exchange for accomplishment. I was the eldest, which meant I had to be the model, the pattern everyone else followed. My younger brother, Elliot, was spared from that pressure. Two years younger, he moved through life untouched by the sharpness of our mother’s expectations, while I lived beneath her constant, unspoken scrutiny.
Be pleasant. Be polished. Be perfect.
My father, quieter and gentler, existed on the periphery of her storms. He managed the family business and rarely intervened in the emotional wars my mother waged. He asked about my studies, offered the occasional word of encouragement, and listened when I spoke, but his silence was its own kind of complicity.
So I left. I chose Greystone precisely because it was far enough, because its anonymity offered the illusion of freedom. I wanted distance, space, a place where I could breathe without feeling my mother’s voice dictating every decision.
Even my car—a sleek black Audi parked beneath the building—stood as a silent reminder of the life I had been trying to escape. I hadn’t driven it in three years. Not since the accident. It had happened the week after my eighteenth birthday. A chain collision on a frozen stretch of highway. I remembered the sharp scent of gasoline threading through the cold, the metallic taste of fear in the back of my throat, the seatbelt biting into my ribs until breathing had felt impossible.
I remembered the chaos, the distant wail of sirens, the world collapsing into shards of glass and the frantic pulse in my chest. And then, through the blur, a man had appeared. Not one of the firefighters, someone who had stopped before them. Hehad forced the door open, his voice low but composed, cutting through the noise with quiet certainty.You’ll be okay.Just that. Nothing more. His hands had been cold against my skin, trembling slightly, yet his presence had carried a strange calm that kept the panic from consuming me.
I had never seen his face clearly. Only fragments lingered, dark hair, a coat dusted with snow, the glint of a watch catching the weak light as he reached for me. When they had pulled me out, he was gone. No one had ever mentioned him afterward, and eventually, I stopped asking.
I told people I stopped driving by choice. For convenience, or simplicity. But the truth was quieter, more stubborn. I couldn’t. The thought alone twisted something in my chest.
Sometimes I wondered if that was the real beginning of my unraveling, not the move to Greystone, not the distance from home, but that moment of helplessness. The realization that no matter how tightly I held control, some things would always slip from my grasp.
Just as they had begun this morning. Just as they had with him.
I didn’t know what he saw when he looked at me, only that his gaze seemed to strip the air of warmth. It left traces, marks that pulsed long after he was gone. I didn’t want to be seen, not through that cold precision of his, yet invisibility no longer seemed possible. He had noticed me, and something about that simple fact unsettled the balance I had so carefully constructed.
I drew my knees closer and sank deeper into the couch, the soft hum of the city spilling in through the half-open window. The lights outside painted quiet patterns on the wall, slow and shifting, until the room itself felt suspended between thought and silence.
Maybe tomorrow would bring calm. Maybe the world would right itself again.
Or maybe it was already too late for that.
The phone on the cushion beside me buzzed once, the sound small yet startling against the stillness.
Aster:
Come out. Gwen and I are going for drinks. You need something stronger than overthinking.
I stared at the message for a moment, the glow of the screen washing pale light across my hands. The day had settled over me in layers, a weight I couldn’t quite shake, pressing at the edges of thought.
Me:
