“Yo, you gonna eat or just stare it down until it gets scared?”
I glance up at one of the guys across from me, lifting a brow.
“You worried about my macros now?”
He grins, shrugs, and the conversation moves on like it always does—easy, loud, uncomplicated.
I let it carry over me.
I don’t look back at her.
Not once.
But I don’t need to.
I can feel where she is.
I can feel when she stands, when her chair slides back, when her presence shifts and then disappears entirely.
And when she’s gone, the space feels… off.
I hate that more than anything.
The quad is where it almost cracks.
It’s busy, midday traffic, people moving in every direction, bikes cutting through, voices overlapping. It should be easy to blend in, to pass unnoticed.
It’s not.
I see her too late to avoid it.
She’s walking straight toward me, backpack slung over one shoulder, sunglasses pushed up on her head, that same calm, composed expression locked in place like armor.
She sees me.
I know she does.
Her shoulders square just slightly, her spine straightening like she’s bracing for impact without showing it.
I don’t slow down.
Neither does she.
We pass each other close enough that our arms brush, just a brief slide of skin and fabric, nothing that anyone else would clock.
But my body reacts immediately, a tightening through my chest, my hand flexing at my side like it almost reached for something it wasn’t supposed to.
I keep walking.
So does she.
No glance back. No words spoken.
We already said so much already.
Just forward.
She felt it.
