The rest of the lecture went by quickly, and by the time she wrapped up, the clock was already creeping toward the end of the period.
"That’s all for today." She set the marker down. "Don’t forget, your projects are due tomorrow, no extensions. And please don’t email me tomorrow morning asking for one anyway, because the answer will still be no."
A groan rippled through the room. One guy near the front actually raised his hand halfway, not waiting to be called on.
"My laptop’s been bad for like a week now."
"Nice try," she said, smirking.
A few students laughed, the tension of the deadline breaking for a second.
Her eyes flicked toward me; brief, unreadable, gone before I could fully read anything into it, though I felt it anyway, same as always. Then she turned, packed up her things, and walked out without another word
Jackson glanced at me, grinning, clearly having caught the look too.
"Come on," I said, ignoring it entirely, already reaching for my bag as I stood up.
The next class dragged on longer than it needed to, and by the time it finally let out, Jackson was already groaning about how starving he was before we’d even made it out the door.
We headed toward our usual spot, ready to grab lunch like every other day, when my phone buzzed halfway there.
Nicole: My lunch. Same café. In case you forgot 😌
I had, in fact, forgotten.
I stopped walking. Jackson noticed a step later, turning back toward me with a raised eyebrow.
"Hey, I’m not gonna make it to lunch," I told him.
He grinned, opening his mouth to say something I already knew wasn’t going to be helpful, when Sasha appeared in front of us, stopping short.
"Can we talk?"
Jackson glanced at me.
I held for a second, then nodded. "Yeah. Sure."
"I’ll, uh—" Jackson gestured vaguely toward the opposite direction, already backing away. "I’ll go grab food. Text me when you’re done."
I nodded. "Yeah. Thanks."
Sasha didn’t wait for a response, just turned and started walking.
I stood there for a second, watching her go, feeling something uneasy settle in my chest, the same guilt from that day at lunch resurfacing without warning.
I followed anyway.
We found a quiet bench near the edge of campus, away from the usual lunch crowd, and sat down.
Neither of us said anything for a moment, until she finally broke the silence.
"I’ve liked you since freshman year. Since before I even knew your last name." She stared straight ahead, not at me. "You helped me find the Dean’s office my first week, remember? I was completely lost, practically in tears, and you just... walked me there. Didn’t make it weird. Didn’t ask for anything."
"I remember."
"I’ve been patient. I never pushed, never made you uncomfortable, never once tried to make you choose anything you weren’t ready to choose." Her voice stayed steady, but there was something underneath it, careful, deliberate. "I just thought, eventually, when you were ready, maybe—"
She stopped herself.
I sat there, not saying anything, because there wasn’t really anything to say that wouldn’t make this worse. She wasn’t wrong about any of it. She had been patient, had been kind, had never once made me feel cornered the way this conversation now felt.
And still, none of that changed anything.
She exhaled, finally looking at me directly. "Do you really not have a girlfriend?"
I paused, though there wasn’t really anything to think through.
"No. I don’t."
She nodded.
A pause. "Then can I be your girlfriend?"
I opened my mouth, then stopped. My mom’s voice from the weekend flickered through my head, you’re the one doing the rejecting, and maybe that was true for a lot of people, but Sasha wasn’t just a name on a list. She was my actual friend, one of the good ones, and whatever I said next was going to hurt her regardless of how carefully I said it.
"No?" she said, quieter, when I didn’t answer fast enough.
I still didn’t answer.
My phone buzzed once against my leg, muffled, no screen lighting up between us, but she heard it anyway.
Something shifted in her expression.
"You like someone else, don’t you?"
I sat with that for a second, and somewhere in the space between her question and my answer, I realized just how true it actually was, more than I’d let myself admit even to myself until right now.
I nodded.
"It’s the Nicole, isn’t it? The one who texted you the other day."
I nodded again.
She laughed, soft and a little broken, nothing like her usual laugh at all.
"I guess I never had a chance, then," she muttered, mostly to herself, though I heard it anyway.
Another moment of silence passed between us.
Then she looked up. "Is she pretty?"
"Yeah. She kinda is."
"More than me?"
I didn’t answer that.
"Wow." A short, humorless laugh. "I already hate her, and I don’t even know who she is."
I caught what she was doing then, reaching for something, anything, that might make this easier for her to carry.
I opened my mouth, some instinct kicking in to make this easier for her somehow, maybe a joke, maybe something reassuring.
"Sasha, you’re not—"
"Don’t." She cut me off, sharper than I expected. "Don’t do the nice thing right now. If you’re kind to me, I’m going to think there’s a version of this where it works out, and there isn’t, is there?"
I stayed quiet.
"See. That’s the problem with you. You’re too good at being decent to people you’re not even into. It’s annoying and hot at the same time."
My mouth twitched despite myself.
She caught it, and something in her expression softened just slightly, a small, reluctant smile breaking through.
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
"We can still be friends, right?" she finally asked.
"Of course we can."
My phone buzzed again in my pocket. I hesitated, glancing at it, then back at her.
"Go," she said, before I could even ask.
I opened my mouth, searching for something, anything, worth saying, and came up empty.
So I left.
The café was busy in its usual quiet way by the time I walked in. I spotted her before she noticed me, sitting at our usual table, scrolling through her phone with a full, dramatic pout on her face.
Something in my chest loosened, just slightly, at the sight of it.
I walked over and stopped in front of her. She looked up, and the pout somehow deepened.
"You’re late."
"Sorry. Got held up." I sat down across from her.
She didn’t look up, still pouting, still scrolling. "You took almost thirty minutes," she said, voice low and a little whiny. "Do you know how little lunch time that leaves us now?"
She went right back to her phone after that.
I just sat there for a second, watching her, thoroughly amused despite everything else still sitting heavy in my chest.
"Sorry," I tried again. "I mean it."
She looked up at me, held the stare for a beat, then sighed.
"I’m only letting it go because you’re hot."
I huffed a laugh, and that finally got a smile out of her too.
She smiled properly this time. "Let’s eat."
I nodded, and she waved the waiter over.
"I’ll have the—" I started.
"Grilled chicken wrap, no onions, extra sauce on the side," she said, cutting in smoothly, not even glancing up from her phone. "For both of us."
The waiter nodded and walked off.
I stared at her for a second.
"I wanted to see for myself how good it actually is," she said, entirely casual, still scrolling, not even needing to look up to know I was staring. "Since you order it literally every time."
It should have felt exactly the same as the first time someone had done that; Sasha, weeks ago, rattling off my order without needing to ask. Instead, it landed completely differently, and I couldn’t quite place why, not right away, just that it did.
I watched her a moment longer before letting the thought go.
"What are you even looking at?" I asked. "You’ve been on your phone since I got here."
She turned her phone to face me. A wall of emails, half a dozen at least, all subject lines some variation of "Extension Request" or "Question About Deadline."
"Your coursemates have been emailing me all morning," she said, sighing. "Asking for extensions, like they didn’t have an entire week to do this."
I smirked. "Rough first project to grade."
"You have no idea." She pulled the phone back, scrolling through another one with visible exasperation. "One of them even tried to argue that the project itself was unreasonable, in the actual email. To me. The person who assigned it."
"Bold."
"Delusional." She glanced at me. "Are you done with yours?"
"Yeah. Finished last night."
Something satisfied settled into her expression. "Good."
She turned back to her phone, typing something out, muttering under her breath. "Let’s see them get an extension now."
"You know how that just sounded, right?"
She glanced up, entirely unbothered. "You’re already top of your class. It didn’t sound like anything."
I huffed a laugh despite myself.
"Here you go," the waiter said, setting our plates down before stepping away.
She looked at the food, then at me. I tilted my head slightly, silently gesturing for her to try it.
She took a bite, considering it for a second.
"It’s actually really good."
"Told you."
She nodded slowly, still chewing, already somewhere else entirely. "I should try making this for you sometime."
She didn’t look up. Didn’t notice what she’d said, or that I’d heard it.
I sat there for a moment, watching her eat, and let myself register something I hadn’t fully admitted until now.
She was already behaving like she was my girlfriend, in every way that actually mattered, even though I hadn’t said the word out loud, not to her, not to myself, not to anyone.
And sitting there, watching her, I realized just how hard it was becoming to keep pretending I wasn’t already somewhere close to feeling the same way.
She looked up at me then, tilting her head slightly, silently asking what.
I just shook my head and went back to eating.