Me:Happy New Year, Austen.
On January third, I drove back to campus.
The truck handled the I-95 corridor without complaint, heater blasting, radio playing the same classic rock Dad had raised me on.I’d left at dawn, watched the sun rise over the Delaware Water Gap, and felt the tension drain from my shoulders with every mile north.
Austen was waiting.
I knew because he’d texted his arrival time—4:47 p.m., precise to the minute—and I’d calculated my own to match.When I pulled into the campus lot at 4:52, his Camry was already there, engine off, a figure visible through the driver’s side window.
I parked two spaces away.Got out.The January air bit at my face, sharp and clean.
Austen emerged from his car.He was wearing the green sweater—he’d kept it, or bought one like it—and his hair was longer than I remembered, curling at his temples.
We stood there, two spaces apart, breath fogging between us.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello.”
“Good drive?”
“Acceptable.Yours?”
“Long.”
The distance felt unbearable.Three weeks of screens and texts and the phantom weight of his absence, and now he was here, real, solid, close enough to touch.
I closed the gap in four steps and kissed him against his car.
He made a sound—surprised, pleased—and his hands fisted in my jacket, pulling me closer.The cold vanished.The parking lot vanished.Everything vanished except the pressure of his mouth and the proof that he was here, he was real, the separation was over.
When we finally broke apart, his glasses were fogged.
“That was—” he started.
“Yeah.”
“We’re in public.”
“I don’t care.”
“Someone could see.”
“Still don’t care.”
He looked at me, eyes bright behind the foggy lenses.“I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”I pressed my forehead to his.“Let’s go inside.”
“Yes.Let’s.”
The next six weeks existed in a haze.
We fell into a rhythm—classes, practice, study sessions that turned into something else, nights tangled together in Luke’s narrow bed.The secret held, mostly.Maya covered for us when she could, deflecting Ryan’s questions with the skill of a veteran diplomat.
We went on a date.A real one—off-campus, a Thai place twenty minutes away where no one knew us.I ordered pad Thai.Austen ordered something with a heat level that made my eyes water just looking at it.We argued about probability theory and whether pineapple belonged on pizza and what constituted a “real” date versus “just eating.”
“This is a real date,” Austen insisted.“We traveled.There’s atmosphere.You’re not wearing a jersey.”
