I pull my laptop back open and force myself to read the response paper from the beginning. I find the place where I stopped. I write one sentence. Then another. The argument comes slowly, then faster, the familiar focus of actual work pulling me out of my own head and into something with clear parameters, a correct answer, and a professor who will read it without any agenda beyond whether the argument holds.
I write for forty minutes without stopping.
When I finally sit back, my coffee is cold and my hand aches from the pen, and outside the library windows, Seattle is fully awake, gray and moving, the quad filling with the morning foottraffic of people who slept properly and ate breakfast and are not sitting in a library carrel thinking about handwriting.
I save the document.
Close the laptop.
Sit for a moment in the quiet.
My phone buzzes on the table. Cody. I look at his name on the screen and feel the familiar cold settling in — not dread exactly. Something more like an actress warming up to perform her lines. I let it ring twice, which is what a normal girlfriend would do at seven forty in the morning, not too eager, not avoidant.
I answer.
"Hey." My voice comes out warm and slightly sleepy. Perfect.
"Morning." His voice is good. Stronger than the previous day, the roughness is almost gone. "You're up early."
"I decided to get ahead on a paper."
"At the library?"
"Yeah," I smile. “How do you know?”
He makes a soft sound — fond, familiar. "That's my girl. Always working."
I look at the empty chair across from me.
"How are you feeling?" I ask.
"Good." A pause. "I've been thinking about you all morning."
"Yeah?"
"About when can I see you properly. Not the hospital. Somewhere normal." Another pause, and my belly rushes with butterflies as I think about the next step into normalcy. "My dad's place, maybe. Dinner. Just us."
"That sounds nice," I say, not wanting to ask when he’ll be released from the hospital.
"Yeah?"
"Of course, babe." I’m forcing a smile, hoping he can hear it in my voice.
"Good." And there it is — that word again, landing the same way it always lands, satisfied and certain, like the correct box has been checked. "I have some planning to do now. It’s something to look forward to. I’ll come back with a date set."
"I'll be there no matter what."
We talked for four more minutes about nothing. His physical therapy. A show he's been watching. Whether I've been eating enough because I sound thin, which is not a thing a person can sound like, but I laugh at it the way I'm supposed to. I embody the warmth and ease of a girl who is relieved that her boyfriend is recovering, looking forward to dinner, and not thinking about anything complicated.
I hang up and set my phone face down on the table.
I glance around, worried my call was being eavesdropped on. I can’t say I’m relieved not to see a dark hoodie somewhere.
The library is fuller now, the morning properly underway, voices and movement filtering through the quiet of the third floor in soft layers. Someone sits two carrels down and opens a laptop. A group of students congregates near the elevators, talking about something I can't hear.
Normal.
Everything is completely normal.
