Chapter 2: The Morning After
The first thing Vy became aware of was the scent—lavender, stale coffee, and beneath it, the musky, intimate smell of sex and sweat. Then came the weight. Katy’s arm was slung across her waist, a possessive anchor. Pale, grainy light seeped through the blinds, striping the wreckage of the room: the teetering textbook towers, the fallen pile of clothes, the persimmon on the desk, now looking less like a heart and more like a stubborn, overlooked fact.
Vy didn’t move. Her body felt liquefied, used in the best way. Every nerve was quiet. She focused on the slow, steady rise and fall of Katy’s ribs against her back.
Then she felt the shift. The arm around her tightened, just a fraction. A breath stirred her hair.
“You’re awake,” Katy’s voice was morning-rough, sleep-scraped. It wasn’t a question.
“Mm.”
“Thinking yet?”
“Trying not to.”
A low hum against her spine. Katy’s hand slid from her waist, skated up her ribcage until her palm came to rest, heavy and warm, over Vy’s breast. Her thumb brushed a nipple. Vy’s breath hitched. The quiet dissolved, replaced by a swift, pooling heat.
“Good,” Katy murmured. Her lips found the juncture of Vy’s neck and shoulder. Not a kiss. A press. A silent claim from the night before, re-staked. “Don’t think.”
She rolled Vy onto her back with an effortless strength that left Vy dizzy. The morning light caught the fine lines of fatigue under Katy’s eyes, the messy halo of her hair. Her expression was closed, intense, but her eyes were soft with a weary hunger. She looked like a war she hadn’t agreed to fight.
Without a word, Katy guided Vy’s hand, pulling it down between their bodies, under the tangled sheet. She pressed Vy’s fingers against herself. She was already wet, slick and hot. A shuddering breath escaped her.
“Feel that?” Katy’s voice was a scrape of gravel. “That’s what thinking does to me. Now you fix it.”
The command, so raw and direct, sent a jolt straight through Vy. Last night had been a blur of sensation. This was clear, stark. An order in the cold light of day. Katy’s eyes dared her to refuse, to be shocked, to be the good girl.
Vy tightened her fingers. She watched Katy’s eyelids flutter. She pushed one finger inside, slowly. Katy was incredibly tight, a velvet clamp of tension. She gasped, her hips jerking forward.
“More,” she gritted out. “Don’t fucking tease me.”
Vy added a second finger, curling them, finding a rhythm. She was learning the map of this body, this proud, crumbling empire. Katy braced her hands on either side of Vy’s head, her arms trembling. She rode Vy’s hand, her movements growing less controlled, more frantic. She was chasing it, a release from the thoughts already massing at the gates.
“Harder. Fuck, just… there. Right there.” Katy’s curses dissolved into a stream of Mandarin, harsh, guttural syllables that sounded like breaking glass. Her head dropped, her forehead pressing against Vy’s. Her breath came in hot, ragged pants. “Don’t stop. Don’t you fucking stop.”
Vy didn’t. She drove her fingers deeper, her wrist aching, captivated by the raw, unraveling beauty above her. Katy was coming apart, and she was the cause. It was power and service all at once. Katy’s inner muscles clenched, a pulsing, rhythmic vise around her fingers. A broken cry tore from Katy’s throat, muffled against Vy’s skin. She shook through it, a long, violent tremor, before collapsing, her full weight sinking onto Vy.
They lay like that, connected, sweaty, breathing the same air. Katy’s face was buried in the pillow next to Vy’s head. Slowly, Vy withdrew her fingers. The silence was swollen, saturated.
Finally, Katy pushed herself up. She didn’t look at Vy. She swung her legs off the bed and walked naked to her desk. She picked up the persimmon, turned it in her hand. Her back was a long, graceful line of tension.
“My mother called while you were asleep,” she said, her voice flat. “At six a.m. She’s sending a draft of my personal statement for the Hopkins application. She’s ‘refined the narrative of my purpose.’” The words were acid.
Vy sat up, pulling the sheet around her. “What are you going to do?”
Katy gave a short, bitter laugh. She put the fruit down. “What I always do. Read it. Memorize it. Perform it.” She turned. The morning light was cruel, highlighting the shadows, the stubborn set of her jaw. “This,” she gestured between them, at the rumpled bed, “is a recess. An intermission. The play is already written.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“You say that because your parents aren’t waiting with a checklist and a lifetime of sacrificed comfort.” Katy’s tone wasn’t angry; it was exhausted. Resigned. She started pulling on clothes—panties, jeans, a faded gray t-shirt. Dressing as the model. “You should go. I have a lab practical at ten.”
The dismissal was a door slamming. Vy felt the chill of it. Last night, the library, the frantic coming together—it was being compartmentalized. Filed under ‘Recess’. Her chest ached. She got out of bed, gathering her own clothes from the floor. The air felt different on her skin now. Exposed.
She dressed in silence. Katy was at her whiteboard, erasing a complex formula with aggressive swipes.
“Wednesday,” Vy said, pulling on her boots. “The library. Is that still a thing?”
Katy’s hand stilled. She didn’t turn around. “Why would you want it to be?”
“Because I’m not in a play. And I don’t want a recess. I want the messy, unwritten thing.”
Katy dropped the eraser. It hit the floor with a soft thud. She finally turned. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but dry. “You’re a masochist, Vy Le.”
“Maybe.” Vy shouldered her bag. She walked to the door, pausing with her hand on the knob. “But you’re the one who keeps finding me.”
She left, closing the door on the scent of lavender and defeat.
The week that followed was a study in dissonance. Vy moved through her freshman routine—Introduction to Political Theory, a crushing amount of reading for her writing seminar, awkward meals in the dining hall where she picked at food while Mei chattered about a cute sophomore in her chem lab. It all felt like a play, exactly as Katy had said. But now Vy was acutely aware of the stage lights, the flimsy sets.
She didn’t see Katy. Not in the library. Not crossing the quad. It was as if the magnetic field that had pulled them together had been switched off.
Then, on Tuesday night, her phone buzzed. An unknown number. Again.
MIT Roof. Now. K.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. It was past eleven. A school night. The smart thing, the right thing, was to ignore it. To stay in her pajamas, to review her notes on Hobbes.
Vy was out the door in ninety seconds, pulling a hoodie over her head.
The night air was biting. She took a Lyft to Cambridge, her stomach in knots. The same rooftop, but emptier now, just a few small clusters of people. The neon glow, the hum of traffic, the wobbly railing—it was all the same, but it felt like a different planet.
Katy stood alone at the far edge, looking out over the city. She wore her leather jacket, hands shoved in the pockets. A bottle of something dangled from her fingertips.
Vy walked over. Katy didn’t turn.
“You came,” Katy said.
“You knew I would.”
Finally, Katy looked at her. Her eyes were dark hollows, her face pale. She’d been crying, or she was desperately tired. Probably both. “I edited my mother’s personal statement today. I made it ‘more me.’ It’s a masterpiece of bullshit. It might even get me in.”
Vy didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Katy took a swig from the bottle, winced. It smelled like cheap gin. “I need you to fuck me.”
The words were so blunt, so stripped of context or poetry, that for a moment Vy just stared. “What?”
“I need to not be in my head. I need to feel something that isn’t disgust.” Katy’s gaze was fierce, challenging. “You said you wanted the messy thing. Well, this is it. This is me, using you. So be used, or walk away.”
The wind picked up, whistling over the rooftop edge. Vy understood. This wasn’t an invitation to intimacy. It was a demand for obliteration. A transaction. Katy was offering her the broken pieces, sharp edges and all.
Vy stepped forward. She took the bottle from Katy’s hand and set it on the parapet. Then she took Katy’s face in her hands. “Okay.”
She kissed her. It wasn’t tender. It was a match struck. Katy kissed back with a frantic, desperate energy, her hands clawing at Vy’s back, pulling her closer. They stumbled backward, into the deeper shadows near a large, dormant HVAC unit. The brick was cold and rough against Vy’s back.
Katy’s hands were everywhere, yanking Vy’s jeans open, shoving her own down over her hips. There was no preamble, no softness. Katy turned her around, pushing her chest against the brick.
“Don’t look at me,” Katy whispered, her breath hot against Vy’s ear. Her fingers probed, finding Vy wet despite the cold, despite the chaos. She pushed two fingers inside, a swift, brutal invasion. Vy cried out, her forehead pressing into the unforgiving wall. “Just feel it.”
Katy fucked her with her fingers, a hard, driving rhythm that left no room for thought. The pleasure was edged with pain, the brick scraping her skin, the cold air on her exposed ass. It was raw and degrading and incredibly hot. Vy met every thrust, her own need coiling tight, a response to Katy’s turmoil.
“You like this?” Katy panted, her teeth grazing Vy’s neck. “Being my dirty little secret up here? My escape hatch?”
“Yes,” Vy gasped, the truth of it shocking her.
Katy’s other hand snaked around, her fingers finding Vy’s clit, rubbing rough, urgent circles. The dual sensation was overwhelming. Vy was hurtling towards the edge, her moans lost in the city’s hum.
“Come for me,” Katy commanded, her voice a ragged thing. “Come all over my fingers. Show me what I’m good for.”
The words, so laced with self-loathing, were the final trigger. Vy’s orgasm ripped through her, a convulsive wave that made her legs buckle. Katy held her up, fingers still buried inside, milking every last pulse until Vy was limp and shuddering.
Katy withdrew. She turned Vy around, her own eyes wild. “My turn.”
She sank to her knees on the filthy rooftop concrete. She pushed Vy’s thighs apart and buried her face between them without ceremony. Her tongue was a relentless, punishing thing. She ate Vy out like she was starving, like she could drink the reality out of her. Her fingers dug into Vy’s hips, holding her in place against the wall.
Vy looked down, breaking the ‘don’t look’ rule. Katy’s face was a mask of furious concentration, her eyes screwed shut. She was using Vy’s body to scour her own mind clean. The vulnerability of it, the brutal honesty, was more intimate than any gentle touch. Vy tangled her hands in Katy’s hair, not guiding, just holding on as the second, sharper climax built and broke over her.
Katy slumped forward, her forehead resting against Vy’s stomach. Her shoulders heaved. She wasn’t crying, but she was shaking. Vy gently pulled her up. She tucked herself back into her jeans, then helped Katy with hers. They stood there in the shadow, foreheads touching, breathing each other’s air, both wrecked.
Katy’s phone buzzed in her jacket pocket. She ignored it. It buzzed again. And again.
She pulled it out, stared at the screen. Her face went ashen. “It’s my dad.”
She answered. “Bàba?” Her voice was small. A child’s voice.
Vy could hear the tinny, urgent sound of a man’s voice from the receiver, but not the words. Katy listened, her eyes fixed on some distant point in the dark sky. “Yes. I understand… No, I haven’t sent it yet… Tomorrow. I’ll send it tomorrow… I know what it costs. I know.”
She hung up. The silence that followed was vast and cold. She looked at Vy, and the last vestiges of the fierce, charismatic senior were gone. What remained was sheer, undiluted terror.
“He just co-signed a loan. For the application fees. For the interview travel. For the future.” Her voice was a thread. “The numbers… he read me the numbers.”
Vy reached for her hand. Katy’s fingers were ice-cold. “Katy…”
“Don’t.” Katy pulled her hand away. She straightened her jacket, a mechanical gesture. “I have to go. I have to… I have to work on that statement.”
“Let me come with you.”
“No.” The word was final. Absolute. “This is the part I do alone. This is the cage.” She gave Vy a look that was closer to a goodbye than anything else. “The library. Tomorrow. Three. If you still want to.”
She walked away, a solitary figure disappearing into the stairwell light, leaving Vy alone on the rooftop with the empty gin bottle and the echo of a price tag too heavy to comprehend.
The gin bottle gleamed dully in the neon haze. Vy picked it up, her fingers fitting perfectly where Katy’s had been, the glass still faintly warm. She poured the remaining inch of liquor over the roof’s edge, watching it disappear into the city’s glow. A cheap libation for a debt she couldn’t see.
She didn’t go back to her dorm. She walked for hours, through Cambridge, across the river, until her feet ached and the sky began to bleach from black to a sorry gray. Her mind was a static hum. The numbers Katy’s father recited were ghosts in the air between buildings.
At 2:58 PM on Wednesday, Vy stood before the third-floor library window. The stained glass cast its familiar jewels of light on the empty chair. Her stomach was a hard knot. She didn’t sit. She leaned against the shelves, watching the door.
Katy arrived at 3:07. She looked like she’d been folded and crumpled. Her leather jacket was gone, replaced by a thick, beige cable-knit sweater that swallowed her frame. Her hair was in a sloppy bun, strands escaping. She carried no books. She saw Vy, stopped, and for a suspended second, Vy thought she might turn and leave.
She didn’t. She walked to the table and sat, her movements heavy. She didn’t look up.
Vy sat beside her. The silence was a third presence, pressing in. They listened to the distant cough of a librarian, the whir of a scanner.
“I deleted the draft,” Katy said, her voice toneless. She stared at her own hands, clenched on the oak. “I opened the document, read my mother’s ‘refined narrative,’ and I pressed delete. I didn’t write a new one. I just left it blank.”
Vy’s breath caught. “What happened?”
“Nothing. Yet. The silence from Shanghai will be deafening. It’s building like a pressure front.” Finally, Katy looked at her. Her eyes were red-rimmed but clear. “I’m Comparative Literature and Economics. Did you know that? Not pre-med. Not really. The pre-med courses are just… props. A convincing backdrop.”
The confession landed softly, a truth detonating in a vacuum. It explained the poetry books next to the neuroscience texts. It explained everything. “Your parents…”
“See the props. They see the stage. They don’t ask about the play.” Katy’s smile was a thin, painful cut. “I’m an international student. Third year. My visa is tied to my enrollment, to my performance. Their life’s investment is tied to my performance. It’s a very elegant, very suffocating piece of financial engineering.”
Vy reached out, covering Katy’s clenched fist with her own. Katy flinched but didn’t pull away. Her knuckles were sharp under Vy’s palm.
“I need to tell you something,” Vy said. The words felt too loud for the library hush.
“If it’s pity, don’t.”
“It’s not.” Vy took a sharp breath. “That night. In your room. The rooftop. All of it. It was my first time. You’re my first. For everything.”
Katy went utterly still. Not with surprise, but with a profound, consuming focus. Her eyes searched Vy’s face, looking for the trap, the regret. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because you think you’re using me. And maybe you are. But I’m not some blank slate you’re corrupting.” Vy’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m choosing you. I am so fucking down bad for you, Katy. It’s embarrassing. I think about the way you smell, and I lose my train of thought in the middle of class. I replay the things you say in my head. But this… whatever this is with us… it’s so complicated it makes my brain hurt.”
A strange, shattered sound escaped Katy—part laugh, part sob. She turned her hand over, lacing her fingers with Vy’s. Their grip was tight, almost painful. “You’re an idiot.”
“Probably.”
“Do you have any idea…” Katy leaned in closer, her scent of jasmine and exhaustion wrapping around Vy. “Do you have any clue how many people are circling you right now? That guy from your poli-sci section, Ben? He’s been asking about you. That senior from the rowing team, the one with the frankly unsubtle jawline? He’s tried to get your number twice through Mei. You’re glowing, Vy. You walked out of that rooftop party and you haven’t stopped. You’re so alive it’s blinding. And they all want a piece of that. They want to be the one to sleep with the beautiful, mysterious freshman.”
Vy felt heat flood her cheeks. She’d noticed the glances, the lingering questions after study groups, but she’d dismissed them as noise. “I don’t want them.”
“I know.” Katy’s thumb stroked the inside of Vy’s wrist. “That’s what makes you an idiot. And it’s what makes me the villain here. I’m a tangled-up, lying, third-year international student with a blank personal statement and a family on the brink of financial heartbreak. I’m a black hole. And you’re a newborn star. This isn’t complicated. It’s a tragedy in draft form.”
Vy shook her head, gripping Katy’s hand tighter. “You don’t get to decide what I’m worth. Or what I want. You’re not a villain. You’re just… trapped. And maybe I’m the one who’s not afraid of the cage.”
Katy stared at her, and the weary cynicism in her eyes finally cracked. Something raw and terrified shone through. “I don’t know how to do this. The wanting. Not without it being about escape.”
“Then we’ll figure it out.” Vy said it with a conviction she didn’t fully feel, but wanted to. “One messy, unwritten day at a time. Starting with you telling me about Comparative Literature. Tell me about a poem you love that isn’t a prop.”
Katy blinked. A real, slow smile touched her lips, tentative as a first crack in ice. “There’s a poem by Ocean Vuong. ‘Aubade with Burning City.’ It’s about love and war and music on a radio. It makes my chest feel too small for my heart. I’ve never told anyone that.”
“Tell me now,” Vy whispered.
And as Katy began to speak, her voice low and weaving through the quiet library, weaving a world of loss and beauty far from medical school applications, Vy watched her. She watched the passion animate her tired face, the way her hands sketched shapes in the air. This was the real thing. Not the model. Not the performance. This was the girl who loved a poem that made her chest ache.
The complication didn’t vanish. The pressure didn’t lift. But in that shared space of stolen truth, with the jeweled light painting Katy’s hands as they spoke of poetry, the live wire between them hummed with a new, terrifying current: hope.
But in that shared space of stolen truth, with the jeweled light painting Katy’s hands as they spoke of poetry, the live wire between them hummed with a new, terrifying current: hope. It was quiet for a long moment after Katy finished, the ghost of Vuong’s words hanging between them.
“We should get out of here,” Katy said suddenly, retracting her hands into the sleeves of her sweater. “Before we start quoting Plath and really depress the pre-law students.”
“Where to?” Vy asked, already gathering her bag.
“The real world. Or a facsimile of it.” Katy stood, stretching, a vertebra in her back popping audibly. “My friends are grabbing coffee at the Lulu. You should meet them.”
The offer was casual, but Vy felt its weight. It was a door opening to a corridor she hadn’t seen. “As what?”
Katy shouldered her own bag, a faded leather satchel. Her eyes met Vy’s, flat and unreadable. “As my friend, Vy. What else?”
The word was a bucket of cold water. A necessary, brutal correction. Friend. It stung, a precise puncture to the hopeful balloon in her chest. Vy nodded, swallowing the metallic taste of disappointment. “Right.Yeah. That sounds good.”
The Lulu was all exposed brick and the hiss of industrial espresso machines. Katy’s group had claimed a large, scarred wooden table in back. They were a tableau of polished exhaustion: sleek laptops, designer water bottles, textbooks with crisp, unbroken spines. Four of them.
“Don’t be intimidated,” Katy murmured as they approached, her breath brushing Vy’s ear. “They’re mostly harmless. Cindy’s my roommate. Scarlet, Mary, Celena.”
Heads lifted as they arrived. Cindy had a sharp, discerning face and wore athleisure as if it were a uniform. Scarlet’s red hair was a violent slash of color, her gaze immediately appraising. Mary was all soft curves and a nervous smile, while Celena had the serene, detached cool of a classicist sculpture.
“You brought a stray,” Cindy said, not looking up from her laptop. “How novel.”
“This is Vy,” Katy said, pulling out a chair. The sound scraped the floor. “She’s a friend from the library.”
“The library,” Scarlet repeated, a smirk playing on her lips. “How very studious of you, Katy. I thought your extracurriculars were more… rooftop-based.”
Katy shot her a look that could frost glass. “She’s a first-year. Undeclared. Be nice.”
Vy offered a small wave, feeling about twelve years old. “Hi. It’s, um, really cool to meet you all.” She focused on generating that welcoming vibe she’d been told she had, letting her natural curiosity push past the awkwardness. “Cindy, you’re in Katy’s organic chem seminar, right? I heard that midterm was brutal.”
Cindy’s eyes flickered up, intrigued. “A lethal injection of carbon bonds. You’re informed.”
“Vy asks good questions,” Katy said, and it sounded like a genuine defense. “She’s not like the other first-years, all panicked about syllabus week.”
“Obviously,” Celena said, her voice smooth and low. Her eyes traveled from Vy’s face to Katy’s protective posture beside her. “She’s got you playing tour guide. You never play tour guide.”
The dynamic was a minefield. Vy focused on Mary, who seemed the least predatory. “I love your earrings,” she said, pointing to the intricate silver moons dangling from Mary’s ears.
Mary’s hand flew to them, her smile widening. “Oh! Thanks. My grandmother sent them from Seoul. You have a great eye.”
A thread of connection. Vy leaned in, asking about the symbolism, and Mary blossomed under the attentive, easy focus. Scarlet watched this, her smirk fading into something more calculating. Cindy minimized her laptop screen.
“So, ‘friend from the library,’” Cindy said, making air quotes. “What’s the actual story? Katy doesn’t collect lost puppies. She barely tolerates us.”
Before Katy could snap a retort, the café door chimed. Vy’s own friends tumbled in, a burst of contrasting energy. Christy, her roommate, led the pack, her laughter bright and immediate. Ruby, Lucy, and Anika followed, a jumble of scarves and tote bags and unselfconscious chatter.
Christy spotted Vy immediately. “There you are! We texted you about the study disaster— Oh, hey, you’re with people!”
It was a collision of worlds. Vy stood, relief and fresh anxiety mixing. “Guys, this is Katy, and her friends Cindy, Scarlet, Mary, Celena. Katy’s been… showing me around.” She turned to Katy’s table. “These are my people. Christy, my roommate. Ruby, Lucy, Anika.”
Christy, with her innate social radar, extended a hand to Katy first. “The infamous Katy! Vy talks about your library spot all the time. Thanks for taking pity on her.”
Katy shook her hand, a bemused expression on her face. “Does she?”
“Only in, like, a totally normal friend way,” Christy said, but her eyes sparkled with mischief. She seamlessly pulled a chair over, her group coalescing around the table, expanding it with noisy, welcoming chaos.
Vy’s welcome vibe acted like a social solvent. Ruby immediately bonded with Mary over a shared hatred of their statistics professor. Anika and Celena discovered a mutual obsession with the same obscure indie director. Lucy, blunt and hilarious, had Scarlet laughing with a story about a disastrous lab partner.
Katy watched, sipping her black coffee, an observer in her own circle. Vy was in the center, bridging the gap effortlessly, her laughter soft but genuine, her questions pulling shy Mary and aloof Celena into the mix.
“She’s good,” Cindy muttered to Katy, low enough that only Katy and Vy, sitting close, could hear.
“I know,” Katy said, her voice devoid of inflection.
“No,” Cindy pressed. “I mean, she’s good good. People want to tell her things. Look at Mary. She’s usually a ghost.”
It was true. Under Vy’s attentive gaze, people unfolded. Christy was now debating political theory with Scarlet, their voices rising in friendly heat. The table was no longer two separate groups, but one loud, overlapping entity.
Vy felt Katy’s knee press against hers under the table. A point of contact, hidden. She didn’t look over.
“So,” Christy said, turning the spotlight back. “How’d you two actually meet? Because Vy is mysteriously vague, which means it’s either deeply boring or incredibly interesting.”
All eyes swung to them. The pressure of the lie, of the word friend, condensed in the air between their touching knees.
Katy leaned back, a slow, feline motion. She draped her arm over the back of Vy’s chair, her fingers just brushing the fabric of Vy’s hoodie. The possessiveness of the gesture clashed violently with the label she’d given. “I caught her staring at me,” Katy said, her voice a low, confidential purr meant for the whole table. “At a party. Like she was trying to solve a particularly difficult equation.”
Vy’s cheeks burned. “You were laughing. I was trying to identify the source of the noise.”
Scarlet cackled. “She’s got a spine! I like her.”
“So you just… adopted her?” Anika asked, grinning.
“Something like that,” Katy said. Her fingers strayed from the chair back to play with a loose thread on Vy’s sleeve. It was an intimate, casual fidget. “Turns out she’s useful. Knows things. Asks better questions than any of you.”
The table erupted into playful protests. But Cindy’s eyes were narrowed, watching Katy’s fingers on Vy’s sleeve, watching the way Vy didn’t pull away, the way she seemed to lean into the touch even as she laughed at Ruby’s joke.
Under the table, Katy’s knee pressed harder. Her hand retreated from Vy’s sleeve, but only to find Vy’s hand resting on her own thigh. Katy’s fingers traced a slow, deliberate circle on the inside of Vy’s wrist, where the pulse hammered. A secret script on sensitive skin.
Vy kept her face turned toward Lucy, nodding at her story, but her entire universe had contracted to that single point of contact. The heat of Katy’s touch burned through her jeans. Friend. The word was a joke now, a thin sheet over a smoking crater.
The conversation swirled. Plans were made, numbers exchanged between the groups. It was a success. Vy had been introduced, accepted. The charisma she didn’t know she wielded had done its work.
As they all began gathering coats and cups, Cindy leaned into Katy’s space. “‘Friend,’ huh?” she whispered, her voice devoid of judgment, full of knowing.
Katy didn’t answer. She just stood, breaking the contact under the table, leaving Vy’s skin instantly cold.
“We’re heading to a thing at Professor Aldridge’s house,” Cindy announced to the group. “Katy? You’re expected.”
Katy’s mask of cool engagement was back, seamless. “Duty calls.” She looked at Vy, and her eyes were empty corridors. “See you around, friend.”
She left with her cohort, a sleek, united front. Vy’s friends closed in around her, buzzing about how cool and intense Katy’s friends were, how awesome it was that Vy had an in with the seniors.
“She’s into you,” Christy whispered in Vy’s ear as they walked back toward their dorm, the others ahead.
“She said ‘friend,’” Vy replied, her voice hollow.
“Yeah, and her hand was on your back the whole time like she was claiming territory. And the way she looked at you when you weren’t looking?” Christy snorted. “That wasn’t a ‘friend’ look. That was a ‘I want to devour you in a library stacks’ look. It’s spicy. I’m into it.”
Vy’s phone buzzed in her pocket. A single line from the now-familiar unknown number.
The persimmon’s rotting. It smells like failure. I can’t stop smelling it.
Then, a second message.
Tell me to come over. Tell me not to go to that fucking thing. Be the thing I choose.
The words were a knife twist. A surrender. A desperate, clawing reach back across the line she had drawn. Vy stopped walking, her breath fogging in the cold evening air. The momentum of the night, of the successful introduction, shattered. This was the unpredictability, jagged and real.
She typed back, her fingers numb.
Then choose it. My room. Now.
She didn’t wait for a reply. She just started running, leaving Christy’s shouted question behind, the live wire in her chest now a screaming siren pulling her home.