Chapter 17: The Hollow Lecture
The click of the projector shutting off was the loudest sound Alexis had ever heard. It echoed in the abrupt silence of the lecture hall, a percussive period at the end of a ninety-minute sentence she hadn't comprehended. Around her, chairs scraped, backpacks zipped, a low hum of conversation rising like water. She didn't move.
On her laptop screen, the single page of typed notes blinked back at her, a monument to her failure.
Property: Rights in rem versus in personam.
She had typed that at 9:04 a.m., just after Professor Hendricks began speaking. At 10:22 a.m., that was still the only line. Below it, the cursor pulsed mockingly. In the white space, her traitorous mind had sketched, in the faint, unconscious language of a daydream, the taut line of Mark’s abdomen. She’d drawn it with the neat, precise strokes of a courtroom artist. It was humiliating.
“Moore, you breathing over there?”
The voice, close and laced with friendly sarcasm, startled her. Jalen leaned over from the seat beside her, his eyebrows raised above his wire-framed glasses. He was her study partner, a fellow St. Louis native with a perpetually crisp fade and a knack for condensing torts into digestible memes. “You looked like you were dissecting that window like a crime scene. Hendricks call on you and I swear your soul left your body.”
Alexis slammed the laptop shut, the sketched abdomen disappearing.“No. Just… intense focus.”
“On the pigeons outside? Respect.” Jalen shouldered his bag. “The Socratic method is gonna eat you alive if you space out like that.You good? You’ve been off all week.”
A week. It had been seven days, sixteen hours, and—she didn’t check her phone—probably twenty minutes. The calendar was a sadistic grid. Each crossed-off day felt less like progress and more like erosion.
“I’m good,” she said, forcing a brightness into her voice that cracked at the edges. “Just tired. Annotating that Pierson v. Post case last night took years off my life.”
“Tell me about it. Wild that two dudes arguing over a dead fox is the bedrock of modern property law.” He fell into step beside her as they shuffled out with the crowd. “We still on for the library at seven? Gotta tackle these nuisance readings before they metastasize.”
The library. The fluorescent glow, the smell of old paper and dread. The thought of sitting still for three more hours in another sterile, silent space made her skin prickle. The memory of stillness now was inextricably linked to Mark’s hands moving on her skin, his voice in her ear. Quiet focus was a trapdoor to a different, visceral reality.
“Can we push it to eight?” she asked, scrambling for time. “I just… I need to reset. Run an errand.”
“Sure, no problem. Eight at our usual fortress of solitude.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Reset’s a good idea. You look like you’re running on fumes and spite.”
He peeled off toward the law review office with a wave. Alexis stood alone in the granite-floored atrium, students flowing around her like river around a stone. The weight of the backpack, the unread casebook, the cold coffee in her travel mug—it all pressed down, physical and suffocating. The curated, strategic life she’d built felt like a costume that didn’t fit.
She needed sound. She needed color. She needed something that wasn’t the gray, rational echo of legal reasoning.
Her apartment welcomed her with its familiar, cluttered warmth, but it felt like a museum of a former self. The fairy lights glowed, the anime figures stood sentinel on their shelves. She dropped her bag and toed off her shoes, her gaze drifting to the framed photograph on her desk: her and Mark at last year’s D.C. anime convention, both grinning under a giant Attack on Titan sword replica. His arm was around her shoulders, his smile effortless. That was six months ago, but in the photo, it felt like yesterday.
A sharp, lonely pang shot through her. She turned away.
Instinct drove her to the old gaming console hooked up to her small TV. Not her law school laptop. Not her highlighter. Something tactile, something that demanded a different kind of focus. She scrolled through her library and landed on an old favorite, a fighting game with absurd, over-the-top characters and flashy, impossible combos. She grabbed the controller, its familiar weight a comfort.
She played for an hour, losing herself in the rhythmic clack of the buttons, the pixelated explosions on screen, the primal satisfaction of landing a perfect counter-hit. It was mindless and consuming. It was also something she and Mark had done together, screaming with laughter on his couch, trash-talking each other’s characters. The ghost of him was in the button inputs, the playstyle he’d taught her. Her victory felt hollow.
Her phone, face-down on the couch beside her, buzzed. Not a text. A FaceTime call.
The avatar that flashed up—a goofy picture of Mark making an exaggerated "thinking" face—sent her heart into her throat. She fumbled for the phone, her thumb hovering over the green accept button. A week of texts, of voice notes, of scheduled evening calls that felt like press conferences. She hadn’t seen his face.
She answered.
The screen resolved into a view of a bare, sun-drenched wall. Drywall, unpainted. The acoustics were echoey.
“Hello?” His voice came first, slightly tinny through the speaker. Then he moved into frame, and her breath caught.
He looked… different.Not bad. But altered. He wore a paint-splattered white t-shirt, his hair was a bit wilder, untamed by product. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. But it was his eyes. They held a frenetic, charged energy, a busyness that wasn't just about moving boxes.
“Hey,” she said, her own voice sounding small. “You’re… painting?”
“Priming,” he corrected, turning the camera to show a large, empty room. “Just finished the first coat in the main studio space. It’s a beast. Looks like a post-apocalyptic skating rink.” He turned the camera back to himself, filling the screen. “How was Property?”
The mundanity of the question, asked while he stood in the skeleton of his new life, was absurd. Rights in rem versus in personam. His hands gripping her hips.
“Brutal,” she said, opting for shorthand. “My brain is absolute mush. I think I officially hate foxes.”
He grinned, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was a distance there, a layer of preoccupation. “Sounds about right. How’s the apartment feel?”
“Quiet.” The word hung between them, a loaded admission. “I just beat up some digital warriors to decompress. Your bad habits are rubbing off on me.”
“See? I’m a good influence.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving a faint, dusty streak. The silence stretched, not the comfortable kind from before, but one searching for a bridge. “Austin is… it’s wild. Hot as hell. The guys are already talking about a barbecue series for the channel. The potential is insane.”
“That’s amazing, Mark.” She meant it. But hearing the excitement in his voice about a world that excluded her was a specific kind of heartache.
“Yeah. It’s just… a lot of logistical crap. The internet installation got pushed back, so streaming is shaky. I had to argue with the landlord about the commercial lease addendum for, like, two hours.” He shook his head, the energy turning into a frustrated vibrato. “Adulting on turbo mode.”
She watched him talk, this man who could command the attention of millions with a skit, looking suddenly younger and older all at once, overwhelmed by drywall and legal clauses. Her pre-law brain flickered on, a useless, analytical muscle.
“Did they provide a rider to the original lease, or is it a fully separate ancillary document?” she asked.
He blinked, then laughed, a real one this time. It was the best sound she’d heard all week. “See, that’s the stuff. That’s why I need you. I just nodded and said ‘addendum’ a lot and hoped for the best.”
The ‘need you’ was casual, but it settled in her chest, warm and desperate. He needed her for lease review. She needed him because his absence had carved a hollow space in the center of her days.
“Send it to me,” she said, sitting up straighter. “I’ll look it over tonight. After my library session.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.” It was true. It was a concrete thing. A thread she could hold onto, a way to be present in his new world. “Consider it my pro bono work for a struggling content creator.”
“My first legal counsel,” he said, the smile softening, his gaze finally seeming to fully focus on her through the screen. “You look good. Tired, but good.”
“You look dusty.”
“It’s the aesthetic. ‘Relatable Construction Chic.’ Gonna start a trend.” He glanced off-screen. “Shit, the guys are here with the second gallon. I gotta run.”
The impending goodbye tightened her stomach. “Go. Don’t inhale the fumes.”
“I’ll text you the lease thing. And… I’ll call you later? Like, properly later.”
“Yeah. Properly later.”
He nodded. His expression shifted, the busyness melting away for one unguarded second. He looked at her—really looked—and the distance in the call collapsed. She saw the echo of her own ache mirrored there. “Alexis…”
“Go,” she whispered again, her throat tight.
He brought his fingers to his lips, then pressed them to the camera lens—a pixelated, imperfect kiss. The screen went black.
She sat in the silence of her apartment, the sounds of the fighting game’s idle menu a distant chirp. The hollow feeling was still there, but it had changed shape. It was no longer just an absence. It was now filled with the image of a dusty room in Texas, the sound of his frustrated laugh, the tangible task of a lease agreement waiting in her inbox.
She stood up, powered off the console. The quiet wasn't just hers to endure anymore. It was a shared condition. She walked to her desk, opened her laptop, and beside the single line of property notes, she opened a new document. She labeled it: PHILLIPS – AUSTIN STUDIO LEASE REVIEW.
Then she opened her casebook. The words were still dense, the logic still cold. But her mind felt sharper, clearer. She had a footnote to write in a story that was now being drafted in two different states. She had a role to play, even from a distance. She picked up her highlighter, and for the first time that day, the yellow streak across the page meant something.