We collapse together, our bodies spent, our breath ragged. He rolls to the side, pulling me against him, his arms wrapping around me, holding me close.
I can feel his heart pounding in his chest, the steady rhythm a counterpoint to my own racing pulse. I look up at him, my body thrumming with satisfaction, and possibility.
"Wow," I say, my voice soft with wonder.
He looks down at me, his expression tender, his eyes dark with something that looks like promise. "Indeed," he says.
CHAPTER 10
URSAK
The envelope arrives with the morning mail, crisp and official beneath a stack of grocery circulars and coffee shop coupons. My name is printed in block letters: URSAK IRONTONGUE. The return address makes my stomach clench, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Not now. Not when everything finally...
I set down my coffee cup with deliberate precision. Three sugars today, just how Maya showed me. The ceramic clinks against the saucer, the sound sharp in my too-quiet kitchen.
The seal tears with a whisper. Inside, legal jargon marches across government letterhead in neat formations. Words likereview,status, andappearance requiredblur together until one phrase crystallizes with brutal clarity:
Failure to appear will result in immediate deportation proceedings.
My hands don't shake. They wouldn't dare. But the paper crumples slightly at the edges where my grip tightens.
Fourteen days. They're giving me fourteen days to prove I belong here.
The coffee tastes like ash now. I push the cup away and read the letter again, slower this time, parsing eachsyllable for hidden meaning. Standard procedure, they claim. Routine verification of academic visa status. But nothing about immigration feels routine when you're the one standing in the crosshairs.
I fold the letter along its original creases and place it beside my breakfast plate. The eggs have gone cold, yolk congealing into yellow rubber. My appetite has vanished anyway.
Focus. There must be precedent. Protocol. A solution.
I rise from the table and move to my study corner, where six notebooks wait in their morning arrangement. Hungarian, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and English, each representing years of careful study, linguistic precision, the kind of methodical progress that builds careers and justifies visa renewals.
The Hungarian notebook falls open to yesterday's entry:szerelem. Love. I'd been practicing the pronunciation, rolling the unfamiliar vowels around my tongue while thinking of Maya's laugh.
Maya.
Her name hits like a physical blow. Last night changed everything, her skin against mine, her breath catching as I?—
No. I slam the notebook shut. Romance is a luxury I can't afford now. Not when my entire future hangs by bureaucratic threads.
The phone slides against the table. Maya's name lights up the screen, probably wondering why I slipped out before dawn. I've never been good at morning-after conversations in any language.
I let it ring.
The second call comes an hour later while I'm pacing between my bookshelves, pulling down immigration law texts I'd hoped never to need again. Maya's voice drifts through voicemail, concern creeping into her tone.
"Hey, it's me. Just wanted to make sure you're okay? Last night was..." A pause. "Call me back."
I delete the message without finishing it.
By noon, I've filled three pages with frantic notes. Hungarian immigration precedents from the 1990s. German academic visa extensions. A Portuguese case study involving a linguistics professor, though his situation involved marriage fraud, hardly applicable.
Marriage.
The word stops me cold. In some countries, it's still a path to residency. But Maya and I have known each other for what… weeks? The idea is absurd. Impractical. The kind of desperate measure that only works in the romance novels I hide beneath my academic journals.
The phone goes off again. This time it's a text:Starting to worry. Please just let me know you're alive?
