His eyes are steady now, searching. Not cruel. But not soft either. “It’s not that simple.”
“No,” I say, my heart sinking under the weight of it, “it’s exactly that simple.Youmade it that simple.”
He runs a hand through his hair, and I’ve never seen him look this unguarded—this close to something like regret. “Coralie?—”
“No,” I cut in again, stepping back now. Because if I don’t, I might say something I can’t take back. Or worse, I might ask him to say something he’s already decided he won’t give. “I came for answers, and I got them. I… read this whole thing wrong.”
Miscommunication is like quantum superposition: two meanings can exist at once until someone observes them directly and collapses them into one. And that’s what we’re doing right now. But despite trying to observe whatever this situation is, two meanings remain, the one he gives me out loud and the one I’m sure I’ll never find out.
The silence isn’t awkward. It’s heavy. Dense with whatever was never allowed to become anything at all.
He doesn’t reach for me.
He doesn’t apologize.
He doesn’t offer even the smallest thread to hold onto.
And maybethat’swhat hurts the most.
Because I meant every word. I came here soaked and vulnerable and entirely too honest, and all he did was tell me to leave it all outside. Like an umbrella in the hallway.
I shake my head slowly. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll focus. I’ll keep my head down, do the work, and leave the feelings at the door. Just like you said.”
His jaw ticks like he wants to say something else—but he doesn’t. So I nod once, tight. “Thanks for the clarification.” Then I turn, fingers curled into fists, and walk out of the office with wet sneakers squeaking against the wooden floors of the hallway. If he says anything as the door closes behind me, I don’t hear it.
I should’ve ended the Holden experiment before it ever began. I should’ve never given it a chance to mutate, to grow legs and crawl into the part of me where logic usually lives.
But I came here hoping for answers. Hoping, maybe, I hadn’t made it all up. Hoping it meantsomething. Hoping for that groundbreaking discovery.
Now I know.
I did, do, feel something. Real and inconvenient and irreversible. I imagined it going two ways. But he made it clear it’s going no further. That the butterflies in my tummy reached their expiration date and were never meant to fly in the first place.
He didn't mean to hurt me. But intent doesn’t factor outcome, does it?
And this—this ache I’m walking away with—is just another feeling I’ll leave behind.
Right outside the door to his office.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next time someone tells me to “be grateful,” I’m putting shrimp in their car’s AC vents. Seriously. Do you know how long it would to get that sort of smell out? Let them sit in that aromatic hellscape and see how quickly their need to force-feed gratitude to everyone dissolves.
I get it—gratitude is supposed to be noble.The parent of all virtues, according to Cicero or whoever. But I doubt the Roman philosopher ever had to navigate my particular brand of distress, and I’m quite confident he never had to do it in 95% humidity.
And, for the record, Iamgrateful. Deeply. For almost everything, all the time. I nearly cried over a sandwich last week. Not even exaggerating—the lady at the deli somehow found the perfect toast-to-melt ratio, and I thanked her five times, minimum. I’m the kind of person who writes thank-you notes to professors for feedback I didn’t want to hear.
I’m grateful for being here, at a university I used to dream about like it was a place on the moon. I’m grateful for the brain in my skull—she’s come a long way since her pea-sized days. And I’m grateful for the people who keep me tethered to myself. My parents, who send me blurry but heartfelt sunrise photos from back East. Blythe, who floats in and out of my inbox with advice, memes, and the occasional existential scream. And my friends—well, they’re a chaotic blessing. Loud, loyal, and exactly what I need.
I’m even grateful for the sting Holden left behind last month when I, in a brief lapse of self-preservation, confronted him in his office. Because as much as it hurt at the time, the wondering—the hoping—has stopped. He made the boundaries clear, sharp as glass, and since then, there’s been nothing left to reach for. And weirdly enough, that clarity has been a relief. I’ve had more space in my brain for everything else: classes, lab, my thesis, my friends. Life, basically.
He’s tried to talk to me about it since. Twice. Told me he was sorry for thewayhe said it. Told me I had to believe him when he said it was for my own good. The words came out in that very Holden kind of way—measured, controlled, half-coded. As if he hoped I’d decode the subtext he couldn’t say out loud. His face gave almost nothing away, but his eyes were... something else. Alive. Burning. But both times I told him the same thing: he was right, and I was sorry for putting him in that position.
And I meant it. He’s my TA. There are rules. Boundaries. Lines that aren’t supposed to blur. As Theo’s best friend and Summer’s ex and the school’s walking brainiac, he’s got enough pressure on him already. Of course there are things he can’t let himself do. So yeah, I do regret barging into his office, drenched and spiraling, trying to make sense of a situation I’d built out of fragments and almosts. I wanted an answer. He gave it to me.
Has that made it easier to be around him? Not even remotely. The tension still hits like a rogue current whenever he walks into a room. Istill can’t help but track the movement of his shoulders, or the way his voice sounds when he sayspectoral finlike it’s a line of poetry. I still think about him more than I should.
But I keep it to myself now. It’s mine. Just a private, harmless ache shared between me, myself, and I. We’ve found a rhythm—clean, professional, efficient. Science questions, science answers. Polite nods in hallways. And, okay, the occasional glance at his biceps when he’s looking the other way.
