Page 102 of Autumn on My Mind

I’ve fallen completely in love. With him, with the life we could build together—I’ve fallen in love. And I want to live in this pocket of time forever, until someday rolls around and we’re not encumbered by secret dating and student life.

Someday we can marry. Someday we can start a family. Someday we’ll grow old together. Promises I make myself but am too scared to say out loud.

Because both of us have grown more stressed as the semester wears on, but it’s taken a toll on Dom especially. He retreats into himself, distance where before there was closeness, and all I can do is wait it out. He doesn’t seem to feel the same relief I do as our classes wind down; if anything, he looks worse, circles under his eyes and a gaze that darts away from mine.

His avoidance births a fear that nibbles at me from inside, with sharp, frantic teeth and haunted dreams.

“Just tell me what’s going on,” I say one snowy day when we’re holed up in the library, studying for different classes across the table from each other. He’s doing all the right things—holding my hand, smiling, laughing—but they’re strained, and behind his eyes there’s a wall.

“Nothing’s going on,” he mutters, half distracted as he thumbs through a few pages of notes.

But he doesn’t ask what I’m talking about. He doesn’t need to.

“You’re a liar,” I say under my breath, loud enough that he can hear me; a rare flash of genuine laughter finds his lips before it fades away, and he’s gone again, retreated behind the wall in his eyes.

It’s the last laugh I hear from him. We’re supposed to meet for lunch the next day, but he cancels; later in the afternoon he calls.

“We need to talk,” he says.

I blink and grip the phone tighter in my hand as those four words travel down the line. “What?” I say—as though I didn’t hear him perfectly. As though asking again will somehow change what he said.

“We need to talk about something,” he says, slower and clearer, which is just as well because I’m not operating at full capacity as of two seconds ago.

“Okay,” I say faintly. I drift to my bed and sit down, nearly missing and slipping off the edge of the mattress completely. “Uh, what is it? Let’s just talk now.”

“No,” he says in a heavy voice.

Bad. This is bad.

“In person would be better,” he goes on.

But I’m already shaking my head. “What can you say in person that you can’t say over the phone?” I say. “Just tell me now.” Then, glancing around at the notebooks spread out all over my comforter, I add, “I’m kind of busy anyway, so⁠—”

“I’m at your front door, Reese.”

My heart sinks from my chest to the pit of my stomach, and it makes a horrible dying sound as it falls. “Oh,” I say. I swallow, but the growing knot in my throat doesn’t budge. “Okay.”

He looks horrible when I open the door. I mean, I love Dom. I love him. But he looks awful. His hair is a mess, like he’s been running his fingers through it on repeat all day. The dark circles under his eyes have intensified, and his gaze looks everywhere but at me.

I step back silently to let him in, and he crosses the threshold with a finality that I might be imagining. He doesn’t come further in like usual; he remains by the door.

“So,” he says, his hands hanging by his sides.

The word hovers between us and then expands, noxious gas that fills the room with alarming speed. A sick feeling creeps into my stomach, poison.

“So,” I say hoarsely, waiting.

He swallows. Pushes his fingers through his hair. And then he begins to pace.

I watch him with wide eyes and shallow breaths, my hands sweaty as they twist together. Back and forth he goes, three or four times before I finally lose my mind.

“Dom!” I say. The knot is still growing in my throat, and although I try to tell myself this might not be what it looks like, I’m not hopeful. “Just say it.”

He stops in place, turns to me, and meets my eye for the first time since arriving.

“You didn’t get a ninety.”

I blink in confusion. “What?”