My phone buzzed at eleven forty-seven and I knocked my tea over reaching for it.
I turned it over only to see an unknown number with a message.
Hi It's Ethan, I hope this isn't too late.
I put the phone down in surprise.
I picked it up again.
Then I put it down again and sat very still for a moment because something was not adding up.
He had my number.
How did he have my number.
I remembered I had his number, He had given it to me on a piece of paper in the library. But I had never given him mine.
I stared at the message.
Then, slowly, like a person solving something they were not sure they wanted to solve, I picked up my phone and typed.
It's not too late. Hi Also, wait… how did you get number?
Three dots appeared immediately.
I got it from Zara, she sent it to Josh.Josh sent it to me. I hope that's okay.
I put the phone down.
I was going to kill Zara.
I was going to find her and I was going to look her in the eye and I was going to —
My phone buzzed again.
Too much? he said.
I looked at the message. I looked at the tea soaking into my notes. I looked at the number still folded in my pocket that I had been carrying around all day like something precious.
No, I typed back. Not too much.
And just like that, the anger at Zara disappeared completely.
I would deal with her tomorrow.
We texted until half past one in the morning.
We went on like that , from him asking how my studies were going. To something funny that had happened that day. We kept texting back and forth and before I knew it an hour had gone by.
I had not thought for once about my the books I needed to read or Stephanie Ryan or any of the eleven things that were usually fighting for space in my head.
It was the most relaxed I had felt since I arrived in New York.
That probably should have been a sign.
I did not tell Zara immediately.
I held on until the next morning.
She sat down next to me in the lecture hall, looked at my face for three seconds, and said "something happened."
"You gave him my number," I said.
She did not even blink. "You are welcome."
"I did not say thank you."
"You were going to."
"Zara."
"Marcelin." She put her bag down and looked at me calmly like someone who knew they had done the right thing and was not sorry about it. "Did he text you or not."
I opened my notebook to a fresh page and wrote the date at the top very carefully.
"Marcelin. Did he text you."
"Yes," I said quietly.
"And?"
"And we talked."
"Until what time."
I wrote the date a second time. Slightly neater.
"Until what time," she said again.
"Half past one," I said.
Zara made a noise loud enough that three people turned around in their seats. She did not notice or did not care.
"It is nothing," I said. "We were both just avoiding our reading."
"Half past one," she said again, like she was reading something that should be written in history books.
"Zara."
"I am not saying anything," she said. "I am just sitting here. Being right."
She opened her notebook and said nothing else for the rest of the lecture.
But she was smiling the entire time.
And if I am being honest, so was I.
He texted again that evening.
And the evening after that.
It became a thing, quietly and without either of us saying it was a thing, He would text around nine or ten, always starting with something small, and I would text back and before I knew it an hour had gone by and I had not thought once about anything that usually made my chest feel tight.
On Friday he asked if I wanted to get coffee.
Not over text. He asked in person, he was suddenly beside me after the lecture , he walked beside me like it was something we always did , like the space next to me was somewhere he had decided to be.
"Would you mind joining me for coffee?" he said.
I thought about my afternoon, reading, notes I had not finished. The call I had been meaning to make to my mother for three days.
"Yes," I said.
He smiled. And we walked out into the cold afternoon together and I told myself this was just coffee. Just two people getting coffee, Nothing more.
The coffee was two hours.
We talked about everything that day. He told me about growing up in Boston, the youngest of three, the only one who went into medicine, the pressure that came with that which he never spoke about directly but which I could hear underneath everything he said. I told him about India. About my family, About the specific weight of being the one who got out, the one everyone was proud of, the one who could not afford to fail.
He listened without interrupting.
By the time we left it was dark and the city felt louder somehow, we stood outside the coffee shop and neither of us moved to leave.
"Same time next week?" he said.
I looked at him and his eyes softened as they met mine, He had charming eyes that made me hesitate for a second before I said anything.
"Yes," I said.
I walked home alone and I was not thinking about my reading or my notes or anything responsible at all.
I was thinking about the way he listened.
The way he had said same time next week like it was already decided. Like I was already part of his life.
I did not know then what I know now. That the most dangerous thing about Ethan Cole was not that he was warm or easy to talk to.
It was that he made everything feel simple.
Right up until it wasn't.