Chapter 8: Worry
The Monday morning alarm was a blunt instrument against the lingering warmth of the weekend. Leo fumbled for his phone, silencing the shriek. His body ached in a pleasant, unfamiliar way—a deep muscle memory of Symphony’s weight, her demands, the cold bathroom tile. The scent of her was still on his skin, beneath the clean smell of soap.
He was making coffee, watching the bitter stream fill his mug, when his phone buzzed with a text. Not a good morning meme, not a heart. Just Symphony’s name and a block of text.
> get over here. now.
> don’t ask. just come.
> please.
The please did it. The please was a splinter of ice. Symphony didn’t say please. She demanded, she teased, she commanded. She didn’t beg.
He didn’t finish the coffee. He pulled on the nearest clothes—a worn hoodie and jeans—and was out the door, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. The walk to her dorm was a blur of grey sidewalks and a sharp, accusing autumn sun.
Her door was unlocked. He pushed it open, the usual wave of sandalwood and vanilla incense hitting him, but underneath it, something acrid. Panic.
The room was a snapshot of interrupted preparation. A hair straightener sat cooling on her desk, a single black lace bra draped over the back of her chair. A textbook was open, a highlighter dropped mid-sentence. The usual melancholic classical strings played from a speaker, a dissonant soundtrack to the scene on the floor.
Symphony was curled into a tight ball in the center of her dark velvet rug. She wasn’t just crying. She was unraveling. Shoulder-length black hair, usually so sleek, was a wild cloud around her face, stuck to her wet cheeks and lips. Her makeup was a disaster—kohl smeared into ghastly wings, tears cutting pale tracks through her foundation. She wore only a loose band t-shirt and her underwear, her legs drawn up to her chest.
She looked small. She never looked small.
“Symphony?” His voice sounded too loud, too stupid.
She flinched, then lifted her head. Her eyes were swollen, the dark brown almost black with anguish. She looked at him, through him, her breath hitching in ragged, ugly gulps.
“Hey… hey, what’s wrong?” He was beside her in two strides, kneeling, his hand hovering over her shaking shoulder. He didn’t know where to touch. “Did something happen? Are you hurt?”
She let out a sound that was half sob, half laugh, a choked, miserable thing. She uncurled one arm from around her knees and pointed a trembling finger toward her small, connected bathroom. The door was ajar. Inside, on the sink, he could see the familiar, cheerful box of tampons beside her skincare products.
“I got my period,” she whispered, the words thick and broken.
A wave of confused relief washed over him, followed instantly by deeper concern. This wasn’t just PMS. This was tectonic. “Okay… that’s… okay, right? I mean, it’s normal, isn’t it?”
“You don’t get it.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, a childlike gesture that shattered his heart. “I’m never late. My cycle is like a fucking atomic clock, Leo. It’s a fact of my existence. And it was late. Three days late.”
The air in the room changed. The music seemed to fade away. He could hear the hum of her mini-fridge, the distant slam of a dorm door down the hall.
“I’ve been… I’ve been sitting here since I saw the blood, just thinking. Retracing every single time.” Her voice gained a horrible, clear precision. “The first time, in your bed. The second time, on your couch. The morning in the garage, up against your car. Saturday night, after I said it. Sunday morning, on your bathroom floor. Every. Single. Time.”
She finally looked directly at him, her gaze holding his with a terrifying intensity.
“You came in me, Leo. Every time. And we never once used a condom. I never asked you to. You never asked. It just… happened. It felt too good to stop. It felt like everything.”
The truth landed, heavy and cold, in the pit of his stomach. He had known, in a distant, hazy way. In the moment, it was just heat and need and her saying yes, yes, yes. The reality of it—the biological consequence—had been a abstract concept, vaporized by her certainty, by the sheer force of her wanting. Now it crystallized, sharp and deadly.
“Oh, god,” he breathed.
“Yeah,” she spat, the word cracking. “Oh, god. For three days, I thought… I actually thought…” She couldn’t finish. A fresh sob wrecked her. “I was making plans. Terrified plans. I was looking at my bank account. I was thinking about how to tell my mother, who already thinks I’m a lost cause. I was thinking about how we’d manage, where we’d live. I was thinking about names.”
Each sentence was a hammer blow. He saw it now—the dark circles under her eyes weren’t just from crying today. They were from three sleepless nights of silent, solitary terror.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked, his own voice strained.
“And say what?” she cried, pushing herself up to sit. “‘Hey, Leo, I might be pregnant because we were reckless and stupid and it felt like love’? You just finally believed me! You finally looked at me like I wasn’t a bomb about to go off. I didn’t want to be the bomb again!”
The raw admission hung between them. Her fear wasn’t just about a pregnancy. It was about ruining the fragile, real thing they’d just built.
Leo moved then. He didn’t hover. He sat on the rug beside her and pulled her into his arms. She resisted for a second, stiff, then collapsed against him, her tears soaking into his hoodie. He held her tightly, his chin resting on the top of her head.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured into her hair. “I’m so fucking sorry, Symphony. I didn’t think.”
“I didn’t either,” she mumbled against his chest. “That’s the problem. We both just… forgot the world exists.”
They sat like that for a long time, until her crying subsided into shaky breaths. The classical music reached a somber, swelling finale and clicked off, leaving a profound silence.
Finally, she pulled back, sniffling. She looked wrecked, beautiful in her devastation. “I’m not pregnant. The universe granted us a colossal fucking do-over.” She managed a weak, watery smile. “A warning shot.”
He brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “It won’t happen again. We won’t be that stupid again.”
“No,” she agreed, her voice firmer. “We won’t.” She took a deep, shuddering breath, the practical part of her mind visibly re-engaging. “We need to get condoms. Like, a lot of them. The good kind. Not the shitty free ones from the health center.”
He nodded. “Okay. I’ll go.”
“We’ll go,” she corrected, pushing herself to her feet. She swayed slightly, and he rose to steady her. “Together. After I wash this apocalyptic mess off my face.” She looked down at herself, at the tear-stained shirt, and let out a real laugh, short and genuine. “Christ, I look like a raccoon who lost a fight.”
He smiled, the tension in his chest easing a fraction. “A cute raccoon.”
She swatted his arm, heading for the bathroom. “Flattery won’t save you from buying the jumbo pack.” She paused in the doorway, her back to him. Her voice softened. “Leo? For what it’s worth… those names I was thinking of? They were all really good.”
Then she closed the door. He heard the sink turn on.
He stood in the center of her dark, elegant room, surrounded by the evidence of her panic and their shared negligence. The relief was immense, a physical unclenching. But beneath it was a new, sober understanding. This was the cost of the clarity she offered. It was beautiful, and it was real, and it demanded you pay attention. It demanded you grow up.
He picked up the hair straightener, unplugged it, and wound the cord neatly. He closed the textbook. He was placing the highlighter back in her pencil cup when she emerged. Her face was scrubbed clean, pale and vulnerable without its usual armor of makeup. She had changed into a clean pair of black jeans and was pulling a oversized knit sweater over her head. She looked young, and determined.
“Ready?” she asked, slipping her feet into boots.
“Yeah,” he said, taking her hand. It was cool in his. “Let’s go learn from our mistakes.”
As they walked out into the bright, ordinary Monday, her grip on his hand was tight, an anchor against the sudden, terrifying depth of the world they had almost fallen into.