MIA POV
The acceptance letter is still warm from the printer.
I've been holding it for twenty minutes, and I still can't stop smiling. My cheeks actually hurt. I don't care. I'm running down the sidewalk in my pajama pants and an old hoodie, hair half-done, one sock slightly wet from a puddle I didn't see, and I could not care less about any of it.
Because I got in.
Hargrove University. Bachelor of Arts. Full admission.
Me. Mia Cole. The girl who rewrote her personal essay six times, who cried over her application at two in the morning, who told herself not to hope too hard because hoping too hard always ended badly.
I got in.
And Jake is going to lose his mind when he sees this.
We planned this together in our sophomore year of high school, sitting on his bedroom floor with both our laptops open, looking at Hargrove's campus website like it was a dream we were daring to want out loud. Same school. Same campus. We'd finally be in the same city after two years of him being forty minutes away. No more rushed weekend visits. No more missing each other's everything.
I have his key on my keychain. The little silver one with the worn edge, because I've used it so many times. I don't even think about knocking anymore. I never have to.
I take the stairs two at a time.
I'm already laughing before I reach his door. Already rehearsing his face the way his eyes go wide when he's surprised, the way he picks me up and spins me when something good happens. I'm going to scream the news the second the door opens. I'm going to wave the letter in his face. We're going to jump around his tiny apartment like little kids.
The key slides in. The door swings open.
"JAKE, I GOT IN, I GOT"
I stop.
The word dies somewhere in my throat.
The room is dim. Curtains half-closed. And Jake is in his bed, sitting up fast, sheet pulled to his waist, staring at me with a face I have never seen on him before, not caught, not surprised, not the face of someone who forgot to tell me something. The face of someone whose whole world just cracked open in the wrong direction.
There is a girl next to him.
I know her.
Her name is Priya. She has been to my birthday party. She once borrowed my lip gloss. She is sitting in Jake's bed pulling the sheet up to her chin, and she is looking at me like she wants the floor to swallow her, and I understand that feeling completely because I want it too.
Nobody says anything.
The letter is still in my hand. I can feel the paper. I can feel every sharp edge of it.
My brain does something strange; it goes very quiet and very busy at the same time. Like it's taking a photograph of everything. Jake's shirt is on the floor. Priya's earrings are on his nightstand. The two coffee cups that I didn't notice at first, but I notice now. Two. Both used. They've been here a while.
Jake opens his mouth.
"Mia"
"Don't." My voice comes out completely flat. That surprises me. I thought I'd scream. I thought I'd cry. I thought there would be some big moment where I fell apart dramatically like in the movies.
But there's just this terrible quiet inside me.
Like the part of me that loved him already knows it has to stop.
I look at Priya. I look at Jake. I look at the room one more time, really look, like I'm memorizing it, so I never make the mistake of forgetting what this felt like.
Then I take the key off my keychain.
My hands aren't shaking. I don't understand why my hands aren't shaking. I set the key down on the little table by the door, not thrown, not dropped, just placed, carefully, like I'm returning something that was never really mine. I hear the soft clink of it hitting the wood, and that sound is somehow the loudest thing in the room.
I walk out.
I pull the door shut behind me. Gently. All the way closed.
And then I stand in the hallway, and I breathe.
One breath. Two. Three.
Jake doesn't come after me.
I wait for ten whole seconds, and he doesn't come after me, and that is the thing that finally breaks something loose in my chest. Not the girl in his bed. Not the two coffee cups. The fact that he doesn't even try.
I walk down the stairs. Out the front door. Back into the morning that is still bright and stupid and cheerful, like it doesn't know.
I look down at my hand.
The letter is crumpled. I've been squeezing it this whole time without realizing it. I try to smooth it out. The paper is wrinkled now, the words blurred slightly where my palm was sweating, and I look at those words, we are pleased to inform you, and something between a laugh and a sob comes out of my mouth.
I got into my dream school.
I came to share the best news of my life.
And I just left behind the person I thought I was going to share everything with.
I start walking. I don't know where. I just walk.
The city does its morning thing around me: people with coffee, dogs on leashes, a kid on a scooter, a woman laughing into her phone. Everyone moving. Everyone is going somewhere. I'm moving too, but I have no idea where I'm going, and that has never felt more true in my entire life.
I walk for a long time.
At some point, the nice part of the neighborhood ends, and a different kind of street begins, with smaller shops, a laundromat, a place that sells flowers, and a little restaurant not open yet. And then a bar.
I stop.
It's not a fancy place. The sign above the door is simple dark letters, a single light above it that's still on even though it's morning. Through the small window, I can see it's dim inside and quiet, and I think: good. I want dim. I want quiet. I want a room where nobody knows me, and nobody is going to ask if I'm okay.
I have never actually been to a bar. I am eighteen years old, and I have never gone in alone and ordered something and just sat there like a person who does that.
I look down at the letter again. Wrinkled and slightly damp, and still the best thing that has happened to me today by a very large margin.
One drink, I tell myself. Just one. You are allowed to have one terrible morning and one drink, and then you will be fine.
I put my hand on the door.
It's heavier than I expected.
I push it open anyway.
The inside is exactly what I needed: dark, calm, nearly empty, this early, smelling like wood and something warm. A few stools at the bar. Low music from somewhere. A bartender who doesn't look up right away.
I sit down.
I put the crumpled acceptance letter on the bar in front of me, and I stare at it, and I think about Jake's face when he saw me standing there. I think about Priya's earrings on his nightstand. I think about two years, and inside jokes and late-night phone calls and all the versions of the future I had planned that are gone now, as of about twenty minutes ago.
The bartender comes over. He is young and kind-faced, and he looks at me and then at the crumpled letter and then back at me, and he says, "Rough morning?"
I say, "You have no idea."
He nods like he's heard worse. He says, "What can I get you?"
I open my mouth to answer.
That's when I feel it.
Someone is looking at me.
Not the bartender. Someone at the far end of the bar, sitting alone with a glass in front of them mostly untouched, I notice, like they ordered it and forgot about it. I don't know why I notice that.
I turn my head.
And the world does something strange.
The man at the end of the bar is looking at me like he's been looking for a while. Dark hair. Strong jaw. Older, not old, but older than me, by maybe ten years or more. He is the kind of person you look at and immediately understand that they take up exactly as much space as they mean to and not a single inch more.
He is not smiling.
He is just looking at me with these dark, steady eyes, and something about the look is so calm and so knowing that it sends a feeling down my spine that I have absolutely no business feeling right now.
I look away first.
My heart is beating faster than it should be.
Get it together, Mia, I think. You are here to be sad about Jake. That is the only thing happening right now.
The bartender is still waiting.
I say the name of the first drink I can think of. He nods and walks away.
I stare at the bar top.
I can still feel him looking.