“The coffee-shop asshole.”
Her mouth fell open, then closed again before she burst into laughter that echoed down the hall, bright and scandalized.
“Stop laughing,” I hissed, swatting her arm. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s hilarious,” she managed between breaths. “Edwina, you baptized him before first period. You marked him. You assaulted a man with caramel and steamed milk, and now he’s your professor. He’s going to remember you forever. He even said your last name like he was etching it into a gravestone.”
“He did not.”
Aster smirked. “No, but that Miss Carter moment? That was Shakespearean-level grudge holding.”
I pressed my lips together, the ghost of a sigh caught in my throat. “He looked different,” I admitted softly. “In the café, I didn’t notice the glasses. Or the way he carried himself.”
“Right?” Aster’s grin widened. “He’s got that thing. That tortured, probably-hasn’t-slept-in-a-decade, might-have-buried-a-body-but-writes-beautiful-sentences kind of energy.”
I groaned, pushing her gently toward the stairs. “You are absolutely no help.”
“You love me,” she teased, looping her arm through mine again.
“Debatable.”
We stepped outside, and the cold greeted us instantly. The wind struck my face, sharp and unrelenting, tugging at the edges of my coat. The sky still hung low and heavy, unchanged since morning, but something in me had shifted. I felt off-balance, as though my skin no longer fit quite right, as though I had stepped into a story I hadn’t meant to start and no longer knew how to end. No one had ever looked at me the way Professor Stonedid, with a calm so cutting it felt almost cruel. It wasn’t merely humiliation that lingered. It was something darker, threaded with tension, something that hummed beneath my skin in a way I couldn’t name without unraveling.
Aster’s voice broke through my thoughts. “You going to be okay?” she asked, her tone softer now.
I hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah,” I lied. “It’s just a class.”
But deep down, I knew it wasn’t.
We reached the crosswalk. The light turned green, the world briefly washed in motion. I hesitated.
“You’re heading back to the dorm?” I asked.
“Nah, Gwen texted. She’s still trapped in that econ nightmare. I’m going to meet her after.”
I nodded slowly, my gaze drifting toward the old library across the quad. Its windows were fogged, its halls quiet, untouched by the noise outside. “I think I’ll go study for a bit.”
Aster raised a brow. “Study or spiral?”
“Maybe a bit of both.”
She looped her arm around me once more before stepping back. “Try not to commit any more acts of caffeinated violence.”
“No promises.”
She grinned, saluted, and turned toward the student center. I crossed the snowy path alone. The wind bit sharper now, cutting through wool and skin alike.
The library stood ahead in its familiar stillness, warm and patient in the fading light. I told myself it was safe. At least, it used to be.
There were days—most, if I was honest—when I felt more a placeholder in my own life than a participant, a collection ofexpectations held together by ambition and caffeine. The dutiful daughter. The dependable friend. The girl with clean notes and quiet eyes. No outbursts, no indulgence, no room for the kind of mistakes that couldn’t be redeemed by extra credit. People liked to think I was composed, but in truth, I was only well-rehearsed in the art of control, skilled at folding every loud thought into neat corners and tucking them behind a polite smile.
I didn’t mind solitude. I welcomed it, even. Solitude asked for nothing in return. It never questioned the tremor in my voice or the ache behind my ribs. It simply allowed me to exist in peace, quiet and unseen.
The library rose ahead, a cathedral of silence in aged brick and shadowed glass, its stillness holding the weight of centuries. Inside, warmth settled immediately, the scent of paper and varnished wood wrapping around me in soft familiarity. Footsteps drifted through the aisles, low voices hushed by reverence.
I climbed to the upper floor, where quiet deepened into something almost sacred. My corner waited by the window, half-hidden between a leaning shelf and a chipped end table. The radiator nearby hummed in gentle rhythm, sending waves of warmth against my legs as I sat down.
Before reaching for my notebook, I pulled a worn paperback from my bag, a dark romance I’d been reading in stolen moments. It was the kind of story that pressed its fingerprints on you, the kind where love was both salvation and undoing. My fingers brushed the underlined words across a page: He looked at her the way sin observes the devout—hungry for reverence, but never for forgiveness.
