He hadn't texted me back in three days.
Just silence, sitting in my phone like a sentence I hadn't asked for.
I told myself it didn't matter. I was in anatomy lab, and Ethan's silence did not get to follow me in here.
It followed me in anyway.
Stephanie Ryan was already at her station when I arrived. Of course she was. She was always already there, always already composed, like she'd figured something out about this life that the rest of us were still searching for.
I took the station across from her.
"Kapoor."
The instructor. Beside me, out of nowhere.
The room went still.
I looked down at what was in front of me. My hands weren't shaking. i was aware of that, specifically.
I talked. Slowly at first, then steadier. Somewhere in the middle of it, the fear left and the words followed.
The instructor nodded once. Moved on.
I let out a breath nobody could have heard.
Across from me, Stephanie was already writing something down.
Zara found me at lunch and didn't say anything for a full minute. That was how I knew, she already knew everything.
"Anatomy?" she said finally.
"Anatomy," I said.
She pushed her chips towards me.
"He hasn't texted me," I said. I hadn't planned to say it.
She looked at me.
"Three days," I said.
She didn't say anything immediately, Zara always had something to say. The fact that she was just watching me, quietly, made my chest tighten in a way, I didn't want to look at her directly.
"Eat your chips," she said.
"Zara—"
"I know," she said. Softer. "I know. Eat your chips first."
I ate my chips. I gazed out the window, the sky looked as lonely as i felt . I thought about his hand on the step in the rain, how still we'd both sat, how certain I'd been that something had shifted.
Maybe I'd imagined it.
Maybe I was exactly the kind of person who imagined things like that.
He was waiting outside the main building after my last lecture.
Just there. Sitting on the steps with his elbows on his knees, looking at the ground. Something about the way he was sitting made my heart sink.
He looked up when he heard my footsteps.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey," I said.
I sat down next to him.
The campus moved around us, everyone going somewhere, and we just sat there in the middle of it.
"I'm sorry I didn't text," he said.
"It's fine."
"Marcelin."
He said the whole of it. Not Marce. My full name, carefully.
I looked at him.
His face was different. softer. Like at some point he'd made up his mind about something.
"I've been trying to figure out what to say," he said. "I didn't want to say the wrong thing."
The wind came sharp and cold. I pulled my jacket tighter.
"So say the right thing," I said.
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he opened his mouth.
Suddenly my phone rang.
it was my Mum . Eleven days without calling her back.
"I have to—" I held it up.
Ethan looked at my phone. Then back at me.
"Take it," he said. "It's fine."
I stood up. Stepped away. then answered.
My mother's voice came through warm and too far away.
"Marcelin, you sound tired."
i'm okay Mama. Just busy.
The usual performance. Yes I'm eating, yes I'm sleeping, yes everything is fine.
I hung up. Turned around.
Ethan was gone.