Chapter Text
That next Monday morning, the air outside was cool and carried the faint scent of dying leaves, signalling the change of seasons to autumn. Lucy thankfully didn't have any classes that day, but she had been wide awake since the sunrise just laying flat on her back and staring at the ceiling, the anxiety of the shadowing opportunity pressing down on her chest, making it so that she could barely breathe.
Needing an escape from her room ASAP (and also needing someone entirely outside her immediate orbit to talk to) she grabbed her phone from where it had been carelessly tossed at her side and sent a quick text to Celina.
you free? wanna grab breakfast together?
Celina’s reply came back within two minutes.
Celina J: yeah sure, i don't have any classes till this afternoon anyway!
Celina J: meet you at the dining hall in 15?
Lucy liked the reply and jumped out of bed to get ready.
—
Twenty minutes later, they were sitting in a back booth of the dining hall with steaming mugs of coffee and bowls of fruit. Celina took one look across the table, at the dark circles under Lucy’s eyes, the way her fingers looked tense wrapped around her mug, the hard-set line of her jaw, and immediately set her fork down.
"Alright, spill," she said, her tone direct with no-nonsense, "You look like you haven't slept in three days, and you've got impending doom written all over your face. What's really going on?"
Lucy stared down into her coffee, her reflection warped in the hot liquid. She opened her mouth to brush it off, to make up some lie about classes being tough or sleep deprivation, but the exhaustion was too heavy. The wall simply cracked. "Okay, so. I need an outside opinion," she whispered. "An objective one. Because if I talk to Rachel about this, I'll simply explode, and if I keep it inside any longer, I'm gonna lose my mind."
"I'm listening," Celina said softly, leaning forward over the table with a supportive look in her eyes.
And then Lucy let it all out- every detail.
She started from the beginning: long before college even started, back when they were neighbors growing up side by side for ten years. She told Celina about Tim, about the unspoken rhythm of their friendship, and how everything shifted when they were teenagers and Rachel moved to their school, where Lucy basically adopted her into their dynamic to form an inseparable trio. "Sometime during high school I fell in love with him," she confessed. "Or maybe I always had been. But I hid it. I couldn't risk blowing up the friendship, or the group. And there were so many moments- encounters where it felt like he surely had to feel it too. It reminded me of all those cheesy 'will-they-won't-they' teen drama TV shows but it was real life. I always saw Tim as this completely dependable guy, someone I could lean on for anything. I admired everything about him."
Celina listened quietly, her eyes sharp and attentive, tracking every shift in Lucy's expression.
"Then, on move-in day," Lucy continued, a knot tightening in her throat, "Rachel mentioned that she thought Tim was really cute. She thought he looked good moving boxes that day, that he was sweet. And she was going through a lot- her dad's ten-month death anniversary was coming up that month. Her dad always told her to be brave, not to fear rejection, and to put herself out there. So she decided to put it to the test and ask him out."
She paused for a moment, taking a shaky breath as the memories of that night flooded back.
"The night before she asked him, Tim and I had a moment. In the dark. I genuinely thought for a split second that he was about to confess that he loved me too. The look in his eyes... it was everything I'd waited years for. But then he didn't. Instead, he pivoted and told me he didn't feel that way about Rachel at all. That he only saw her as a friend."
"Wait," Celina interrupted, her brow furrowing slightly in confusion. "So he completely changed the topic and told you he didn't like her like that?"
"Oh, yeah, Rachel had sent me to talk to him, feel out if I thought he was into her or not," Lucy nodded bitterly. "But then I guess the conversation turned to him and I instead. Oh, and then, the very next day, Rachel actually asked him out, and he said yes. When I found out, I felt completely betrayed. I thought he had lied straight to my face. When I confronted him that night, he defended it. He said he hadn't lied about his feelings, but because of what Rachel told him about her grief and her dad, he couldn't bring himself to reject her and make things worse. He said it was his responsibility as a good friend. That he was going to 'play the part of a good boyfriend' to help her get through it," she did air quotations while relaying the last part.
Celina crossed her arms, her expression clearly turning critical. "So he's dating your best friend out of pity and obligation, while still being in love with you? That's an absolute mess, Lucy."
"Well, I don't know for sure that he loves me, or even likes me for that matter. But listen, it gets worse," Lucy said, running her hands over her face. "I told him he was just playing with her feelings, that it wasn't as noble as he thought it was, it was actually really cowardly. And ever since then, it's been a cold war. We've been passing each other like strangers, yelling in the rain, building up walls. He gets hyper-protective and territorial whenever other guys show up in my life, acting like he has a right to be jealous while he's literally sitting in front of my face holding Rachel's hand."
She then rushed through all the crazy events of the past few days; the ultimatum she gave him at the library, the situation with Chris, and finally, Saturday night in the courtyard.
"On Saturday night we called a truce for 2 minutes," Lucy murmured, looking down at her hands. "He saw me sitting in the dark courtyard outside our building completely out of it, and he begged me to just tell him what was up. And I tried, Celina, I tried so hard to keep the walls up, but I just couldn't. I broke down and told him about my parents forcing this shadowing thing on me, and how much anxiety it's giving me to live a lie and act like I'm still doing pre-med. And in that moment it just felt like old times. He told me I wouldn't drown, he wouldn't ever let me, that we'd figure it out together, and he wrapped his arm around me. And then the spell broke. I pulled away because I remembered he's still Rachel's boyfriend at the end of the day. He looked at me and said, 'I miss my best friend.' And he clearly meant it. But I just don't know how to deal with it all."
Silence settled over the pair. Celina sat back, processing the whole mess of a story she'd just been handed. Lucy slumped back against the worn vinyl seats, suddenly breathless from spilling all her emotions. "So... yeah. That's my life right now."
Celina stared at her across the table for three long seconds. Then, a strange ironic expression crossed her face.
Lucy caught it instantly, her stomach dropping into her shoes as a sudden memory flashed in her mind. On the very first day they'd met, Celina had mentioned her girlfriend breaking up with her out of nowhere after a two-year-long relationship because the girlfriend had confessed to being in love with her childhood best friend.
Oh shit.
Her eyes went wide. She slapped her hands over her mouth, hot panic rushing up her throat. "Wait," she choked out, her voice pitching up in horror. "Wait. Oh my god. You're the other side of that story. Your girlfriend left you because of her childhood best friend. And I'm literally sitting here telling you the exact same dynamic from the opposite perspective like a goddamn idiot. Oh my god, Celina, I am so so so sorry. Just ignore everything I just said, throw it in the trash, pretend I never spoke-"
"Hey, hey, stop spiraling," Celina said, reaching across the table to grab Lucy's flailing hands to calm her down. She wasn't yelling, and she wasn't storming out, but her gaze carried a certain look that Lucy couldn't quite explain.
"I'm not gonna lie to you, hearing a childhood-best-friend story is a little triggering," Celina admitted. "It's definitely a weird mirror to look into. But I want you to understand: I'm not mad at you, Lucy. You didn't orchestrate this. You're just drowning in a situation where everyone is trying to do the 'right thing' and save their own emotions from drowning, but they're just ending up miserable."
Lucy let out a shaky breath, her shoulders visibly sagging with relief. "You're not mad?"
"No," Celina said firmly, leaning forward again to grab Lucy's hands. "I am concerned though. Because what you're telling me isn't just about Tim and Rachel. There's so much more- you're still letting your parents dictate your life, and Tim's letting his guilt dictate this relationship of his. If you don't step up and seriously draw some hard boundaries, starting with that shadowing thing with your parents, this whole house of cards is going to collapse on top of all of you when you least expect it."
Lucy grimly nodded and looked into her mug of coffee, now turning lukewarm. They stayed silent for about half a minute until Celina pushed her empty coffee mug aside and checked the time on her phone. "Alright, I should probably get going before my lecture this afternoon. I still have some homework I need to submit. But hey, what are you doing tonight?"
Lucy shrugged, wrapping her hands back around her half empty mug. "I don't know. Monday with no classes means I'll probably just rot on my bed and watch a TV show or something."
"Okay, girl, I'm sorry but that's wildly lame," Celina said, rolling her eyes with a small laugh as she slid out of the booth. "Come with me tonight to the Spoken Word Collective, it's a creative writing and open mic club and it's super duper chill. The meeting today is at seven in the student theater."
Lucy blinked, shaking her head almost instantly without even giving it a second thought. "Oh, no. Absolutely not. That's not really my thing, Celina. I'm an education major- I wanna teach little kids how to read and do math, not stand on a stage and bleed my heart out into poetry. I'm terrible at that kind of stuff."
"You don't have to perform if you don't want, you dork," Celina said, slinging her tote bag over her shoulder and giving Lucy a little shoulder nudge. "You can just sit in the back, drink free tea, and listen. It's a really chill group, and if I'm being honest with you, you need a distraction that isn't just sitting in your room in the dark staring at the walls. Just come with me. It’ll be fun."
Lucy looked at Celina's expectant face and let out a long defeated sigh. "Fine. But if anyone tries to hand me a microphone, I promise you I'm running out the door."
—
Later that afternoon, the dorm room was completely silent. Rachel was in class leaving Lucy alone in the lingering stillness. She sat at her desk, staring at the blank white screen of a new google doc. Her laptop's fan hummed softly, seemingly in sync with the anxious throbs in her chest. The gaps in the open blinds led to the afternoon light spilling into the room, leaving bright lines across her desk and onto the box of textbooks- a small reminder that the clock was still ticking.
Her mother’s voice echoed in her head: "Send that email today so we can review it together over the weekend."
She had definitely missed that deadline, but it was still only Monday, so "close enough?" she supposed. She opened a new tab, navigated to her email account, and clicked the button to create a new email draft. Her fingers hovered over the keys; her palms felt slick, her heart knocking against her ribs as if she were about to step off a ledge. Writing a direct refusal to Dr. Murphy (and by extension, her mother) was an absolutely terrible option that she simply didn't have the stomach for today. Not after the emotionally-charged morning she’d already had.
Buy time, she thought desperately. Just buy a few days.
Taking a deep breath, she began to type, forcing her writing into the crisp polite tone her mother had spent years drilling into her.
Subject: Inquiry Regarding Shadowing - Lucy Chen
Dear Dr. Murphy,
I hope this email finds you well!
My parents mentioned your extraordinarily generous offer regarding a pediatric surgery shadowing opportunity at UCLA Medical Center for the upcoming weeks. I am writing to confirm that I have received the information, and to thank you for considering me for such a prestigious opportunity.
As I finalize my class schedule for this semester and other extracurricular commitments this week, I will follow up regarding official scheduling matters. Thank you again for your time and guidance.
Best regards,
Lucy Chen | UCLA
She re-read the draft three times. It wasn't an official confirmation, but it wasn't a refusal either. It was a thought-out tactic designed to look like progress.
Lucy took a screenshot of the message, added it to a text to her mother ("sending the email to his office to touch base!"), and hit send before she could lose her nerve.
She slammed her laptop shut, leaning back and burying her face in her hands. A long exhale escaped her lips. It wasn't real progress, and the next step was still coming, but the immediate threat had been pushed back a few feet. She had at least bought herself room to breathe.
Needing a break from her own head, Lucy reached for her phone and flopped backward onto her bed. She opened TikTok, scrolling mindlessly through a stream of videos.
After ten minutes of aimless scrolling, a video popped up that made her thumb pause hovering over the screen.
The screen showed a cozy bright room filled with tiny colorful chairs, short wood tables, and walls lined with alphabet posters and kids book displays. The text on the screen read: day in my life as a 1st grade elementary school teacher!
An acoustic version of a popular song played in the background as the video cut through the teacher's morning routine; waking up early to get to school on time, brewing a cup of coffee in a travel mug, setting up interactive reading stations on a colorful carpet, and writing a cheerful "Happy Monday!" in loopy font on the whiteboard.
Lucy stared at the screen, her grip on the phone tightening just a little bit. As she watched the teacher kneel down to give a little girl, face covered with a flower emoji, a hug, a sudden swell of warmth blossomed right inside Lucy's ribs. It was followed almost immediately by a sting in the corners of her eyes.
This was what she was fighting for.
Not the sterile blue operating rooms, the cold metallic stethoscopes, or the prestige her mother tried to force into her hands. Lucy didn't want to run a surgery department; she wanted to stand at the front of a sunlit classroom with a colorful outfit on and a fun book in her hands. She wanted to teach six-year-olds how to sound out words, watch their faces light up when they finally understood a sentence, and build a space where kids felt safe, seen, and supported.
She was an education major. It was who she was, down to her bones, no matter how much she'd tried to ignore it throughout her life.
Lucy replayed the two-minute video 3 times, capturing every detail each time. The path ahead was definitely terrifying, and the explosion with her parents was inevitable, but looking at that video of the bright colorful classroom, she knew with absolute clarity that she wasn't making a mistake. Her real life was waiting for her. She just had to survive the distance between here and there.
—
Right before 4pm, the door flew open, and Rachel walked in with her backpack hanging onto one shoulder. Lucy shifted slightly on her bed, lifting her torso up to see better and setting her phone face down on her mattress.
"Hey!" Lucy said, keeping her tone light, gentle, and warm.
Rachel paused, tossing her backpack onto her desk chair. She let out a sigh, running a hand through her curls. She looked exhausted- not in a sleep-deprived-didn't-sleep-enough-last-night way, but with that fatigue that comes from carrying heavy thoughts with you all day. "Hey," she murmured, giving her a faint smile. She kicked off her sneakers and climbed up onto her bed and sat down criss-cross on the middle of the mattress.
Lucy sat up fully now, mirroring her by also crossing her legs on top of her comforter. She peered at Rachel's face closely, picking up on the subtlety in her roommate's posture. "You okay? You seem a little quiet today."
Rachel stared down at her lap, her fingers idly pulling at the fringes at the bottom of her jeans. She let out a small breath before looking up at Lucy with vulnerable eyes. "It’s... just hitting me today," she admitted, her voice dropping. "This Wednesday is my dad’s ten-month death anniversary."
Lucy felt a sudden pang pierce right through her heart. A wave of sympathy and guilt washed over her. Ten months. It had been almost a full year since the world had shattered for Rachel, and here Lucy had been, spending days harboring resentment, petty jealousy, and treating her like an obstacle in her messy non-romance. Rachel was her best friend. She had lost her father, her anchor, and she was out here every single day trying to navigate being away at college, her grief, and her life with bravery.
"Oh, Rach..." Lucy whispered, climbing off her bed and up Rachel's ladder to sit right beside her on her mattress. She reached out, wrapping her arms gently around her shoulders and pulling her into a tight hug. "I'm so sorry. I didn't even realize the date was so soon; it completely crept up on me."
Rachel leaned into the hug, resting her head against Lucy’s shoulder, letting out a breath she seemed to have been holding all week. "It's okay. You don't have to keep track of the calendar for me. I.. I woke up this morning and realized it was two days away, and it just made everything feel really heavy."
"It makes total sense," Lucy said softly, pulling away and squeezing her shoulder tightly. "It's okay for it to be heavy, Rach. You don't have to be strong all the time."
"My dad always told me to be brave, though," Rachel murmured, pulling back slightly with a sad smile touching her lips. "He used to say that life is too short to let fear sit in the driver's seat. That's honestly why I pushed myself to ask Tim out last week. I felt like... if I kept waiting for the 'perfect time,' whatever that means, I'd just let fear win. And I wanted to honor what my dad taught me."
Lucy’s throat tightened, a hard painful lump forming in her neck. Hearing Rachel tie her feelings for Tim directly to her father's memory and her process of grieving blew away every trace of her anger that had built up over the past few days. Rachel wasn't manipulating anyone. She wasn't playing games. She was just a girl who had suffered an unimaginable loss, trying her best to follow her father's legacy and find happiness in a world that felt fundamentally and utterly changed. She needs this, she told herself, her mind churning with clarity. She needs stability. She needs someone who makes her feel safe and happy. If Tim makes her feel safe, then who am I to ruin that for her? Rachel needs him so much more than I do right now.
Lucy swallowed down her own selfish ache, burying her lingering feelings deeper into the dark corners of her mind. She forced a genuine affectionate smile onto her face, determined to step up and finally be the supportive best friend Rachel deserved. "I'm really proud of you for being brave," she said softly, leaning in close. "And honestly... I haven't been asking enough about you guys lately, and I'm sorry about it. It's just a change and I've had a hard time adjusting. But I want to be a better friend to you, Rach. Tell me about you and Tim. How are things going? Is he... is he being a good boyfriend to you?"
Rachel’s sad expression immediately shifted. A sudden flash of color bloomed across her cheeks, her dark eyes lighting up with warmth as a genuine smile broke across her face. "He's... oh my god, Lucy, he's so sweet," she gushed, leaning back against her pillows and pulling her knees up to her chest. "Honestly, at first he was kind of hesitant about normal couple thing, like holding hands in public or being super affectionate anywhere on campus. He’s lowkey a little shy about that kind of stuff, which is kind of adorable coming from a guy who looks like he could lift a truck up with his bare hands."
Lucy kept her smile fixed in place, nodding encouragingly even as her stomach executed flip-flops that made her want to vomit her breakfast up. "Yeah? He's just taking it slow?"
"Yeah!" Rachel beamed, clutching her throw pillow against her stomach and smiling like an idiot. "Which is honestly fine by me, because I didn't want to rush things either. But... oh my god, Lucy." Rachel paused, going upright from her laying-down position, with a sudden breathless whisper, her eyes wide with excitement. "Guess what happened today? Guess!"
Lucy froze. She kept her tone light and perfectly curious no matter how much her heart denied it. "What?"
Rachel leaned in closer, a glowing grin spreading across her face. "Today... we kissed for the first time!"
Lucy felt the smile on her face lock into place, rigid and synthetic. Her chest went completely hollow, as if someone had reached inside and ripped all the air right out of her lungs. "You... you kissed?" she repeated. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears; distant, as if she were speaking through a paper towel tube.
"Yes!" Rachel squealed softly, clapping her hands over her mouth before flopping back onto her pillows with a dreamy sigh. "It was... oh my god, Luce, it felt like something straight out of a Disney movie."
Lucy forced her hands to remain still in her lap, her fingernails digging so deeply into her palms that her nails pushed right into her skin. "Tell me everything!" she choked out, forcing her eyes to stay wide and bright, forcing herself to play the part of the ecstatic best friend like her duty was. "Where were you guys? What happened?"
"So, after my class let out around two, we met up at that cute little cafe on the 1st floor of the library to grab iced coffees," Rachel gushed, staring up at the ceiling with a star-like giddy expression. "We ended up sitting in this quiet corner of the library for like an hour studying for our math exam next week. He was being so patient, walking me through these insane calculus formulas, making sure I understood every step- and let me tell you, girl, I was LOST. He kept resting his hand on the back of my chair, Luce. It was so sweet."
Lucy nodded, her throat bobbing silently as she swallowed down the burn. "That's... that's really sweet, Rach."
"Right? And then, we were walking back to the building," she continued, her voice rising up about 3 octaves out of excitement. "We got into the elevator, and it was just the two of us inside. Usually, for the past week, when he drops me off and there's nobody else in the elevator, he just gives me a little kiss on the cheek before the elevator doors open. So when we reached the third floor, I leaned in, expecting him to just kiss my cheek like usual."
She paused dramatically, letting out a breathless laugh.
"But then right as I leaned in, he turned his head. And he kissed me right on the lips!" she squeezed her pillow against her chest, her cheeks clearly flushed bright pink. "It was short, maybe like 2 seconds, but it was so tender, Luce. He had a hand on my shoulder for a second right after, and I literally felt like a princess. I just walked down the hallway to our room feeling like I was floating on a cloud. And then when I walked into the room, I was suddenly reminded of my dad and that put me in the dumps for a minute there. But, oh my god, Lucy, you'd never understand how amazing it was to kiss THE Tim Bradford."
As Rachel kept talking; her voice blurring into an amalgamation of words about how gentle Tim was, how good he smelled, and how lucky she felt, Lucy’s hearing began to fade out, replaced with a muffled pulse of bass music.
—
Two years ago. December, junior year of high school.
It was the Friday night, and winter break had officially started. The three of them had been planning all week to go to a giant end-of-semester house party that basically the entire class was going to be at. But at 5pm that evening, Rachel had called their group chat coughing, her voice thick with fever, completely sidelined by a sudden case of the flu.
Lucy had almost canceled too (because come on, it'd be no fun without her!) but Tim had pulled his truck up to her driveway at 9pm sharp, leaning across the console with a crooked grin. "Come on, Luce. It's Friday, and you haven't shut up the past 3 days about what you're going to wear. Let's just go for a couple hours, say hi to everyone, and bring Rach some soup tomorrow."
So they had gone. The party was loud, crowded, and suffocatingly hot, filled with most of the junior class drinking cheap alcohol out of red plastic cups. Lucy had taken a few shots of tequila to take the edge off her anxiety, while Tim had stuck to one cup of beer, lingering just behind her the entire time like a person security guard every time a random guy from the football team tried to strike up a conversation with her.
By 11pm, exhausted by the noise, they had retreated outside to the back patio overlooking a valley. Someone inside had changed the playlist from the upbeat EDM that had been playing for the past 2 hours, a slow indie song taking its place. It began to bleed through the closed glass doors, the hazy music floating through the air.
Lucy had been sitting on the wooden deck railing, shivering slightly in her cropped denim jacket, when Tim stood up next to her.
"You're freezing," he had murmured, his breath forming a white cloud in the December air.
"I'm fine," she had craned her neck up to him and lied, her teeth loudly chattering together.
Without a word, Tim had reached out, taking her hands in his and pulling her gently down off the railing. "Dance with me, then. Warm up."
Lucy had laughed, lightheaded and slightly tipsy, but she hadn't pulled away. She had stepped into his space, resting her hands on his shoulders, while his broad hands came to rest firmly, warmly, around her waist. They hadn't danced properly- they had just swayed in tiny slow circles under the stars, listening to the muffled music from inside.
And then the music had slowed down even further.
Lucy had looked up, her dark eyes catching the dim glow of the patio lights reflected in his. Tim had stopped moving. His gaze had dropped down to her lips, his fingers tightening against her waist with a sudden intensity that made her breath catch in her throat.
"Tim?" she had whispered.
He hadn't answered with words. He had just leaned down, closing the small distance between them, and pressed his lips to hers.
It hadn't been short. It hadn't been hesitant. It had been warm, deep, and intoxicatingly real. A sudden explosion of years and years of unspoken history, shared secrets, and previously-hidden longing coursing through their veins. Lucy’s hands had slid up into his sandy hair, up on her tiptoes, pulling him closer as he leaned into her, his hands on either side of her face, tracing her jawline.
When they finally pulled apart, both of them were breathing heavily, staring at each other in the dark, terrified by what they had just done.
The rest of the night was awkward- the most they talked was Tim dropping Lucy off at her front porch and waving a small goodbye as he walked away.
And the next morning, Lucy had woken up at 11am with her heart slamming against her ribs. Panicked, overwhelmed, and terrified of losing the best friend she had ever had, she had sprinted down the street to Tim’s house in her makeshift pajamas (a pair of shorts and an extremely oversized t-shirt that Tim could've sworn went missing from his closet a few months ago). She had knocked on his front door, her hands shaking, and when he pulled it open, looking just as pale, tired, and wide-awake as she was, she had choked out: "Let's go for a walk."
They had walked down the frost covered sidewalk of their neighborhood street in total silence for 10 whole agonizing minutes before Lucy couldn't take it anymore. So she'd stopped in her tracks.
"It was an accident," she'd blurted out, her voice trembling as she stared fixedly at her sneakers on the pavement. "We were tipsy, and we were tired, and it was just a mistake, Tim. We're better off just being best friends, and we can't tell anyone about this, even Rachel. Right?"
It had broken her heart into a million pieces to say those words. It was the hardest lie she had ever told in her life, even more than the lies she constantly told her parents to live up to their expectations.
Tim had stopped walking on the pavement too. He had looked at her for a long moment, his eyes filled with something raw, and deeply wounded.
He hadn't fought her. He hadn't said, "No, it wasn't an accident, Luce, I promise it wasn't." He had been just as terrified of losing her, just as afraid of destroying their carefully-crafted world, exactly like she was.
So he had swallowed his own heart whole. He had slowly nodded, his jaw setting hard into a line as he forced a calm tone into his voice. "Yeah," he had said. "Yeah. You're right. It was an accident. Better off as friends. And yeah, this'll stay between us."
They had walked back to their respective houses in silence, shoving the most real, eye-opening, heart-bursting moment of their lives deep into the dark, pretending it had never happened.
—
"-and so he said he'd text me later tonight after he hit the gym!" Rachel’s happy voice suddenly snapped back into focus, breaking Lucy out of her spiraling memory.
She blinked, her vision refocusing on the bright sunlit dorm room. Oh, right. Rachel was sitting right next to her, beaming at her from retelling the memory and waiting for a response.
The contrast was a physical ache in Lucy’s chest.
Tim had given Rachel a gentle fairytale kiss; a kiss meant to build a relationship, to move forward, to play the perfect boyfriend. While the only kiss Lucy had ever shared with him was drunkenly buried in the dark, covered in lies, and locked away like a crime they were both too cowardly to admit to.
She forced a bright glowing smile onto her face, wrapping her arms around her knees to hide the tremble of her hands. "Rach," she said, her voice sweet and entirely empty inside. "That is incredible. I'm so happy for you."
—
The student theater was dimly lit, smelling oddly strongly of old carpet and bleach. The yellow stage lights shone directly onto the room, casting long shadows over a scattered audience of twenty-some students lounging on mismatched thrifted couches and floor cushions on the stage of the theater room.
Lucy sat tucked into one of the worn velvet armchairs at the very back, her hands buried deep in her denim jacket pockets. Celina sat right beside her, sitting on a matching armchair, quietly sipping steaming tea from a paper cup.
At the front of the stage, standing under a single warm spotlight, a short girl with round wire-rimmed glasses gripped the microphone stand, a yellow notepad in her other shake hand. Her voice was steady but her knuckles were white, Lucy could tell even from the back row.
"You call it loyalty when you turn yourself into a bridge," the girl spoke into the mic, her voice echoing against the large room. "You let them walk across you every day, every hour, every minute, to get where they need to go. You tell yourself it’s the love you offer. You tell yourself you’re strong enough to carry all the weight. But nobody ever asks the bridge if its foundation is cracking, if its slats are about to break. Nobody stays to watch it fall apart, fall into the water."
Lucy’s heart stopped. She stared at this girl under the light, every word striking like a blow to her ribs.
A bridge.
That was exactly what she had spent weeks doing. Holding up her mother’s impossible expectations. Holding up Rachel’s fragile grieving heart. Holding up Tim’s cowardly illusion of being the noble protector. She had made herself completely hollow just so everyone around her could stay whole, stay happy.
The girl finished her piece to a burst of soft, snapping fingers from the audience. As she stepped down from the spotlight, Lucy leaned sideways, her voice barely a whisper as to not be overheard by others.
"Damn," Lucy murmured to Celina, her throat raspy. "How is everyone so good? Is this really the first meeting?"
Celina turned her head slightly. "No, actually. It’s the second meeting. The first one was last Friday. But most people who join do have a gift for this type of stuff." Celina took a sip of her tea. "And a lot come here because it’s the only place on campus where you don't have to put on a show."
She stared down at her lap, her thumb tracing the seams of her jeans. "Are you gonna perform?"
"Not tonight," Celina shook her head softly in reply. "This club is totally super chill; you don't have to perform just because you showed up to the meeting. I'm working on a piece right now that I'll probably share next week if it's done by then. You'll get to hear it then."
"Okay," Lucy whispered with a slight smile on her face, anticipation to hear what Celina had been writing.
Another student stepped up to the microphone- a tall lanky guy in an oversized sweater, his head bowed as he adjusted the mic height. When he began to read from his crumpled notebook paper, his voice was raw, breaking slightly.
"I lied when I said I was fine with being the ghost in your room," he read quietly, his eyes fixed on nothing else but the paper. "I lied because I thought staying near you as a shadow was better than leaving and being nothing at all to you. But watching you hand someone else the keys to the house we built together, that isn't really devotion, is it? That’s just slow suicide."
The room went dead silent as he took one step back from the mic, still refusing to look up at the audience.
Lucy pulled her knees tight against her chest in that small armchair, a sudden burn behind her eyes. She swallowed hard, trying to fight down the wave of suffocating emotion rising in her throat. Hearing her own pathetic reality spoken out loud by complete strangers was excruciating. She was the bridge. She was the failing foundation. She was the ghost. She was the shadow. She had handed Tim the keys to their special bond, watched him hand them straight to Rachel, and then stood in the cold alone, pretending she was happy for them.
Beside her, Celina didn't say a single word. She didn't offer pity, and she didn't offer fake comfort. But she sure did understand in a heartbeat. She simply reached over in the dark and gently rested her hand over Lucy’s wrist, giving it a squeeze.
For the first time all day, surrounded by the soft snaps of clicking fingers and the raw unfiltered voices of these strangers bleeding their hearts onto a stage of twenty-something people, Lucy didn't try to hide her pain. She just let the truth sit in her chest, and she let herself feel every dark, painful morsel of it.
—
The room was pitch black when Lucy slipped back inside just after 11pm.
Across the room, Rachel was fast asleep, her breathing slow. The rhythmic ticking of the clock on Lucy's desk was the only sound cutting through the quiet of the room. She didn't want to turn on the main light in hopes to not wake Rachel. So she moved quietly through the dark, dropping her jacket over her chair and crawling up onto her bed, pulling her legs up under her blanket. Her chest still felt raw and exposed from the club meeting; the echoes of those unfiltered performances vibrating under her skin.
She reached for her bag hanging off the slats of her bed, pulling out her favorite black pen and a spiral-bound notebook she'd originally bought to take class notes but had yet to actually use.
She opened to the first page and stared at the blindingly-white paper, using her phone flashlight as a bit of light so she could see what she was doing. Her hands felt slightly awkward holding the pen; she had spent her entire life writing neat scientific summaries, memorizing biological terms, and typing structured essays. Creative writing definitely wasn't her world. She didn't know how to format a poem, she didn't know the rules of meter or stanza, and her handwriting was a messy rushed half-cursive, nothing beautiful to look at.
But the silence in her head had grown too loud to keep contained.
Setting the notebook against her knees, she pressed the tip of the pen to the paper and began to write whatever came to mind.
i built a house out of ten years of us
and called it my safety.
i stood on the lawn and watched you set the table
and then invite someone else inside.
She paused, her thumb tracing the damp indentations of her pen marks, leaving black skids where the ink hadn't fully dried yet. It was clunky. The lines felt jagged, unpolished, and slightly disjointed. It was nothing like the effortlessly emotional pieces she had heard just a few hours ago. But she swallowed past the knot in her throat and kept going, the ink smudging even more under the side of her hand as her thoughts spilled out faster than her fingers could move.
you told me it was an accident in the cold.
we both know that we lied.
now you learn how to kiss her in the elevator
while i learn how to pretend i never knew your mouth.
i'm stuck trying to teach myself a new language,
one where your name isn't the first word in every sentence.
Lucy stopped midpage, her pen hovering above the paper. A sudden tear dropped from her lashes, landing right in the middle of the blank line below her last sentence, mixing with the still-wet black ink, and blooming into a small dark circle.
She didn't finish the poem. She didn't try to wrap it up with a clever ending or a neat resolution. It was messy, incomplete, and jagged; an imperfect mirror of her own shattered heart and disjointed life.
Carefully, Lucy closed the notebook and pushed it under her pillow, resting her head over the hidden pages. She closed her eyes in the dark, letting out a long shuddering breath. She didn't know how to feel.
—
The bright sunlight of Tuesday afternoon flooded through the lecture halls as students began filing out trying to rush to their next classes.
Lucy clicked submit on her online psych quiz, letting out a slow breath that felt like her first full lungful of air all day.
In the seat directly to the left, Chris threw his laptop into his backpack and zipped it up, running a hand through his slightly messy brown hair before turning toward her with a grin while standing up. His eyes were bright, seemingly completely unbothered by the heavy clouds that seemed to follow Lucy around campus.
"Alright, truth time," Chris said, as they walked out of the row and towards the classroom door. "On question 14, the one about cognitive dissonance, did you go with option B or C? Because C felt like a total trap, but B felt too straight-forward."
Lucy let out a laugh, slinging her tote bag over her shoulder as she follows directly behind him. "Definitely B, Chris. You're overthinking it. It was literally the textbook definition copy-pasted from chapter 4."
Chris gasped dramatically, placing a hand over his heart with a look of devastation. "You're killing me! I spent five full minutes staring at that question while you were probably sitting over there done with all the questions and doodling on the scratch paper."
"I literally told you the other day at the library that the definitions were super straightforward," she teased, stepping out into the fresh air of the outdoors. "You just wanted to argue with me about explicit versus implicit memory."
"Hey, my method clearly worked because I feel about 80 percent confident we both just aced that quiz," Chris said, matching her stride as got warmed by the midday sun.
The campus was lively at this time of day, filled with students lounging on the grass, riding scooters, and hanging out in clustered groups. For the first time in days, the suffocating fog in Lucy’s mind felt like it was beginning to lift. Walking alongside Chris was so easy it was kind of funny. He didn't look at her with hidden history or unspoken expectations. He didn't know about the fake email she'd sent, her parents' crushing pressure, or the secret poem tucked under her pillow.
With Chris, she didn't have to carry years and years of silence. She was just an education major who had study-sessioned her way to an A on her psychology quiz.
"So," he said, turning slightly to face her with his lopsided smile as they reached the tree-area near the crossroads of the path. "Since we clearly crushed that quiz, I think we're legally obligated to celebrate. There's that new boba spot down on the leftmost path we could hang out at. My treat."
Lucy paused for just a second, her thumb tracing the strap of the tote bag hanging off her shoulder. A small protective voice in the back of her head reminded her of how complicated things already were, of the heavy web of secrets she was already navigating, and how could she add one more thing to her already-complicated life? But then she looked at Chris's open expectant face, completely free of drama or double meanings.
So she smiled, a genuine light feeling washing over her chest. "Sure, yeah, I've been to that boba shop before," she said. "Sounds perfect!"
—
The boba shop was bright and smelled faintly of brown sugar syrup, freshly brewed tea, and warm tapioca pearls. Indie pop music thudded from the small speakers hidden in the ceiling, providing a lively background to the chatter coming from the large sitting area.
"Alright, what's your go-to?" Chris asked, stepping up into the long line beside her and pulling out his wallet. "Are you a classic milk tea person or are you more adventurous with the fruit teas?"
Lucy laughed, barely looking up at the brightly lit digital menu board above the register. She always got the same order every time she got boba, no matter what. "Taro milk tea, brown sugar boba, 75% sweet. Every time."
"Boring but respectable, I guess," Chris teased, leaning his shoulder casually against hers as the line moved forward a step. "I prefer trying something new each time. I think today I'm leaning towards the passionfruit green tea with aloe vera jelly. It sounds life-changing! Come on, how about you try something new, too?"
"I'll just stick to what I know," Lucy smiled, the easy uncomplicated banter pulling her completely into the moment.
They stepped up to the second spot in line, Chris leaning in slightly to whisper a joke about one of the bizarre topping options on the menu he'd just seen (like, come on now, who adds sprinkles to their boba?!). Lucy let out a genuine laugh, turning her head toward him.
And then her stomach dropped directly into the floor.
Standing right at the pickup counter, just six feet to their left, was Rachel.
She was wearing a cute pastel cardigan, holding two wrapped cups of boba, her face flushed with excitement. And standing right beside her with his brows pulled down into his usual neutral furrow, was Tim.
All of a sudden it felt like all of the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.
Tim was staring directly at Lucy and Chris. His dark eyes were locked onto the non-existent distance between Lucy and Chris's shoulders, his jaw set so hard a muscle twitched along his cheek. His hand tightened around the straps of his backpack with enough force that his knuckles turned white.
"Oh my god!" Rachel’s voice suddenly cut through the shop's calm vibe like a siren. Her eyes widened with delight as she spotted them in line. She practically ran across the colorful tiled floor, dragging a completely dead-panned Tim along behind her by his elbow.
"Lucy! Chris!" Rachel squealed, coming to a stop right in front of them. She looked between the two of them, her eyes darting from Lucy's slightly flushed cheeks to Chris's relaxed posture, and her face exploded into a massive triumphant grin.
"Oh my god," Rachel gasped, leaning in toward Lucy with a stage whisper that was practically audible to everyone within a mile radius. "Are you guys on a date right now?!"
Lucy felt a flash of embarrassment flood her neck, her cheeks burning instantly, red creeping up towards her face. "Rachel, we just-"
"We just smashed our psych quiz!" Chris interjected smoothly, totally unfazed by Rachel's sudden energy. He gave her a friendly easygoing smile, extending a hand. "Rachel, right? Good to officially meet you this time!"
"Yes! Oh my god, hi!" Rachel beamed, shaking his hand enthusiastically before gesturing to Tim, who was standing beside her like an angry thundercloud, emitting pure hostility. "And this is my boyfriend Tim!"
The word boyfriend hung in the air between the 4 of them.
Chris’s smile remained polite even though his eyes flickered briefly to the possessive way Tim was standing, taking in the tension clearly radiating off him. "Hey, man. Good to see you again."
Tim didn't smile. He didn't offer a hand. He just stared down at Chris with a glare that could've burned a hole through a wall of bricks if he tried hard enough. "Yeah," he muttered. "Really good to meet you."
"Oh my god, this is amazing!" Rachel cheered, totally blind to the war happening between the others. She clapped her hands together loudly, her eyes shining with excitement. "We literally just got our drinks! You guys haven't ordered yet, right? You have to sit with us! We can all do a double date right now!"
"A double date?" Lucy echoed, her voice pitching up just a fraction before she managed to flatten it into something resembling composure, control over her emotions. "Rach, we literally just walked in to grab a quick drink. Plus you guys were heading out-"
"We're not in a rush at all!" Rachel interrupted instantly, her face lighting up with an enthusiasm that made it impossible to argue without looking like an absolute monster. She turned to Tim, her hand sliding up his arm and into his t-shirt sleeve to rest curled against his bicep. "Right, babe? We have nothing else on our schedule this afternoon, and it's such a nice day. Come on, it'll be fun!"
Tim didn't answer right away. His eyes, dark with annoyance, stayed fixed on Chris, his jaw locked so tightly that the muscle along his cheekbone was pulsing. The silence stretched for 2 long seconds; long enough for Chris to notice the air between them. He simply smiled though, his easygoing personality refusing to be taken down. "Yeah, sounds good to me," he said smoothly, looking over at Lucy with an encouraging tilt of his head. "If Rachel’s offering, we’d be totally crazy to say no, right, Lucy?"
Frankly, she wanted to make a hole in the tile and die right in there. She offered a small smile that entirely felt like it had been glued onto her face. "Right. Yeah. Sure."
"Awesome!" Rachel squealed. "There’s a four person booth right over there by the window. I’ll go drop our drinks there. Tim, go help Lucy and Chris order and bring everything over!"
Before anyone could object, she spun on her heel and glided away toward a sunlight table near the front window, completely oblivious to the fact that she had just locked three very unwilling people in this room together.
Tim let out a self-regulating breath through his nose, his gaze shifting from Chris down to Lucy. The people in front of them finished ordering, and Lucy and Chris were then next in line. "What can I get you guys?" the barista behind the counter asked cheerfully, breaking the spell.
"Just a small taro milk tea with brown sugar boba and 75% sweet, please," Lucy said quickly, keeping her eyes glued to the menu board to avoid meeting Tim's stare.
"Add on a medium passionfruit green tea with aloe vera jelly, 100% sweetness," Chris added, stepping up more to the register and pulling out his card. "Put it on mine."
Before Lucy could even protest, Tim’s voice cut in, laced with an unmistakable edge. "No, I got it." He slapped his card against the card reader with unnecessary force, paying for both of their drinks before Chris could even blink. Tim didn't look at Chris as he did it; his eyes remained pinned to the side of Lucy’s face.
"Consider it a welcome-to-the-group gift, Chris," Tim said as they stepped away from the counter, saying the other guy's name like it was a slur.
Chris raised his eyebrows, amusement crossing his eyes, though he kept his tone entirely relaxed. "Appreciate it, man. Though you really didn't have to."
"Yeah, well." he muttered. Without another word, he turned on his heel and paced toward the window booth, his broad shoulders squared, walking with the quick stride of someone holding back an explosion. Lucy and Chris followed a step behind, grabbing their prepared drinks at the other end of the counter on the way to the table.
When the others reached the table, Rachel was already settled on one of the plush bench seats, beaming happily. "Here, sit!" she patted the cushion beside her, gesturing for Tim to slide in. That meant Lucy and Chris were left with no choice but to take the opposite bench, sliding into the tight space directly across from them, Chris first and Lucy following. The seating arrangement, funnily enough, was an immediate psychological trap. The table was small, barely three feet wide, meaning she was forced to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with Chris, while directly across the narrow table surface sat Tim, his knees literally inches from hers under the table.
"Isn't this the best?" Rachel declared, radiating joy as she pushed out Tim's boba cup towards him. "It’s so nostalgic being back here. Remember when we all came here together on our very first night on campus? And now look, we’re back just 2 weeks later and it’s a double date now! Just two best friends on a date together!"
"Right. Yeah, totally," Lucy said, her voice strained as she gripped the cold plastic of her drink, staring intensely at the plastic seal without puncturing it with her straw.
Across the table, Tim set his drink down after taking a small sip. He leaned back against the vinyl cushions, crossing one arm casually over the back of the bench behind Rachel, while his other hand wrapped around his own cup. But his posture was clearly a lie- every line of his body was coiled up like a spring, holding large amounts of tension.
"So, Chris," Tim began, his voice dropping into a tone of sarcasm that didn't fool anyone. His eyes locked onto Chris's diagonally across the table. "I remember the other day when you introduced yourself when we all met Starbucks, you mentioned you're a political science major from Irvine. First-year, right?"
There was a subtle edge to Tim's tone; not very welcoming, instead with judgement that hung heavily in the air.
Chris didn't flinch. He just offered an easy unfazed smile. "Yeah, man. Political science, pre-law track. And you're right, first-year here. It's a top 20 school for my major so I'm lucky to be here, ya know?"
"Pre-law," Tim repeated, ignoring Chris's attempt at creating more conversation. The word rolled off his tongue with a hint of skepticism. "Right. And you're a first-year like us- I'm in sports medicine, myself, by the way," Tim added.
Chris nodded in agreement. "Sports med. Dope. Takes a lot of discipline."
"It does," Tim said quietly, his dark eyes flickering between Chris and Lucy rapidly. "Takes knowing what you're focusing on, too. Not just drifting into things randomly one day."
Lucy felt the air turn static. She kept her eyes fixated on her unopened drink, her pulse thumping in her throat. Chris, though, caught the subtext instantly, but surprisingly his smile widened by a fraction. He shifted his arm to rest along the back of the bench behind Lucy's back, his hand resting just inches from her far shoulder; mirroring Tim's arm position behind Rachel's.
To anyone else, it would look like nothing had happened. But to Lucy, who had grown to learn every single micro-expression in Tim's face, it looked like a declaration of war. His jaw clenched so hard a white line formed around his mouth. His eyes flickered down to where Chris's hand rested near Lucy's shoulder, and then snapped back up to Chris’s face with a lethal look. The air between them practically caught on fire from all the anger boiling over.
Next to Tim, Rachel remained totally in her own world, sipping her boba and smiling happily. "Oh, speaking of first-year classes by the way, Lucy was actually just telling me the other day how much she loves her first education class. She’s going to make the best elementary school teacher someday, right, babe?"
Tim’s gaze shifted slowly from Chris to Lucy. The hostility in his eyes softened just a tiny bit, replaced by something heavy and much too complicated to explain. "Yeah," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave, losing its razor sharp edge entirely as he looked straight into Lucy's eyes. "She's really good with kids. And she's exactly the right person for a job like that."
Lucy felt her breath hitch in her throat. Hearing him say that, acknowledging her real dream, the dream she was hiding from the rest of the world, sent a completely agonizing shiver down her spine. It was a reminder of how deeply he knew her, how many years of history lived between them, untouched by whatever mess they had both created for themselves now. She swallowed hard, breaking eye contact and looking down at her lap. "Thanks, Tim."
"Ooh, that actually reminds me, I have to run to the bathroom real quick," Rachel suddenly announced, setting her drink down after taking one long sip through the straw and then sliding out of the booth, stepping over Tim. She drummed on the table with her nails as she stood at the head of the table. "You guys better not start talking about anything interesting without me! Lucy, come with me for a second please?"
Lucy froze in confusion. "Wha- me? Right now?"
"Yeah, come on, I need to fix my lip gloss," Rachel giggled, grabbing Lucy by the wrist and literally pulling her out of the booth before she could even think about protesting.
She shot a panicked, wide-eyed look to Chris, still sitting on the far end of the bench, who gave her an understanding nod. Then her gaze flickered to Tim. He was staring up at her, his expression darkening instantly at being left alone across the table from this other random guy who was supposedly talking to Lucy- which he did NOT approve of at all, clearly.
Dragged away by Rachel toward the back of the shop, and down the dark corridor towards the bathroom, Lucy’s heart hammered frantically against her ribs.
The moment the big bathroom door clicked shut behind them, cutting off all the extra noise of the cafe, Rachel turned straight to Lucy, her eyes shining with absolute excitement. She grabbed both of Lucy’s hands, bouncing slightly on her heels. "Okay, spill right this instant!" Rachel whispered urgently, her voice vibrating out of utter happiness. "How long have you and Chris been a thing? Because the chemistry between you two at the counter was literally insane! I was watching from our table and I could see it so clearly 6 feet away! He is so stinking sweet, and he looks at you like you hung the moon, girl!"
Lucy stood frozen in the dark bathroom, staring at her best friend's radiantly happy face. The weight of the lies, the secret history, the junior year kiss, the poetry tucked under her pillow, the shadowing email deadline, and the absolutely suffocating tension from sitting at the table outside pressed down on her from every direction, squashing her into a tiny cube in which she could no longer move.
She was stuck in a trap of her own making, playing the supportive best friend to a girl who was dating the only boy Lucy could ever love, while trying to talk more to this guy that she didn't really like as much she should. So she did the only thing she knew how. She forced a bright trembling smile onto her face, swallowing the bitter bile in her throat, and said the only thing appropriate at the moment- she had no choice.
"He's... he's really great, Rach," Lucy whispered.
And outside the door, sitting alone in the booth across from Chris, Tim was running out of time.