My throat tightened. “I feel stupid. Like my brain thinks I deserve an award for…lying here. Not freaking out. Like—‘congrats, Holly, you touched someone without imploding.’”
His expression softened, a small, genuine thing. “Seems like a big deal to me.”
I stared at my hands, cheeks hot. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Sometimes the stuff that works doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
Something inside me shifted. A tiny click. A quiet easing I didn’t know I’d been waiting for.
“Do you regret it?” he asked.
“No.” The answer came without hesitation. “I just don’t know what to do with it now.”
“Me either.”
I got up and pulled my sweatshirt over my head. “I should go. Before your mom wakes up and thinks I broke in to steal your innocence or something.”
He huffed a laugh. “She wouldn’t notice if a marching band set up in the living room.”
Fair. I hesitated in the doorway. “Last night…mattered. Even if it feels stupid to admit that.”
“It wasn’t stupid,” he said firmly. “It was brave.”
That word hit in a place I didn’t let people touch. I swallowed, nodded once, and slipped out. “See you around, Jackson,” I said softly.
His answering smile was small, real. “Yeah, Malibu. You will.”
Next thing I knew, he had left for training. And I’d barely wrapped my head around the idea of starting college before my father was pulling strings, making phone calls, greasing palms—whatever it took to make sure I didn’t have to set foot in a dorm. “It’s not negotiable, bug,” he’d said in that surgeon’s tone of his, clipped and precise. “You’re not ready for that environment.”
For once, I didn’t argue. He was right. Throw me into a building crammed with strangers, and I’d either lock myself in my room until spring or pick a fight with the first girl who breathed too loudly. Probably both.
So instead, I stood in the middle of a two-bedroom apartment on the edge of Athens with the keys digging into my palm and the overwhelming sense that I didn’t deserve any of it. Polished hardwood floors. Granite counters. A balcony big enough to throw parties I’d never host. School was still a couple of months out, but my hammering heart hadn’t gotten the memo. There was nothing to freak out about…yet.
Maria whistled low when she walked in, Jewel bouncing on her hip. “Girl, this place is bigger than my whole house.”?
I was sitting cross legged on the floor and guilt immediately churned in my gut. “I know. I feel—”
“Stop.” She turned so fast she almost tripped. Her eyes snapped, sharp as knives. “Don’t you dare apologize. You hear me? Don’t. You didn’t steal this. You didn’t cheat for it. You use it.”
I blinked, caught between shame and gratitude. “But—”
“Shut the heck up,” Maria cut in, smirking now. “Seriously. You’re not allowed to feel bad for something that makes your life easier. You’ve had enough hard already.”
Jewel gurgled as if seconding the point, reaching sticky fingers toward my face. I laughed, the sound rusty but real, and let Maria boss me into hanging curtains and rearranging furniture until the apartment felt less like a showroom and more like a home. We made a game out of it. Maria held up two sets of curtains and crouched down in front of Jewel like it was a royal decree. “All right,princesa, left or right? Which one’s worthy of our girl here?”
Jewel squealed, grabbed a fistful of the left panel, and promptly stuffed it into her mouth.
Maria cackled. “Done. Decision made. You can’t argue with baby logic.”
I shook my head, smiling in spite of myself. “So my décor is going to be determined by whatever tastes good to an infant?”
“Exactly,” Maria said, already climbing onto a chair to hang the chosen set. “Kid’s got better instincts than either of us.”
For the first time since I’d walked into the apartment, the knot of guilt in my stomach loosened. It wasn’t about how much I had compared to her. It was about filling the space with people who made it feel alive. And with Maria and Jewel in it, my apartment finally felt like it belonged to me.
Still, when Maria left that night, the silence pressed down like a weight. I curled up on the couch, staring at the neat rows ofbooks I hadn’t read yet and the perfectly folded blankets I didn’t want to use. Everything felt too clean, too empty, too much.
The days blurred after that. I bounced between the clubhouse, my apartment, quick visits with my parents, and afternoons at Maria’s—Jewel babbling on the floor while we folded laundry or cooked together. And then there were the damn mixers. Every week another glossy flyer or email telling me Ihadto show up to some “welcome event” if I wanted the “real college experience.” If the real college experience meant warm soda, sticky floors, and people shouting in my ear, then I’d take a hard pass. I went to two out of obligation before swearing off them entirely.
