He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Everyone has those monuments. The trick is building something better on top.”
I think about Miles, about secrets, about all the ways I compromised myself for crumbs of affection. Then I look at Ethan—who wants me in daylight, who makes me laugh, who’s trying to give me back pieces of myself I didn’t know I’d lost.
“I want to tell you everything,” I say. “Eventually. When I figure out how.”
“I’ll be here,” he says simply. “Whenever you’re ready.”
And I believe him. That’s the difference between Ethan and everyone else—when he says he’ll be here, he means it. No conditions, no secrets, no pretending it didn’t happen the next day.
Just... here.
It’s terrifying and wonderful and everything I didn’t know I needed.
“We should probably head back,” I say eventually. “I do actually need to work on that assignment.”
“Responsible. I like it.” He helps me up but doesn’t let go of my hand. “Same spot Thursday?”
“For tutoring?”
“For memory replacement therapy.”
I laugh. “You’re terrible.”
“I’m therapeutic.”
As we walk back down the trail, I turn back once to look at the grove.
Now it’s just a pretty spot where my boyfriend made me laugh until my sides hurt.
Boyfriend. The word feels strange and perfect and real.
“Hey, Ethan?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really glad you’re patient.”
25
ETHAN
The computer lab at 11 PM on a Thursday is a liminal space—half the fluorescents are off to save power, the vending machine hums like it's achieving sentience, and the only other soul here is some PhD student who's been staring at the same screen for three hours without blinking.
Perfect conditions for pretending to study while actually falling stupidly in love with Piper Renner.
She's been typing aggressively for the last twenty minutes, occasionally muttering threats at her Distributed Systems assignment. Her hair's in a bun but her wild curls are poking out, and she's wearing an oversized UMS CompSci hoodie that makes her look soft and touchable.
“Stop staring at me,” she says without looking away from her screen. “I can feel your eyes boring into my skull.”
“I'm not staring.” I glance at her screen. “What even is that?”
“Byzantine fault tolerance in distributed systems.” She says it like it should mean something to me.
“Sounds fake.”
“Everything sounds fake to liberal arts majors.”
“Hey!” I protest, spinning my chair to face her. “Game Design is technically?—”
