~~~~~ Emery’s Pov ~~~~~
I found out about it the way most people my age found out about anything, through a barrage of texts that arrived faster than I could read them, starting with Priya’s text.
*have you seen this???*
In all caps and escalating from there into a chain of screenshots I had to piece together standing outside my organic chem lecture, with my backpack still slung over one shoulder.
Someone had taken a picture at the Italian place.
Not a candid caught mid-blink, not anything scandalous.
Just Calloway and me at our little two-top by the window, heads bent together over the table, her hand gesturing mid-sentence the way it always did when she got animated about something.
It was ordinary.
Except it had ended up on the university’s unofficial gossip account, captioned with three question marks and enough speculation in the comments that I felt my stomach drop somewhere around the fortieth reply.
*is calloway marchetti seeing someone???*
*who’s the girl w her at that italian place*
*my roommate said they’ve been together like a month*
I stared at my phone for a long moment, the hallway noise fading into background static, and felt something twist uncomfortably in my chest.
Not embarrassment, exactly, though there was some of that.
Something closer to the specific dread of watching a private thing become public property without your permission.
My phone buzzed again.
Calloway.
*have you seen it*
*Yeah.
Just now.*
I typed back.
*coach marsh already texted me.
apparently my dad follows the account*
She typed after some minutes.
I read that last line twice, feeling the dread sharpen into something more specific, more urgent.
I knew, even without her spelling it out, exactly what that meant.
The careful distance she’d built between herself and her father’s opinion.
The wall she kept between what he approved of and what she actually wanted, and now a photo with a stranger’s caption had put a crack directly through the middle of it.
*Is that bad?*
I typed immediately.
There was a long pause before the next text came through, longer than felt normal for someone who usually typed fast and thought faster.
can you meet me.
not the restaurant.
somewhere quieter*
I looked at the clock.
My next class started in eleven minutes, an organic chem lecture I genuinely couldn’t afford to skip given how close we were to midterms.
But something about the tone of her texts was clipped and careful.
It was nothing like her usual confidence.
And that made the decision for me before I’d even fully weighed it.
*Where.*
I typed after considering it.
*rink.
side entrance.
give me twenty*
I texted my professor a lie about a family emergency that felt uncomfortably close to true.
I gathered my things and walked out into the cold afternoon with my heart beating faster than the walk warranted.
Priya caught up to me before I made it off the quad.
Her phone still in her hand, scrolling through the comment section with the specific horrified fascination of someone who couldn’t stop reading something that was clearly making things worse.
“This is insane,” she said, falling into step beside me.
“There’s over two hundred comments already.
Someone found her dad’s LinkedIn and tagged him in a reply — who does that, honestly.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.” I asked nervously, my heart skipping a beat.
“I wish I were.
It’s already been deleted, but I saw it happen in real time.” She glanced up from her phone, actually reading my face for the first time since she’d caught up to me.
“Hey.
Are you okay?
You look like you’re about to throw up.”
“I’m meeting her at the rink.
Her dad already called her.
Twelve minutes after it posted.”
Priya’s eyebrows shot up.
“Twelve minutes.
That’s not a casual scroller, that’s a man with alerts set up.”
“That’s what she said too.” I replied, looking down.
“This is bad, isn’t it.
Like actually bad, not just embarrassing-bad.” Priya said, glancing at me.
I didn’t have a good answer for that, mostly because I was still working it out myself, the dread from Calloway’s texts sitting heavy and unresolved in my chest.
“I don’t know yet.
I’m about to find out.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” She asked with genuine concern written all over her face.
“No.
I think this is a conversation she needs to have without an audience.” I squeezed her arm once, grateful in a way I didn’t have the energy to fully express.
“I’ll text you after.”
“You better.
And Emery—” she caught my sleeve before I could walk off, something serious replacing the panic in her expression, “—whatever happens in there, this isn’t your fault.
You didn’t ask to be photographed.
You didn’t ask for any of this.”
I nodded, not entirely sure I believed her, and left her standing on the quad, her phone still buzzing with notifications neither of us wanted to look at anymore.
The walk to the rink gave me too much time to think, which was rarely a good thing.
I thought about the way Calloway had said *not sure yet* instead of *it’s fine*.
The careful hedge of it, like she was genuinely unsure how bad this was going to get and didn’t want to promise me otherwise.
I thought about Sweden, about the academy she had turned down, and about the particular fear she’d admitted to weeks ago over grilled cheese, not the eligibility letter, but him being right.
A photo like this, splashed across an account half the university followed, was exactly the kind of thing that could hand her father a fresh argument for being right about something else entirely.
I didn’t know what I was walking into.
I only knew that whatever it was, I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
That should have scared me more than it did, but I still dragged my feet and kept walking.
“I hope all this gets resolved and she’s going to be fine,” I muttered to myself as I walked to the rink, without caring how involved I already was.
I’m really sorry for not updating for two days now.
Something really came up.
So as an apology I will update five chapters.
Thank you everyone.