~~~~~ Emery’s Pov ~~~~~
“What are you doing here?” I asked, surprised to see Calloway standing there instead of on the ice where she was supposed to be.
It was Monday.
Monday wasn’t a tutoring day.
She had practice at this hour, film review afterward, a schedule packed tightly enough that she’d complained about it herself more than once.
She couldn’t just leave practice and come here for me.
Not without consequences.
Not without Coach Marsh noticing an empty spot on the roster.
And yet here she was.
Still in half her practice gear, her hair damp with sweat under the fluorescent library lights, looking like she’d sprinted the whole way across campus without stopping to think twice about it.
Calloway stepped closer, unhurried despite everything about her appearance suggesting the opposite, until she was standing right in front of me, close enough that I had to fight the instinct to step back, to put the cart between us, to put anything between us at all.
“Why weren’t you answering my calls or replying to my texts?” she asked.
“Oh.
I’m busy.”
The lie came out fast, almost automatic, the kind of thing I said without thinking whenever I needed a wall to hide behind.
Calloway stared at me for a long moment before letting out a quiet, exhausted sigh.
“What you saw wasn’t what it looked like,” she said, holding my gaze, refusing to let me look away first.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, pretending not to know, the words coming out flatter than I’d meant them to, my whole body braced against the effort of the performance.
Calloway didn’t respond right away.
She just looked at me, something patient and unbearably sad lingering behind her eyes, like she could see straight through the act and was simply waiting for me to drop it.
“Emery,” she said softly.
My name landed more gently than I had any right to let it, gentle enough that, for one dangerous second, I almost forgot what I’d actually walked in on.
Her hands twitched at her sides like she wanted to reach for me and had decided, at the last second, that she didn’t have the right anymore.
I caught myself immediately and smiled, small and quiet, the kind of smile I’d perfected over the last hour so no one could see what was actually happening underneath it.
“You don’t need to explain anything, Calloway,” I said, the smile still tugging faintly at my lips, my voice steadier than I had any right to expect, given how unsteady everything underneath it actually felt.
“Everything between the two of us…” I gestured vaguely between us, the same gesture she’d used weeks ago outside her apartment, except now it felt hollow instead of hopeful.
“…was fake from the beginning.
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That was the whole point.
Your dad, the housing stipend, the rules we wrote on loose-leaf paper.
None of it was ever supposed to be real.”
“So I don’t actually have any right to be angry.
About you or anything you do.”
The words stung on their way out, sharper than I’d expected even though I was the one saying them, like swallowing something jagged and calling it fine.
“Emery, I—”
“I have a lot to do,” I said, cutting her off before she could finish, before whatever she was about to say could land somewhere I wasn’t ready for it to land.
I glanced around the empty stacks before looking back at her.
“You’re supposed to be at practice.”
Her phone buzzed in her pocket before she could argue.
She hesitated, glancing between me and the screen, before finally pulling it out and answering.
“Okay,” she said, nodding once, her voice tight.
“I’m coming right now.”
She ended the call and looked back at me, something helpless in her expression that almost cracked through the careful wall I’d built over the last twenty minutes.
I smiled at her.
“They’re already calling for you.
You should go.”
Calloway didn’t say anything right away.
She just looked at me for a long moment, like she was trying to memorize something before it slipped away, before finally nodding once, slow and reluctant.
“Wait for me, Emery.”
She didn’t wait for my response.
She turned and left, her footsteps fading quickly down the quiet hallway, the door swinging shut behind her with a soft, final click.
“Why would I listen to you?” I muttered under my breath, already turning back to the cart, back to the safety of spines and call numbers and a task simple enough to keep my hands steady.
But my hands weren’t steady at all.
I stood there for a long moment after the door closed, staring at nothing, the book in my grip forgotten entirely.
I felt the careful composure I’d been holding onto since the rink begin to crack down the middle, slow and unstoppable, the way ice gives way just before it breaks.
I pressed my palm flat against the shelf to steady myself and made myself breathe.
In for four.
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Out for four.
The same trick that had gotten me through the restaurant bathroom, through the walk to the library, through the entire performance I’d just given a girl who apparently still had the power to make my chest ache just by saying my name softly enough.
Wait for me, Emery.
I didn’t know if I would.
I didn’t know if I even could, not after what I’d seen, not after her hands had stayed so still at her sides while someone else’s fingers found her jaw like they’d done it a hundred times before.
I kept replaying the way she’d said my name in the stacks, soft and pleading.
So different from the flat, careful voice I’d overheard through that half-open rink door.
Two different versions of her.
And I didn’t know anymore which one I was supposed to believe.
But some small, stubborn, humiliating part of me already knew the answer.
It had known the second she’d walked into the library instead of letting the silence between us stretch until it became something permanent.
That part of me was already counting the hours until practice ended, already wondering if she’d come back.
I already hated myself a little for wanting her to.
The rest of my shift passed in a fog.
I reshelved two more carts on pure muscle memory, checked out books for a handful of students without really registering a single face.
I watched the clock above the front desk crawl toward closing time with the particular dragging slowness that only ever seemed to happen on nights when I wanted the hours to move faster.
I finished the last cart in silence, sliding the final book into place with hands that had finally, mostly, stopped shaking, and told myself, for the second time that day, that I’d deal with all of it later.
Later kept arriving faster than I wanted it to.
I smiled to myself.
Then my phone buzzed.
Priya.
“Gosh.” I sighed quietly.
“That’s right.
I never called Priya.” I muttered under my breath before answering immediately.
“Emmmery!” Priya practically shouted the second I picked up.
“Hey, Priya,” I said, quickly pulling the phone away from my ear.
“Don’t tell me you met with Calloway.”
“—”