When nineteen-year-old Emilia starts her first year at university, she's determined to leave her past behind and finally prove she belongs somewhere.
Architecture was supposed to be her fresh start-a place to disappear into floor plans and future dr...
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While I was still typing back and forth with Ms. Voss — a conversation that had somehow fallen into an easy groove, letters clipped but tender — my phone buzzed with something louder: the group chat.
N: what's up? up for coming over tonight or heading out?
T: yessss totally
E: yeah let's meet at yours, Nick
It felt like the room had brightened for a second. The two of them — Nick and Tara — had become a sort of small orbit for me, a predictable gravity I could trust. I typed the plan and then sat for a moment with my thumb hovering over the final send to Ms. Voss, feeling stupidly guilty at how much I was enjoying the harmless domesticity of it all: friends, a couch, bad late-night snacks.
I'd hardly eaten all day. Not by choice — my appetite had left with the panic and the shame last night — and my body felt the absence in the way my legs tightened when I stood, in the hollow ache under my ribs. But the idea of going out, of being with people who laughed too loudly and didn't look at me like a study in distress, was exactly the kind of medicine I needed.
I got ready fast. I chose something safe: oversized sweater, plain jeans, sneakers — nothing that drew attention but not deliberately hidden either. A little mascara, hair in a loose knot. Small armor. I grabbed my coat and left, the winter air cutting bright and clean across my face.
The walk to Nick's felt longer than it should have; I moved through it on autopilot, chewing on the silence between my thoughts. When I reached his building, I could already hear—the muffled bass of music, the rattle of a familiar laugh. The door was open and Nick stood there like a host in a sitcom, arms wide.
"Emi!" he called, cheerfully chaotic as always. "You're punctual for once."
"I was late one time," I said, and he rolled his eyes.
Inside, everything smelled of instant comfort: reheated pizza, coffee gone cold at the edge of a cup, the sweet plastic of takeaway boxes. The flat was a scattering of lives — posters on the wall, a stack of games on the coffee table, a small basil plant that Mark was trying and failing to keep alive. Nick's sofa had a dent where it had settled like a second skin; Tara had the prime spot already, knees tucked up, phone in hand.
And there was Mark, too — Nick's roommate — lounging in an armchair with a kind of wounded dignity. He was someone I'd seen around before but hadn't known well; tonight he unrolled his heartbreak story in that theatrical, self-invented way people do when they're trying to turn pain into entertainment so that hearing it hurts less.
"So I walk in," Mark was saying, playing up the wide-armed scene, "and there she is. My ex. With another girl. Holding hands. Kissing. You should've seen the way they matched, mate — like two cartoon characters who decided to be in love."
