I don’t go back to the café. I don’t go home with my mother. I don’t go anywhere that feels familiar. I walk.
The campus lights blur into pale halos as I move past them, my boots hitting the pavement too hard, too fast. My body knows something is wrong before my mind can put language to it. My chest feels hollowed out, like someone scooped everything important from inside me and forgot to close the wound.
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be anywhere.
I stop near the library steps, gripping the cold metal railing as if it might anchor me to the ground. Students pass me in pairs, laughing, talking about deadlines and parties and nothing at all. Normal life. Normal stress.
I feel like a ghost drifting through it.
“Focus,” I mutter to myself. “Just focus.”
I force my feet up the steps and inside the library. The familiar scent of paper and dust hits me, but instead of comfort, it makes my stomach twist. This place used to mean safety. Order. Control.
Now it feels poisoned too.
I sit at one of the long tables and pull my laptop out with shaking hands. My reflection flickers faintly in the black screen—eyes glassy, face pale, mouth pulled tight like I’m holding something back.
I open my notes.
Words swim.
I scroll, reread the same paragraph three times, and realize I have no idea what it says.
“Come on,” I whisper. “You can do this.”
I type a sentence. Delete it. Type it again. Delete it again.
My thoughts won’t stay where I put them.
Everywhere I look, I see them.
My mother’s hand on his wrist.
His smile—warm, real, not professional.
The way they leaned toward each other like gravity existed between them.
I slam my laptop shut harder than necessary, earning a sharp look from a girl across the table.
“Sorry,” I mumble automatically.
She nods stiffly and goes back to her book.
I press my palms flat against the tabletop, grounding myself in the cold surface. My fingers tremble.
This isn’t heartbreak the way people describe it.
There’s no dramatic sobbing yet. No poetic devastation.
It’s emptiness.
It’s the sick realization that every direction I thought I was walking toward just vanished at once.
I gave up Chase because I thought I was choosing something better.
I chose structure.
Stability.
A future where I didn’t have to keep surviving someone else’s chaos.
And now that future feels like a joke someone played on me.
I stand abruptly, chair scraping loudly behind me, and shove my things back into my bag. Studying is pointless like this. I can’t read. I can’t think. I can barely breathe without my chest tightening painfully.
Outside, the air is colder. Sharper. It stings my lungs, but I welcome it. Pain feels better than numbness.
I sit on a bench near the quad, pulling my coat tighter around myself. My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I already know who it is.
I don’t take it out.
I stare straight ahead, watching the fountain spray weakly under the lights. Water rises and falls, over and over again, accomplishing nothing.
“You’re such an idiot,” I whisper.
The words slip out before I can stop them.
Idiot for thinking calm would save me. Idiot for letting myself feel something forbidden. Idiot for believing my mother would never cross a line that affected me this deeply.
I rub my arms, suddenly aware of how cold I am.
“Get it together,” I mutter. “You have exams. You have deadlines.”
That’s the voice I know. The one that always drags me forward no matter what’s collapsing around me. The one Melissa trained into me from childhood.
But tonight, it feels tired.
I stand and start walking again, this time toward my dorm. Every building I pass feels wrong. Too many memories. Too many versions of myself layered over the same paths.
I pass the academic building where I used to sit in Professor Wilson’s class, leaning forward, listening too intently. My stomach flips violently, and I turn my head away like I’ve been slapped.
“No,” I say quietly. “No.”
I don’t want to think about him.
I don’t want to think about how safe I felt in his presence. How calm. How seen.
Because now every one of those feelings feels contaminated.
Back in my dorm room, I shut the door and slide down until I’m sitting on the floor, my back pressed against it. My bag drops beside me with a dull thud.
The room is too quiet.
I stare at the opposite wall, my breath shallow and uneven.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I tell the empty space.
The words sound fragile.
I repeat them anyway.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Wanting stability isn’t wrong. Trusting someone isn’t wrong. Feeling attraction doesn’t make me dirty.
But shame crawls over me anyway, hot and suffocating.
I should have known. I should have stayed away. I should have picked someone simpler, someone broken enough that there were no illusions about the future.
Chase.
The thought surfaces instinctively, and I push it away immediately.
Not yet.
I can’t go there yet.
I pull myself up and sit at my desk again, forcing my laptop open with a shaky breath. I open a blank document and stare at the blinking cursor.
“Just write,” I whisper. “Anything.”
My fingers hover.
Nothing comes.
Instead, my mind replays the last weeks in brutal clarity—the moment I thought I was brave for walking away from Chase, the fragile hope that maybe I was finally doing life right.
I laugh softly, bitter and hollow.
“So much for growth,” I mutter.
My phone buzzes again.
I finally look.
Two missed calls from my mother.
One message.
Melissa: We’ll talk when you’re ready to be rational.
Rational. I let out a shaky breath and lock the phone without replying. Rational would be pretending this didn’t gut me. Rational would be swallowing it and performing like always.
I can’t do that tonight.
I crawl onto my bed fully dressed and curl onto my side, staring at the wall. My body feels heavy, like gravity doubled when I wasn’t looking.
I don’t cry.
I just lie there, hollow and stunned, listening to the muffled sounds of life continuing outside my door.
People laughing. Doors opening and closing. Someone playing music down the hall. Everything keeps moving. I don’t.
For the first time since I was a child, I don’t know what the next right step is. I don’t know who to lean on. I don’t know which version of myself is supposed to survive this.
All I know is this:
I gave up the only person who had seen me in both my highs and my lows—
for a future that never belonged to me in the first place.
And now I am alone with the consequences, staring at a ceiling that doesn’t offer answers, only silence.