Chapter 2: The Library Confession
The leather of the armchair was cool and slick under Vy’s palms. She pressed her hands flat against it, trying to ground herself in the solid, studded reality of the library chair. The words on the page in front of her—Theories of Hegemonic Stability in Post-Cold War International Relations—swam, black ink bleeding into meaningless shapes.
All she could see was the gear shift of his Audi. His hand, relaxed, then moving to her knee.
A shiver that had nothing to do with the library’s climate-controlled air ran through her. She clenched her thighs together under the wide wooden table, but the motion only sent a fresh, unwelcome pulse through the tender ache that had been her constant companion for two days. It was a brand. A reminder. Her body had become a treacherous archive of him.
She forced her eyes back to the text. The preponderance of power leads to systemic order. Bullshit. The only system she understood now was the one he’d wired into her nerves: the escalation of touch, the climax of release, the devastating quiet after.
A burst of laughter, soft and melodic, cut through the dense silence of the third-floor study room.
Vy’s head jerked up.
Across the sun-drenched space, near the tallest arched window, Katy Guo was leaning against a shelf, a hardcover book held loosely in one hand. The late afternoon light poured over her, turning her black hair into a cascade of liquid amber. She was smiling at something Cindy had said, her eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that made something in Vy’s chest contract painfully.
Katy. A junior. A friend. Just a friend.
They’d met during orientation week. Katy had been the one to patiently explain the library layout, her voice calm and sure. They’d gotten coffee a few times since, talking about majors, about the awkwardness of being far from home. Katy was steady. Katy was kind. Katy had a laugh that felt like a secret you wanted to keep.
And for months, Vy had carried a quiet, hopeless thing for her—a flutter in her stomach when Katy texted, a deliberate choice of seat in lectures to be in her line of sight. It was a pure, aching warmth, untouched by the frantic hunger Dante had unlocked. It lived in a different chamber of her heart, one lined with fear and a desperate, fragile hope.
Now, looking at Katy’s easy smile, a wave of shame so intense it tasted metallic washed over Vy’s tongue.
She had given her first everything—first kiss, first touch, first time—to a virtual stranger in a filthy fraternity study. To a guy who smoked and commanded and looked at her like she was a complex toy he wanted to take apart. She had let him ruin her for this, for the simple, sunlit possibility of a girl who made her feel seen in a gentle way, not devoured.
She had fucked Dante Reyes. Repeatedly. And when she thought about it, which was constantly, her body burned with a guilty, addictive fire. But thinking about it while looking at Katy felt like a violation. Like she’d stained something precious with the memory of sticky couches and animal groans.
Scarlett said something, and Katy threw her head back, laughing fully now, the sound clear and bright as cut glass. Vy’s stomach flipped. She quickly looked down, her face heating. She could feel the ghost of Dante’s mouth on her neck, a direct counterpoint to the clean line of Katy’s jaw against the window light.
Stop it. She dug her fingernails into the leather. Just read.
The hegemon provides public goods…
Public goods. Dante’s hands on her hips were a private good. A stolen, illicit resource.
“Hey. Earth to Vy.”
The voice was right beside her. Vy started, knocking her knee against the table leg. A sharp bolt of pain radiated up her thigh—a pain that was weirdly, shamefully familiar.
Katy stood by her chair, a faint, curious smile on her face. She’d left her friends by the window. Up close, Vy could see the faint dusting of freckles across her nose. She smelled like laundry detergent and green tea.
“You’ve been staring at that same page for like, twenty minutes,” Katy said, her tone lightly teasing. “Is hegemony that captivating, or is it just a really good nap spot?”
Vy’s throat went dry. “A bit of both,” she managed, her voice embarrassingly raspy. She cleared it. “Just… hard to focus today.”
“Tell me about it. I have a lab report that’s actively draining my will to live.” Katy leaned a hip against the table, crossing her arms. The casual gesture was so friendly, so normal. It made Vy want to scream. “You okay? You look… intense.”
I feel like my skin is on inside-out and I can still smell him on me and I just want you to touch my hand and tell me it’s going to be okay.
“I’m fine,” Vy said, forcing a smile. “Just tired. Party on Friday. You know.”
Katy’s dark eyes held hers for a beat too long. Vy felt transparent, as if every debauched secret was written in highlighter across her forehead. “The Harvard mixer? Heard it was wild. You have fun?”
The question was innocent. A social formality.
Vy’s mind flashed: the feel of the door against her back, the ragged sound of his breathing in her ear, the utter, complete surrender. Fun was such a stupid, small word for it.
“It was an experience,” Vy said, looking back at her book, a coward.
Katy nodded slowly. “Well, if you need a break from the grand theories of global order, we’re gonna grab dinner at Lulu’s in a bit. Wanna come? Celena’s debating the merits of various bao buns again. It’s weirdly entertaining.”
It was an olive branch. A path back to the world of gentle camaraderie and shared meals. A world where she wasn’t the girl who got into a near-stranger’s car because he told her to.
For a second, Vy could almost grasp it. The normality of it. Sitting with Katy and her friends, talking about nothing. Letting the clean, simple fondness she felt for Katy slowly, maybe, become something more. A real first.
Then her phone, face-down on the table, vibrated.
A single, dense buzz that traveled up through the oak and into her bones.
She didn’t move. She kept her eyes locked on a random word in her textbook: stability.
Katy’s gaze flicked to the phone, then back to Vy’s face. Her friendly smile didn’t waver, but something in her expression shifted. A subtle understanding. A quiet withdrawal. She’d seen the jolt that went through Vy, the way all her attention had collapsed inward to that silent, buzzing device.
“Or,” Katy said, her voice still kind but now layered with a new distance, “maybe you’ve got other plans.”
Another buzz. A reminder. A demand.
Vy couldn’t speak. Her guilt was a physical weight, pinning her to the chair. She was choosing the text over the invitation. Choosing the fever dream over the sunlight. Katy saw it. And in that moment, Vy hated herself more than she thought possible.
“It’s okay,” Katy said softly, pushing off the table. “Some other time.” She gave Vy’s shoulder a brief, friendly squeeze. The contact was warm and brief and felt like a farewell. “Don’t work too hard.”
Vy watched her walk back to her friends, the honeyed light framing her like a saint in a painting. She saw Katy say something to Cindy, and they all gathered their things, glancing once in Vy’s direction before heading for the staircase. Their laughter faded, swallowed by the hushed grandeur of the library.
The study room was silent again, but the sanctity was broken. The air hummed with her shame.
She sat there for five full minutes, staring at the empty space where Katy had been. The ghost of that friendly hand on her shoulder burned.
Finally, slowly, she flipped her phone over.
Two texts from DANTE.
The first: A photo. His bed, rumpled sheets, the low light of his bedroom lamp. Her stomach twisted.
The second: I can’t stop thinking about the sound you make right before you come.
Vy’s breath hitched. Every coherent thought, every shred of guilt, evaporated in a white-hot rush of sheer, wanting need. It was a chemical reaction. He was the catalyst.
She stood up so fast her chair scraped loudly in the empty room. She shoved her textbook and notes into her bag, her hands trembling. She didn’t think about Katy’s retreated smile, or the dinner she’d just rejected, or the stable, orderly world of International Relations.
She thought about the gear shift. His hand on her knee. The promise in his low voice. We have a lot to try.
She was already halfway to the door, her body moving on a command deeper than thought. The shame was still there, a cold knot under the heat, but it was fuel now. It made the needing sharper, more desperate.
She had chosen. Again.
The library’s quiet swallowed her footsteps as she ran for the staircase, for the outside, for the waiting car she knew would be there. The fading dusk through the arched windows no longer looked like honey. It looked like fire.
It looked like fire. She ran toward it.
Dante’s apartment was a sparse, modern studio near Central Square, all concrete floors and industrial windows. He opened the door before she could knock. He’d taken his shirt off. The sight of his lean torso, the faint trail of dark hair leading below his waistband, short-circuited every coherent thought she’d rehearsed on the T ride over.
“Took you long enough,” he said, his voice a low thrum. He didn’t smile. He just pulled her inside by the strap of her bookbag and kicked the door shut.
His mouth found hers instantly, hungry and demanding. He tasted like mint and nicotine. Her bag thudded to the floor. His hands were under her sweater, palms rough against her ribs, skating up to cup her breasts through her bra. A needy whimper broke from her throat. It was the sound he’d texted about. He growled against her lips, recognizing it.
This was the pattern. He’d claim her, efficiently and thoroughly, against every available surface. The wall. The kitchen counter. The cold, hard concrete floor. It was never tender. It was a conquest, a consumption. And her body, traitorously, worshipped it. Each time he pushed inside her, a searing stretch that bordered on pain, she felt a devastating sense of fitting, of being used for the exact purpose she was made for.
Afterward, lying in a damp tangle on his unmade bed, the high receded. The reality seeped back in. His room smelled of sex and smoke and him. He traced the curve of her hip with a detached fascination.
“You’re like a fucking revelation every time,” he mused, his voice still thick. “So tight. So... fresh.”
The word hung in the air. Fresh. Like she was a fruit he’d plucked, unbruised. The meaning was clear. Her virginity had been a novelty, a spice. He’d tasted it and, for now, wanted to keep savoring the dish.
Vy stared at the exposed pipes on the ceiling. The cold knot of shame from the library, from Katy’s retreating back, hardened into a clear, cold stone in her gut.
She was not stupid.
She sat up, pulling the thin sheet around herself. The movement made her sore muscles protest. “This has to stop.”
Dante propped himself up on an elbow. He looked amused, not concerned. “Stop what? You just came three times.”
“This.” She gestured between them, the space still vibrating from their violence. “You just want fun. You want to fuck. You want to feel good.”
“And you don’t?” He reached for her, running a thumb over her lower lip. She flinched. “Your body begs for it, Vy. It screams.”
“That’s not the point!” She pushed his hand away, her voice sharpening. “The point is that’s all you want. I was a virgin, and it’s a thrill for you. A temporary one.”
His amusement faded. His hazel eyes cooled, assessing her like a math problem. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m not just going to continue this because you’re good at making me feel things.” She stood, legs shaky, and started gathering her clothes from the floor. “I’m ending it.”
He watched her dress, silent for a long moment. She could feel his gaze on her back as she hooked her bra. “You’ll be back,” he stated, simple as a fact. “You’re addicted to the stretch. To the weight. You like having someone in you.”
Her hands trembled as she pulled her sweater on. He was right, and that was the worst part. The hollow, physical need was already gnawing at her, just minutes after being filled. “Don’t contact me,” she said, not looking at him.
She walked out, the door clicking shut with a finality that echoed in her bones.
For three days, she was raw, jittery. She attended all her classes. She took meticulous notes. She tried to read about systemic order, but her mind kept replaying the crude, perfect mechanics of his hips. Her body was a withdrawal patient, aching for a specific, brutal fix.
The need became a hum, then a roar. It was a physical craving, separate from him now. It was the feeling of being stretched full. The pressure of another body pinning hers. The frantic friction.
So she got stupid.
She started going out. Not to random house parties, but to the sanctioned, elite fraternity mixers—the ones for pre-law and investment banking hopefuls. These were cleaner, sharper affairs in brick mansions with catered hors d'oeuvres and a dress code. The fucking here was more subtle, more clothed.
People didn’t casually fuck. They pressed. They grinded.
In a darkened basement lounge of a Final Club, the air thick with cologne and ambition, Vy let a guy from Yale named James pull her close during a slow song. He was all sharp cheekbones and polite conversation, but his hands were firm on her lower back, pressing their bodies together through layers of wool and cotton.
They swayed, not dancing. Just rocking. The hard line of his erection pressed against her belly through his tailored trousers. A shock of heat, pure and electric, shot through her. He didn’t try to kiss her. He just breathed against her temple, his hips making slow, deliberate circles.
It felt good. It was the pressure, the containment, the promise of a body against hers without the messy aftermath of being someone’s temporary revelation. She could lose herself in the sensation, anonymous in the dark.
She did it again the next weekend at a different house, with a different guy named Colin who murmured about his start-up against her hair. She pressed back, chasing that same electric grind, that full-body contact that made her nerves sing and her mind go blissfully, mercifully blank.
She never went home with them. She’d extricate herself with a mumbled thanks when the song ended, her body throbbing with unfinished business. It was a tease. A way to feed the craving without handing another piece of herself over.
Through it all, she hadn’t told Katy a single thing. Not about Dante. Definitely not about the grinding in dark rooms with strangers whose last names she forgot.
The thought of Katy’s calm, intelligent eyes clouding with judgment was a physical pain. Vy couldn’t bear it. She needed Katy to see her as good, as whole.
So she started manufacturing reasons to be near her.
“Hey, are you still swamped with that lab report?” Vy texted, fingers clumsy with nerves. “I’m drowning in Realism vs. Liberalism. Could use a study buddy who actually gets it.”
They met in the science library, a different vibe from Clapp. Sterile, bright. Katy was generous with her time, explaining complex concepts with a patience that made Vy feel both grateful and wretched.
“It’s just, I think I learn best by helping people, you know?” Vy said one afternoon, twirling a highlighter. The lie felt sour. “Like, explaining it to someone else solidifies it. And learning from people who are better at it.”
Katy looked up from her organic chemistry diagrams, a slight, curious frown on her face. “Sure. That makes sense.” She paused. “You’ve just been… around a lot more lately. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s great,” Vy said, too quickly. She forced a smile. “Just trying to be more… proactive. Social. Helpful.”
Katy held her gaze for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Okay. Well, I’m glad you’re around.”
It was a small victory, but it felt hollow. Vy sat there, the phantom feeling of a stranger’s hips grinding against hers lingering under her clothes, while she smiled at the only person whose opinion truly mattered. She was building a fragile lifeboat of normalcy with Katy, even as she secretly dove back into the dark, hungry water every weekend.
The dissonance was a constant scream in her skull. She was managing it, barely, a double life balanced on a knife’s edge of need and denial.
The knife’s edge was getting sharper. Every time Katy texted—“Running to the dining hall, want me to grab you a coffee?”—Vy’s heart did a stupid, hopeful little stutter. She’d stare at the screen, her thumb hovering. The “yes” was always right there, buzzing on her tongue.
But she’d force herself to type, “All good, thanks! Have a lecture soon.” She’d send it and immediately feel hollowed out, like she’d just thrown away something precious. Keeping distance was a physical ache, a constant low-grade fever behind her ribs. She’d see Katy across the quad, laughing with her roommate, and her feet would instinctively move toward that sound before she’d consciously wrench herself in another direction.
It was killing her. The wanting was a quiet, persistent hum, so different from the screaming need Dante had unlocked. This was softer, deeper. It lived in the space between sentences. It was in the way Katy would bite her lower lip while concentrating on a problem set, or how she’d always push the sugar bowl toward Vy during their study sessions.
One Tuesday, they were the last two left in a basement-level study carrel. The air was cool and smelled of old paper and Katy’s lemon-ginger tea. Vy was ostensibly reviewing her economics notes, but her attention was fully on the minute movements of Katy’s hand as she highlighted a line in her biology textbook.
“You’re staring at my highlighter like it’s about to give you the meaning of life,” Katy said without looking up, a smile in her voice.
Vy flushed, caught. “Sorry. Just… zoning out.” She scrambled for a topic, any topic. “How’s the lab report? The one draining your will to live?”
Katy sighed, rolling her shoulders. “It’s alive. I had to culture this bacteria that literally smells like rotten eggs. My clothes still reek. I’m basically a biohazard.”
“I don’t smell anything,” Vy said, and then wished she hadn’t. It sounded like she was sniffing her. Which, in a way, she had been.
Katy glanced at her, that curious flicker in her dark eyes again. “You’re being nice. Or you have a sinus infection.” She closed her book with a decisive thump. “I need a real break. Want to get out of here? There’s a shitty, amazing diner off campus that sells pie at midnight.”
It was a direct invitation. A step beyond the library. Vy’s pulse hammered a frantic yes in her throat. This was it—a chance to just be with her, in a booth, under fluorescent lights, talking about nothing. The pure, simple thing she actually wanted.
Her phone, buried in her bag at her feet, buzzed. Not a call. Just a single, jarring vibration against the floor tiles.
It was him. It was always him. He’d respected her “don’t contact me” for exactly four days before a photograph of his hand wrapped around a beer bottle arrived, his thumb positioned in a way that was obscenely suggestive. No words. Just that. She hadn’t replied. But he kept sending them—images of his room, his mouth, the neckline of a t-shirt—little grenades of memory lobbed into her new, fragile routine.
The buzz was a shackle. It yanked her back from the diner, from the pie, from Katy’s expectant face. It reminded her of what she’d done, of what her body still craved in the deepest, most shameful part of the night. She couldn’t sit across from Katy with that secret buzzing in her bag. She’d feel like a fraud.
“I… can’t,” Vy said, the words ash in her mouth. She couldn’t meet Katy’s eyes. “I have that… thing. Early morning thing.”
“Right,” Katy said. The single word was flat. The warmth had bled out of it. She started packing her bag, her movements efficient and final. “The thing.”
“Katy, I—”
“It’s cool, Vy.” She slung her bag over her shoulder. She looked tired. “Really. See you in class.”
Vy sat frozen in the carrel long after Katy had left. The silence was absolute, heavy with her own failure. She reached down slowly and pulled her phone from her bag.
The screen glowed in the dim light. It wasn’t a photo from Dante.
It was a calendar alert: PoliSci Midterm – 8 AM.
A laugh, sharp and ugly, burst from her lips. It echoed in the empty room. She’d just blown off the only person she genuinely wanted to be with because of a phantom text, an anticipation of filth that hadn’t even arrived. She was sabotaging herself, building the distance she thought she needed, and it was eating her alive from the inside.
The walk back to her dorm was a cold, blurry misery. Cambridge in late fall was all brittle wind and skeletal trees. She pulled her coat tight, but the chill was inside her. She passed a couple leaning against a brick wall, tangled up in each other, murmuring. A raw pang of longing, clean and sharp, lanced through her. Not for the grinding, nameless pressure. For the murmuring. For the leaning.
Her phone buzzed in her hand. For a wild, pathetic second, she hoped it was Katy. Change of heart. Pie?
It was Dante. A video this time. Three seconds long. It was dark, shaky. It showed the ceiling of a moving car, then the camera tilted down to capture a hand—his hand—sliding down the bare curve of a female thigh. Not hers. The skin was paler. The video ended.
The message below it read: Thought you’d want an update. Since you’re not answering.
Nausea, hot and immediate, rose in her throat. She stopped walking, bracing a hand against a cold lamppost. This was the game. This was the consequence of leaving. He was proving his point: she was replaceable, and he was moving on. The caveman logic of it should have filled her with relief. Instead, it ignited a possessive, irrational fury that burned away the nausea.
He didn’t get to have that. He didn’t get to have her, ruin her for everything else, and then just move on to some other thigh. She stared at the frozen image on her screen. The hollow ache inside her mutated, twisting into something harder, darker. It wasn’t about wanting him back. It was about ownership. About proving he was just as hooked as she was.
She didn’t think. She tapped the call button.
He answered on the second ring. “Yeah?” Background noise: music, laughter. A party.
“Where are you?” Her voice was steady, cold. It didn’t sound like her.
A beat of silence. She could picture his slight, surprised smile. “Sigma Chi. You coming to reclaim your territory?”
“I’m coming to end this.”