Chapter 2: The Mirror & The Unspoken - Dressing for Disaster
The walk back from the bridge was a numb, cold blur. The image of the dark car, the extinguished light, played on a loop behind Ethan’s eyes, synchronized with the rhythm of his footsteps. By the time he pushed open the door to his own quiet apartment, the knot in his stomach had hardened into a cold, heavy stone.
He didn’t text Mia.
She texted him an hour later, a simple ‘Home!’ with a sleeping emoji. He stared at the message, the cheerful yellow face a stark contrast to the black water of his memory. He typed ‘Cool. Night.’ and let the phone fall screen-down on his couch.
A week later, the smell of lavender and old paper hit him as soon as Mia opened her dorm room door. “You’re a lifesaver,” she said, pulling him inside.
The room was its familiar cozy chaos. Textbooks stacked like precarious towers on a thrift-store desk, a half-empty mug of cold coffee beside a sketchbook left open to a page filled with quick, anxious studies of a human hand. Her bed was unmade, a tangle of sheets and a worn quilt. A single string of fairy lights flickered softly above her bed, one bulb persistently sputtering.
Mia stood in front of her full-length mirror, which was propped against the wall and framed by peeling stickers. She was wearing a blush-pink dress Ethan had never seen before. It clung to her curves, falling just above her knees, and she spun once, the fabric flaring out slightly.
“Well?” she asked, catching his eye in the reflection. “Too much? Not enough? It’s for the thing tonight. The art department mixer at the gallery.”
Ethan set his backpack down, the weight of his laptop and books feeling suddenly irrelevant. “It’s good. You look… it’s good.”
“Helpful,” she said, grinning. She snatched two small boxes from her dresser and turned to him, holding out her hands. In each palm lay a single earring. One was a simple, minimalist silver bar. The other was a small, intricate feather, dangling from a fine chain. “Which one says ‘I am a fun and interesting person who is also serious art student material’? This is a crucial strategic decision, Bellweather. My entire future may hinge on it.”
He took the earrings from her. They were warm from her hands. The feather was light, almost fragile. He thought of Liam’s hand on her knee in the car, the easy possessiveness of the gesture. His own knuckles whitened around the tiny pieces of metal.
“The feather,” he said, his voice tighter than he intended. “It’s more… you.”
“Yeah? You think?” She took the feather earring from him, her fingers brushing his. She pivoted back to the mirror to put it on, her focus shifting to her own reflection. “I just want to make a decent impression. Professor Callahan is going to be there, and he picks the assistants for the summer residency program.”
Ethan sat down on the edge of her unmade bed. The sheets smelled like her shampoo. “You’ll get it. Your portfolio is the best one.”
“You haven’t even seen all of them,” she laughed, but she looked pleased.
Her phone, face-up on the rumpled quilt beside him, lit up with a notification. The screen flashed. A message preview from Liam.
Can’t wait to taste that lipstick tonight.
The words seemed to pulse on the screen, obscene and immediate. A hot, sour wave rolled through Ethan’s gut. He looked away, but the afterimage burned: the dark car, the two silhouettes, the light going out. Taste that lipstick. The intimacy of it was a punch to the throat.
Mia, one earring successfully in, glanced over. “Is that Liam?” She moved to pick up the phone, her smile softening as she read the message. She typed a quick reply, her thumbs flying. A soft, private laugh escaped her.
Ethan focused on a loose thread on her quilt. He wound it around his finger, pulled it tight until the tip of his finger turned pale and bloodless.
“You’re coming to the gig after, right?” Mia asked, putting in the second earring. “It’s at The Anchor. You can meet us there.”
Us. The stone in his stomach grew heavier. He thought of the diner, of Liv’s kick under the table. Just tell her. The pressure behind his teeth returned, a scream packed into silence. He could say it now. Right now. While she was happy, while she was looking at him with her wide, expectant eyes.
He opened his mouth. The air in the room felt thick, charged.
“Mia,” he started. The name sounded rough, strange.
“Hmm?” She was leaning close to the mirror now, applying the very lipstick in question. A deep, rose-red color.
The words dissolved. What came out was a weak, wounded sound. “The, uh… the feather. Good choice.”
She smiled at him in the mirror, then turned around. “You okay? You seem… tense. Is it the paper? The post-modern whatever thing?”
“Yeah,” he lied, grasping the excuse like a lifeline. “It’s killing me.”
“You’ll ace it. You always do.” She stepped closer, now inspecting him. “You should come tonight. Blow off some steam. Liam’s band is actually getting decent.”
The mention of the name was a spark to dry tinder. A reckless, jagged feeling ripped through Ethan’s careful control. “Saw his car the other night,” he said, the words coming out flat and hard. “Down by the marina. After the diner.”
Mia’s expression froze. The casual lightness in her posture stiffened, just slightly. A fraction of a second where her eyes darted away from his. “Oh. Yeah. We… we went for a drive. Talked. The water’s nice at night.”
“Looked like you were talking pretty intensely,” Ethan pushed, hating himself even as he did it. He couldn’t stop. The image was in the driver’s seat now. “The light was on. Then it wasn’t.”
The room went very quiet. The sputtering fairy light flickered, died, then flickered back on. Mia’s face closed off, a shutter coming down. “We were talking,” she repeated, her voice cooler now. “What’s your point, Ethan?”
He had none. No point he had any right to make. He was just a friend on a bed, holding a grenade he’d found in his own chest. He let go of the tight thread. The blood rushed back into his fingertip, a sharp, painful sting.
“No point,” he muttered, looking down. “Just… saw you, that’s all.”
The silence stretched, thin and brittle. The easy warmth of minutes ago was gone, replaced by something unfamiliar and chilly.
Her phone buzzed again in her hand. She looked at it, her shoulders relaxing slightly as she read. “Liam’s here,” she said, her voice returning to normal, but the ease was forced. “He’s gonna give me a ride to the mixer.”
“Right.” Ethan stood up, his legs feeling unsteady. “I should… get to the library. That paper.”
“Ethan.” She stopped him as he reached for his backpack. She looked conflicted, her earlier happiness now clouded by the conversation’s sudden turn. “Are we… is this okay?”
He forced a smile. It felt like cracking clay. “We’re fine. Always fine. Have fun tonight. Knock ‘em dead.”
He couldn’t get out of the lavender-scented room fast enough. The hallway outside was sterile and bright, a shock after the warm, tense darkness of her space. He walked quickly, the backpack thumping against his spine. He didn’t head toward the library.
He walked until he found himself on a concrete bench in a deserted campus courtyard, the dusk settling around him like ash. He took out his own notebook, the one he used for the things he couldn’t say. He didn’t write a villanelle. He scrawled a single line, over and over, until the page was a storm of angry, overlapping marks:
The light went out.