~~~~~ Emery’s Pov ~~~~~
“Are you going home now?” Priya asked, still stroking my hair the way she had been doing since I’d finally stopped crying enough to breathe properly.
I shook my head.
“No.
I’ve got my shift at the library.”
Priya and Jordan exchanged a glance and nodded at the same time, some silent agreement passing between them the way it always did when they’d known each other long enough to think in sync.
“Okay, let’s walk you there,” Jordan said, already pushing herself up off the bench.
“Yeah, let’s walk you,” Priya agreed, standing as well and reaching a hand out toward me.
I looked up at both of them, something warm cutting through the numbness that had settled over me since the rink, and I managed a small, tired smile.
“Thanks, Jordan,” I said, glancing at her.
“Thanks, Priya,” I said, glancing at her too.
“But you both don’t have to worry.
I can get there myself.”
Priya stared at me for a moment, clearly weighing whether to push back, before she finally lowered her hand.
“Okay, since you insist,” she said.
“But call us when you get there, okay?” She said it with a frown, the kind that made it clear this wasn’t really a request.
I nodded slightly and smiled, softer this time.
“I will, Priya.”
She shook her head, exhaling like she wasn’t entirely convinced, before looping her arm around Jordan’s neck and letting herself be steered away, throwing one last glance back over her shoulder before the two of them disappeared around the corner of the quad.
I sat there a moment longer, watching the space where they had been, before I finally stood.
I pulled my bag back over my shoulder and started the walk toward the library alone.
The walk felt longer than it actually was, every step giving my mind too much room to circle back to the same handful of images I couldn’t seem to shake loose.
Calloway’s hands, still at her sides.
The easy, familiar way she’d said *Cally*, like the nickname had been worn smooth from years of use.
My mind went back to replaying the weekend.
I couldn’t help but think of the almost-kiss in the car, my mother’s hand squeezing mine across the dinner table.
All of it had felt so real.
That was the part that hurt the worst somehow, worse than the kiss itself.
Not that I had been wrong about wanting her.
But that I had been so certain, so completely convinced, that she wanted the same thing back.
The campus had gone quiet in the late afternoon light, most people already gone for the day, just a few stragglers crossing between buildings with their heads down against the cold.
I walked with my arms wrapped around myself, not entirely sure if it was for warmth or just something to hold on to.
My thoughts drifted without any real direction—rent, Calloway, the essay still sitting unfinished on my laptop, my mother’s voice from the night before saying, *Be careful with your heart.*
I hadn’t been careful at all.
I had handed it over in pieces without even noticing I was doing it, one tutoring session at a time, one dinner at a time.
A part of me kept trying to build an argument in her favor, the way I always seemed to do even when I didn’t want to.
Maybe it hadn’t been what it looked like.
Maybe there was a version of the story where Calloway hadn’t kissed her back, hadn’t wanted any of it.
But her hands had stayed at her sides.
She hadn’t pulled away, not until she had noticed me standing there, and that detail kept circling back no matter how many times I tried to talk myself out of it.
My phone buzzed again somewhere around the halfway point, and I didn’t look at it this time either.
I just kept walking, my eyes fixed on the path ahead, the library’s brick façade slowly coming into view through the bare trees lining the walkway.
By the time I reached the doors, my face had mostly dried, though I was fairly sure the redness around my eyes hadn’t faded nearly as much as I wanted it to.
I ducked into the staff bathroom first, splashed cold water on my face the same way I had in that restaurant bathroom days earlier, and stared at my reflection for a long moment, trying to will myself into something that resembled composure before my shift actually started.
“I’m not supposed to feel anything,” I whispered to myself.
“Everything between us was fake from the beginning.”
— Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
The library was quiet, the way it usually was on a Monday evening, just a handful of students scattered across the study floor and the soft hum of the heating system working against the cold outside.
I clocked in at the front desk, grateful, for once, for the mindless predictability of the job waiting for me.
A cart of returned books needed to be sorted and reshelved, a task that required just enough focus to keep my hands busy without asking anything of the rest of me.
I pulled the cart toward the stacks and got to work, checking call numbers, sliding books back into their proper places one at a time, the familiar rhythm of it slowly, gradually, doing what I needed it to do.
Fiction first, then the reference section, then a stack of chemistry textbooks that made my chest tighten unexpectedly before I forced myself to keep moving, to keep sorting, to keep my hands occupied so my mind wouldn’t have room to circle back to a rink door and a girl I still didn’t know the full story of.
The stacks smelled the way they always did.
Old paper and dust and the faint chemical tang of the carpet cleaner they used every weekend, a smell I’d found strangely comforting since freshman year, back when this job had just been about the paycheck and nothing more complicated than that.
I moved slowly between the shelves, spine after spine passing under my fingers, letting the quiet, methodical work fill up the space where my thoughts kept trying to wander back toward the rink.
I lost myself in it for a while, the shelving, the quiet, the particular calm that came from doing something small and useful with my hands while everything else in my life felt like it had shifted under me without warning.
A few students came and went, nodding at me on their way past, none of them aware of anything except that the library was open and I happened to be the one working the desk.
Somewhere around the third cart, my phone buzzed against my hip again, insistent this time, three times in quick succession.
I finally pulled it out, more out of reflex than any real desire to look, and found seven missed calls and a string of unread texts, all from the same name.
I let my thumb hover over the screen for a moment, the small preview of the first message visible without me even opening it.
*Emery, please.*
The two words landed somewhere heavy in my chest despite everything, despite the hands still at her sides when she was being kissed by someone else, despite the nickname I still couldn’t shake from my head.
I didn’t open any of them.
I just turned my phone face-down on the cart and kept working.
I slid the next book into place with more force than the task really required and told myself, unconvincingly, that I would deal with it later.
Later felt very far away just then, standing alone in the quiet stacks with a cart full of other people’s returned books and a chest full of something I didn’t yet have the words to name.
“Emery.”
A familiar voice called from behind me, making me look in her direction.
Calloway.
“What is she doing here?”