Which means she’s giving me something.
Pressure. Public. Chosen.
I let it settle in my body like a promise I don’t say out loud.
This won’t burn out. This isn’t something I can outlast.
And when I finally speak, it won’t be to defend myself.
It’ll be to detonate something that’s been waiting way too long to go off.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter 7
Gio
Istep into the lecture hall, and the air conditioning bites through my hoodie like it’s got a grudge. Too cold. Too loud. Too many bodies packed into rows that don’t quite fit the number of opinions in the room. Everyone’s performing belonging—pretending they aren’t tracking who sits where, who talks, who gets listened to.
I scan the rows without meaning to.
Front row.
Zoë.
Of course.
Front and open. Upright. Visible. She sits with her laptop out like a weapon, shoulders loose, spine straight, already engaged, already clocking the room the way people do when they expect to be called on and aren’t afraid of it. This place adjusts to herwithout her asking. Chairs scrape quieter around her. A couple conversations die mid-sentence. Even the professor’s cadence shifts a fraction when his eyes land on her.
It irritates me. Immediate. Sharp.
She belongs here. The space fits her the way it fits people who never have to fight for the chair.
She answers a question without looking back—voice clean, unhesitating—and a few people around her nod like she just handed them permission to understand something. Meanwhile, I’m doing mental math on how many weeks into the semester we are and how badly I should’ve read the syllabus by now.
I slide into a seat toward the back.
Deliberately.
Away from her.
Doesn’t help.
My focus splits whether I want it to or not—half on the professor, half on the way Zoë flips her hair back over one shoulder without breaking concentration. Her gaze stays forward. She doesn’t check who’s watching.
The air thickens anyway, pressure settling low and heavy in my chest like the room holds its breath around her.
I’m not the only one who feels it.
That’s the problem.
“Rossi.” The professor’s voice cuts through the low hum, steady and present. Enough to snap a few heads in my direction. “You with us?”
A couple students snicker. Curious.
I nod once. Too slow. Attention clings longer than it should, like people are weighing something. Measuring how I look today against whatever version of me they’ve been fed.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m here.”
