Chapter 1: The Unexpected Reunion
The bus from Wellesley to Boston smelled like exhaust and regret. Vy spent the forty-five minutes tracing cracks in the vinyl seat, her knee bouncing a nervous rhythm against her backpack. Ruby, wedged beside her, scrolled through her phone, letting out the occasional snort of laughter.
“You’re sure you’re just… visiting?” Ruby asked, not looking up. “Because you spent twenty minutes deciding which sweatshirt looked ‘casual but not trying.’”
“It’s a health fair. It’s literally about trying,” Vy mumbled, watching the city skyline materialize through the grimy window. The real answer knotted in her stomach. She was going because Sofina Su had posted about tabling there on her Instagram story. A three-second clip of a table covered in pamphlets, Sofina’s hand—a silver ring on her index finger—arranging them. That was it. That was the hook.
Boston University’s campus was a different species of chaos than Wellesley’s curated green. The health fair sprawled across a wide plaza, a temporary carnival of wellness. Fluorescent posters screamed about mindfulness and STI testing. A pop-up tent offered free blood pressure checks, the line snaking past a guy in a giant vitamin gummy bear costume. The air was thick with the scent of popcorn, fake-butter sunscreen, and the underlying damp wool of a thousand college sweatshirts.
Vy felt immediately, acutely out of place. Her Wellesley sweater was a dark navy beacon in a sea of BU scarlet. She and Ruby moved through the crowd like a small, polite island, students swirling around them with a louder, faster energy.
“Over there,” Ruby said, pointing to a constellation of familiar navy sweaters by a table hawking ergonomic pillows. “Looks like some econ girls. We could—”
Vy’s eyes snagged on a different table. Public Health Initiatives & Community Care. And behind it, Sofina.
Time did that stupid, cliché thing where it stuttered. The noise of the fair dipped. Sofina was handing a pamphlet to a guy in a soccer jersey, her head tilted, her black hair falling in a perfect, sharp curtain. She laughed at something he said, and Vy knew that laugh—a short, bright sound that never quite reached her eyes unless she meant it. Then Sofina’s gaze lifted, scanning the crowd, and landed directly on Vy.
It wasn’t a glance. It was a lock.
Vy froze mid-step, one foot awkwardly in front of the other. Sofina’s sharp smile didn’t waver, but it changed. It became a challenge. A recognition. Her eyebrows, perfectly shaped, lifted a millimeter.
Ruby followed Vy’s line of sight. Her elbow connected with Vy’s ribs. “Oh,” she breathed, her voice dropping to a theatrical whisper. “You didn’t tell me you knew her.”
“I don’t,” Vy said automatically, the lie reflexively bitter on her tongue. “I mean, we went to high school.”
“You went to high school with that?” Ruby’s gaze was appreciative. “She looks like she could dissect you and give you a grade on your organ function.”
That was uncomfortably close to the truth. Vy’s mouth was dry. The attraction she’d nursed in the scattered, vulnerable days of senior year came roaring back, a physical heat climbing her neck. It was the way Sofina held herself, utterly still amidst the chaos, a calm control in every line of her body.
“Go say hi,” Ruby urged, giving her a gentle shove.
“She’s working.”
“So? You’re a prospective student. Ask about public health majors. It’s a health fair, you dork.”
Vy’s feet carried her forward before her brain could veto it. The distance closed in a series of disjointed sensory inputs: the crinkle of a mylar balloon tied to the next table, the feel of a dropped pamphlet under her shoe, the dizzying smell of the cheap coffee being handed out next door. Sofina watched her approach, that same knowing smile playing on her lips.
“Vy Le,” Sofina said when Vy was finally within earshot. Her voice was exactly as Vy remembered—cool, clear, with an undercurrent of something perpetually amused. “Wellesley treating you okay? Or did you come all this way for a free toothbrush?” She gestured to a bowl of dental hygiene samples.
“The toothbrushes are a compelling draw,” Vy managed, her own voice sounding too high. “I, uh, saw you were tabling.”
“I posted about it.” Sofina leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. The silver ring glinted. “Knew you followed me. Knew you’d see it.”
The directness was a physical blow. Vy felt her carefully constructed casual façade crack. “Just seemed like a thing to do. Boston. A weekend.”
“Mm-hmm.” Sofina’s eyes, dark and intelligent, flicked over Vy’s face, reading every twitch. “Well, since you’re here, want a pamphlet on harm reduction? Or are you more in the market for… stress relief?” Her tone dipped, just slightly, on the last two words.
Ruby materialized at Vy’s shoulder, a buoy of forced normalcy. “Hi! I’m Ruby, Vy’s roommate. We’re exploring all the… health.” She waved a hand at the fair.
“Sofina. Nice to meet you.” Sofina’s attention shifted to Ruby, polite and engaged. She explained the public health major, the pre-med track, her work with a local community clinic. She was brilliant and articulate, and Vy just stood there, listening to the girl she’d helped write a letter of continued interest for BU, the girl she’d stared at during calculus when she thought no one was looking.
A wave of students pushed past, jostling Vy sideways. Her hip bumped the table.
“Careful,” Sofina said, her hand shooting out to steady a toppling stack of flyers. Her fingers brushed Vy’s wrist. The contact was brief, electric. Vy jerked her arm back as if scalded.
Sofina’s smile turned genuine, a real flash of teeth. It was more unnerving than the cool smirk. “Still jumpy, Le.”
“I’m not jumpy.”
“You are. It’s your tell.” Sofina straightened up, turning to answer a question from another student. The dismissal was clear, but not unkind. Just a return to her duty. Over her shoulder, she added, “The good stuff is at the back. Mental health booth. They have a zen garden in a box. You look like you could use it.”
Ruby pulled Vy away as another person stepped up to the table. “Okay,” Ruby hissed as they melded back into the crowd. “What the hell was that?”
“What?” Vy’s wrist still tingled.
“That was not a ‘we went to high school’ vibe. That was a ‘we have unresolved tension’ vibe. A major one.”
“We don’t.”
“You practically short-circuited when she touched you. And she knew you’d come. That’s intentional. That’s game.”
Vy’s head swam. The smell of popcorn was suddenly nauseating. She looked back. Sofina was already engrossed with the next person, her profile sharp and focused. But for a moment, just a moment, her eyes slid back to Vy. A quick, sidelong glance. A secret passed through the crowded, noisy air.
Then Sofina turned fully away, her dark hair a curtain between them once more.
Ruby was still talking, a steady stream of analysis and glee, but Vy wasn’t listening. The hum of the fair, the laughter, the thumping bass from a nearby DJ booth—it all faded into a dull roar. A single, clear thought crystallized in the noise.
Sofina had known she would come. She had posted that story for an audience of one. And Vy, like a compass needle finding north, had obeyed.
She felt a confusing twist in her gut—part thrill, part sheer terror. This wasn’t high school. The rules were different here. The stakes felt higher. The game, as Ruby called it, was already in play, and Vy, for all her careful plans and international relations theories, had no idea what move to make next. She just stood there, clutching a free granola bar she didn’t remember taking, the future snapping into focus with a terrifying, exhilarating clarity.
She just stood there, clutching a free granola bar she didn’t remember taking, the future snapping into focus with a terrifying, exhilarating clarity.
Ruby’s voice was a distant buzz. “Earth to Vy. You’re doing that thing where you just… stop. It’s creepy.”
Vy blinked. The noise of the fair rushed back in—a shouted conversation about fluoride, the crinkle of a protein bar wrapper, the bass from the DJ now drilling into her temples. She forced a breath.
“Sorry. It’s loud.”
“It’s a fair. It’s supposed to be loud. Let’s go pet a therapy dog or something. Reset your brain.” Ruby tugged her toward a fluffy golden retriever wearing a vest.
Vy let herself be pulled, a vague panic still buzzing under her skin. Sofina had seen her. Sofina had calculated her. She’d known Vy would see the story, known she’d come. The arrogance of it should have been infuriating. Instead, it felt like being seen through a foggy window suddenly wiped clear.
They were halfway through a conversation with the therapy dog handler when Vy felt it—a shift in the air behind her, a specific pressure. She turned.
SOFINA APPROACHES.
She moved through the crowd not like she was pushing through it, but like it was parting for her. Her public health table was abandoned to a fellow volunteer. She held two paper cups of the fair’s terrible coffee. Her expression was unreadable.
Ruby followed Vy’s gaze and went very still. “Oh,” she whispered.
Sofina stopped in front of them, ignoring Ruby completely. She held out one of the cups. “You looked like you needed this. And don’t say you don’t drink coffee. You lived on it during AP Lit.”
Vy took the cup. The cardboard was hot, almost burning. “Thanks.”
“Can I steal her?” Sofina asked Ruby, her eyes still fixed on Vy. It wasn’t really a question.
Ruby, for once, seemed at a loss. “Uh. Yeah. Sure. I’m gonna go… learn about…,” she trailed off, waving vaguely at the vitamin gummy bear, before retreating with a significant look at Vy.
Then it was just the two of them, a pocket of silence in the chaos. Sofina took a sip of her coffee, made a slight face, and then nodded toward a quieter edge of the plaza, away from the main throng. “Walk with me.”
Vy fell into step beside her, the granola bar still clenched in her other hand. They walked past a spin-the-wheel for birth control education, past a chiropractor giving free assessments.
“Why are you here, Vy?” Sofina asked. The question wasn’t accusatory. It was flat. Direct.
“You said you knew.”
“I knew you’d see the story. I didn’t know you’d get on a bus. That’s a different level of… something.” Sofina glanced at her. “Your roommate seems fun.”
“She is.”
“And Wellesley? All women, all the time. Is it… enlightening?”
Vy heard the unspoken question. She bristled. “It’s college. It’s classes. It’s the same as anywhere.”
Sofina smiled a little, a private thing. “Sure.” They reached a quieter corner near a brick wall covered in ivy. The sound of the fair was a dull roar here. Sofina leaned against the brick, turning to face her. “I read your last essay. The one you posted about neoliberal frameworks in Southeast Asian development.”
Vy’s stomach dropped. She’d forgotten she’d linked it on her private Twitter, a account Sofina definitely didn’t follow. “You… how?”
“The internet is small when you’re looking for someone.” Sofina shrugged. “It was good. A little naive in the conclusion, but the analysis was sharp.”
The critique, delivered so casually, was a hotter brand than the coffee. “Naive how?”
“You assumed the local actors wanted liberation on your terms. You framed them as victims of a system, not participants in it. It’s messier than that.” Sofina took another sip, watching her over the rim of the cup. “You always did like things clean. Straight lines.”
Vy felt exposed, as if Sofina had peeled back a layer of her skin and was poking at the raw circuitry beneath. This wasn’t the conversation she’d imagined in the bus. There was no flirting, no nostalgia. This was a dissection.
“Why did you want me to come here?” Vy asked, her own voice sounding foreign to her.
Sofina was quiet for a long moment. She looked out at the swirling crowd, her profile sharp against the red brick. “Because I wanted to see if you would,” she said finally. She turned her head back, her dark eyes capturing Vy’s completely. The controlled public health advocate was gone. In her place was someone more intense, more real. “And because I’m bored out of my mind at BU, Vy. The pre-meds are robots. The public health kids just want to tick boxes. They don’t… think. They don’t get mad when they’re wrong. You get mad. I can see it now. You’re furious I called you naive.”
Vy was. The heat in her cheeks confirmed it.
A slow smile spread across Sofina’s face. It wasn’t kind. It was thrilling. “There it is.” She pushed off from the wall, standing close enough that Vy could smell her perfume—something clean and citrus, cutting through the fair smells. “I have to get back to my table. My shift ends at four.”
She turned to go.
“That’s it?” The words tumbled out of Vy, helpless.
Sofina looked over her shoulder. “There’s a party. Off-campus. A friend of a friend’s warehouse. It’ll be loud and dirty and full of people trying too hard.” She paused, her gaze drilling into Vy. “It’ll be the opposite of Wellesley. Be at the Harvard Square T stop at nine. If you want.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She just walked away, melting back into the colorful, noisy stream of students, leaving Vy alone with a cooling cup of bad coffee, a crushed granola bar, and a decision that felt heavier than any textbook.
She just walked away, melting back into the colorful, noisy stream of students, leaving Vy alone with a cooling cup of bad coffee, a crushed granola bar, and a decision that felt heavier than any textbook.
The bus ride back to Wellesley was silent. Ruby, sensing the shift, didn’t press. She just played music through one earbud and stared out the window, leaving Vy to her own churning thoughts. The city lights blurred past, streaks of gold against the deepening blue. If you want. Those three words looped in her head, a taunt and a temptation. It wasn’t an invitation. It was a test.
Her dorm room felt like a dollhouse that night—small, orderly, safe. Her international relations textbook lay open on her desk, the words swimming. Neoliberal frameworks. Participatory versus dictatorial development models. It all seemed absurdly abstract. Sofina’s critique needled her. Naive.
“You’re going, aren’t you?” Ruby asked from her bed, painting her toenails a violent shade of purple.
“I shouldn’t.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Vy swiveled in her desk chair. The clock read 7:43 PM. The party was at nine. The Harvard Square T stop was an hour away, between the commuter rail and the Red Line. “She wants to see if I’ll do it. It’s a power move.”
“Obviously,” Ruby said, blowing on her toes. “So, are you going to let her have that power? Or are you going to walk in there and take some for yourself?”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means stop analyzing her like she’s a treaty and start reacting like she’s a person you like. A person who clearly, for some messed-up reason, likes you back.” Ruby capped the polish. “Wear the black jeans. Not the mom jeans.”
At 8:12, Vy stood in front of her closet. The black jeans felt like a costume. She paired them with a simple grey sweatshirt, her hair down for once, the weight of it strange on her neck. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She looked like herself, just sharper.
“You look hot,” Ruby called from her bed, where she was now scrolling through TikTok. “Now go get your girl or whatever. Just text me if you need an extraction. Code word: ‘borogove.’”
“That’s not a word.”
“Exactly. No one will suspect.”
The air outside was cold, a slap after the dorm’s warmth. The walk to the commuter rail station was quiet, her footsteps echoing. Each step felt like a commitment. Buying the ticket, sitting on the nearly empty train, watching the suburbs give way to the city—it all had the flat, hyperreal quality of a dream. Her heart was a frantic bird in her ribs.
Harvard Square was buzzing with a Saturday night energy that was different from the fair’s collegiate buzz. This was older, weirder. Tourists mixed with street performers, students rushing to parties, couples holding hands. Vy stood near the newsstand, exactly where Sofina had said. She felt wildly conspicuous. Every set of headlights was a judgment.
At 9:04, a black car pulled up. The window slid down. Sofina was in the passenger seat. She wasn’t smiling. “Get in.”
Vy moved on autopilot, opening the back door and sliding in. The car smelled like weed and new leather. A guy with a shaved head was driving, his eyes meeting hers in the rearview for a second before focusing back on the road. Another guy, lanky with a beanie, was in the back with her, giving her a nod.
“This is Vy,” Sofina said, not turning around. “Vy, this is Mark and Colin.” No one said anything else. Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” played at a low volume, the synths feeling apocalyptic.
They drove deeper into parts of Boston Vy didn’t recognize. Industrial buildings, warehouses, stretches of darkness broken by the occasional flickering streetlight. The silence in the car was absolute, heavier than any conversation.
Mark pulled up to a nondescript warehouse, its only sign of life a dull red light above a metal door and the bass thumping through the very foundations. The sound was a physical presence, a pressure in her chest. People clustered outside, smoking, their breath making clouds in the cold air.
Sofina finally turned. In the dim light from the dashboard, her face was all angles and shadows. “You came.”
Vy just looked at her, unable to form words. The noise from the warehouse seemed to swallow sound.
“Let’s go,” Sofina said, opening her door. The cold rushed in.
Inside was a different universe. The bass wasn’t just sound; it was the pulse of the room. Strobe lights cut through a haze of smoke and bodies, turning the dance floor into a frantic, disjointed film reel. The air was thick with sweat and perfume and something metallic. It was everything Sofina had promised—loud, dirty, full of people trying so desperately hard to be seen.
Sofina took her hand. Her grip was firm, dry, decisive. She pulled Vy through the edge of the crowd, past a girl crying into her phone, past a couple making out against a stack of pallets, past a makeshift bar where someone was pouring clear liquid from a giant jug into red plastic cups.
They found a relatively quiet corner near a flickering EXIT sign, shielded by a massive piece of abstract sculpture made from welded car parts. The music was still thunderous here, but you could hear yourself think. Barely.
Sofina leaned close, her lips almost brushing Vy’s ear. Her citrus scent cut through the sweaty fog. “You okay?”
Vy nodded, though she wasn’t. She was overwhelmed. “You come to these often?”
“When I need to feel something that isn’t on a syllabus.” Sofina’s eyes scanned the crowd, analytical even here. “It’s honest, in its own ugly way. No one’s pretending to be virtuous here. It’s just hunger.”
A guy with glazed eyes stumbled toward them, smiling slackly. Sofina put a hand flat on his chest and stopped him without a word, guiding him sideways with a slight push. He wandered off, confused.
“Why did you want me here?” Vy asked, the question finally ripping free.
Sofina turned to face her fully, the strobe light flashing across her features, making her appear and disappear. “Because at the fair, you were still the Vy from AP Lit. Careful. Polished.” She reached out, took a strand of Vy’s long black hair between her fingers, rubbed it. “I wanted to see you here. Where it’s raw. I wanted to see if you’d break or bend or just… watch.”
She dropped the strand of hair. “Dance with me.”
It wasn’t a request. It was the next step in the experiment. Before Vy could answer, Sofina was pulling her into the thick of the crowd, into the heart of the noise and the heat. Bodies pressed in from all sides, moving in a rhythm that felt primal. Sofina moved differently here—not with the controlled precision of the health fair, but with a loose, instinctual grace. She closed her eyes, let her head fall back, became part of the music.
Vy stood still for a moment, a statue in a river. Then, something in the beat, in the dark, in the sheer reckless anonymity of it, unlocked. She stopped thinking about being watched, about being naive, about international relations. She let the sound move her. It was clumsy at first, then easier. She caught Sofina’s eye. A flash of a smile, real and surprised, and then Sofina was closer, their movements syncing, the space between them charged and crackling like the air before a storm.
A hand grabbed Vy’s waist from behind—not Sofina’s. She jerked away, turning to see a guy grinning, his eyes unfocused. Before she could speak, Sofina was there. She stepped between them, her body a shield.
“She’s not interested,” Sofina said, her voice low but slicing through the bass.
The guy’s grin faded into a scowl. “Chill, man. Just dancing.”
“Find someone else.” Sofina didn’t move. She held his gaze until he muttered something and shuffled away.
Sofina turned back, her body now flush against Vy’s in the crowd, one hand on Vy’s hip, the other still holding hers. The protective anger was gone, replaced by something hotter, more intent. The music pounded around them, a frantic heartbeat.
“See?” Sofina’s mouth was at her ear again, her breath warm. “Not so clean.”
Then she kissed her.
It was nothing like Vy had imagined. It wasn’t soft or questioning. It was claiming. A direct, unambiguous possession. Sofina’s lips were firm, insistent, her hand tightening on Vy’s hip. The noise, the lights, the entire chaotic universe of the party collapsed into that single point of contact. Vy kissed her back, a surge of something fierce and long-denied rising up in her, meeting Sofina’s challenge with one of her own.
When they broke apart, the world rushed back in, louder, brighter, more dizzying. Sofina’s eyes were dark pools, her lips slightly parted. She looked like she’d just won something.
“Good,” she said, the word lost in the music but shaped perfectly on her mouth.
She kept her hand on Vy’s hip, anchoring her in the chaos, as the beat dropped and the crowd screamed around them.