Except I don’t have to. Because a taller, broader shadow steps in between us.
I don’t even have to look. No one makes my nervous system react like this. No one makes the air feel heavier by simply entering it.
“Everything okay here?” Holden’s voice is low, even, and somehow still takes up all the space. His hands are in his pockets, but there’s nothing casual about the way he’s watching us. When I finally glance over, he’s looking directly at me. Then his gaze moves to Emma. Then Brad.
“Yes. Brad was just about to leave us alone,” I say, voice cool, steady, trying to match Holden’s.
And just like that, whatever arrogance Brad had been clinging to dissolves. Undone by the sheer weight of Holden’s presence—and maybe the look in my eyes, too.
“Good,” Holden says, tone even but unmistakably final. “Then I suggest you all get on with your day.”
We start to move, but he stops us with a sharp snap of his fingers. He taps his chin like he’s justremembered something.
“Oh, and Mr. O’Hara?”
Brad turns, slow and already wary.
“I’ve heard the ABC stores sell great floaties. The ones with palm trees are especially cute.”
His tone is bone-dry. His face, uncompromising.
Brad turns crimson. Actually crimson. He mutters something incoherent and storms off, and while I can admit that he may not have actually been using a floaty that day at the beach… it felt right to say it. Maybe a little petty. But satisfying. I could’ve been the bigger person, but where’s the serotonin in that?
After riding the high of the trip announcement and the small win against Brad, I head to the coffee shop near campus where Kai usually works, hoping to catch him between shifts. But his coworker tells me he doesn’t start until later. No surprise—both he and Maya have been a little more swamped than usual this week, probably drowning in midterms like the rest of us.
Alana and Soren seem to be weathering it fine, at least from the occasional texts and memes. But since they live off campus, they only make the drive in if someone bribes them with food or if there's an event they're trying to guilt us into attending.
I settle for a quick coffee, cold and perfectly sweet, and sit down alone to drink it—no phone, no books, no studying. Just a few minutes to breathe and reset my nervous system before heading back to check on Damon.
When I get back to the lab, it’s quiet and empty. I’ll be honest and say that that’s exactly how I like it. No one to side-eye my Petri dishes, noone loudly rehashing last night’s Rainbow Warriors game, and definitely no one manhandling Damon without knowing the first thing about cephalopods. Just because you’re a marine scientist doesn’t mean you respect all saltwater creatures equally—a disappointing but persistent truth.
So, yeah, right now I’m glad it’s just Damon and me.
I drop my bag by the bench and skip the lab coat—I’m not here to run experiments or collect data. I just came to sit with him. To check in. Tobehere.
I lean my forearms on the counter near his tank. “Hey, buddy.”
He’s still pale, that muted color that makes my chest tighten, but a slow ripple of lavender moves across his skin when he sees me. He reaches out with green—his locomotive arm—and pulls himself closer to the glass.
“I missed you too,” I say, even though I spent half of yesterday glued to his side.
For the next stretch of time, I test a few things casually: his response to my fingers, his interest in a couple familiar puzzles. He’s a bit more reactive today—still sluggish, but not as hushed. It’s not a full win, but I’ll take it.
“You know,” I murmur, watching him drag himself up the tank wall, “I thought you looked very handsome in that orange-brown combo you used to rock. What do you think about bringing that look back?—”
I stop mid-sentence. My eyes land on the wall just beside his tank.
Weeks ago, someone had scribbled a bit of harmless lab graffiti there:Cephalopods > All Other Invertebrates.I’d added my own contribution not long after—Truth of life. Fight me—and since then, it’s gone untouched. Until now.
There, right beneath our two-part exchange, someone’s drawn a small octopus. Not just any octopus—a smiling one, with comically large boxing gloves. I let out a laugh, quick and real.
The gloves are absurdly disproportionate. It’s nothing short of ridiculous. But there’s something weirdly comforting about it. A silent little back-and-forth, passed like notes in class across time and scribbled surfaces.
“Very on brand,” I murmur to Damon, whose slow side-eye suggests either judgment or disappointment in my taste.
Still grinning, I grab a marker from the bench and lean over the wall. Next to the little fighter, I draw a wobbly cuttlefish holding a sign:I’m with him.
It’s not my best work. In fact, my cuttlefish might look more like a squid, but I don’t care. It’s silly. It’s stupid. It makes me feel, for a moment, like things are okay.
