Chapter Text
(May's POV)
May Grant had forgotten what it felt like to walk across campus without a headset in her ear and an emergency on the other end of the line.
The quad was alive with late-summer heat, buzzing with voices and the faint strum of a guitar from somewhere near the fountain. People drifted past her in clusters — laughing, weaving around bikes, balancing overpriced coffee and thick textbooks — and for the first time in a long time, she was one of them. Just another USC student on her way to her next class.
No shift to clock into after lecture. No juggling dispatch calls between homework assignments. No guilt for telling her mom she was too busy to come to dinner.
It was still strange, having all her focus here.
Her backpack felt lighter than it should’ve — not because she wasn’t carrying books, but because she wasn’t also hauling around the mental weight of sirens and addresses and split-second decisions. She’d loved the work, in her own way. But it had been exhausting. Incredibly fulfilling, but exhausting.
She was here now for her BA in Sociology, with a minor in Law. Which meant most of her schedule was heavy on research, theory, and case analysis — reading until her eyes crossed, writing until her wrists ached.
This next class? Not one of those. It was a communications/journalism elective, something her advisor had suggested to “round out” her degree. The professor’s blurb had promised interactive discussions, media analysis, and project work, which at least sounded different from a forty-page literature review.
Inside the building, the air was cooler, tinged with that faint paper-and-printer smell every classroom seemed to have.
Sliding into a seat halfway up the tiered lecture room, she pulled out her notebook and pen. Students were trickling in — a mix of chatter, the scrape of chair legs, and the occasional clatter of a dropped water bottle.
Her gaze wandered automatically — habit, not boredom. Her work in dispatch and growing up in a first responder family had trained her to notice the little things: how people moved in groups, who claimed space easily and who hovered on the edges, the subtle tells of personality in the way someone carried their bag or balanced their phone.
That was when she heard it.
A laugh. Warm, unselfconscious, a little rough around the edges like it hadn’t been polished for anyone’s approval.
It came from the far aisle. The girl it belonged to stepped into the row two seats down, a messenger bag slung over one shoulder, dark hair falling in easy waves. She was dressed like she hadn’t even tried — soft gray T-shirt, worn black jeans, sneakers with scuffed soles — but somehow it all worked.
She dropped into her seat with the kind of casual confidence May always noticed in people who were used to adapting on the fly. Not loud or showy — just comfortable in her own space, the room adjusting around her instead of the other way around.
For a second, May thought she looked familiar. Not in the I’ve-seen-you-in-class-before way — more like a flicker of recognition she couldn’t place.
She shook it off when the professor walked in.
The professor scanned the room, tablet in hand. “Alright, everyone, let’s get started. Today we’re diving into media framing and perception… and I’m going to assign you your first project partners.”
May’s pen hovered above her notebook. Names began to roll off the list — pairs forming in murmurs and sideways glances.
Two seats down, the girl with the laugh rested her chin in her hand, listening with the kind of easy patience that didn’t seem forced.
“…and last but not least — May Grant and Tamara Colins.”
May’s head came up at her name, eyes automatically scanning the room until they landed on the girl with the laugh. Tamara Colins glanced over at the same time, her expression open and easy, like she’d been expecting this.
The professor moved on to the next pairing, giving instructions about project guidelines, but May was already slipping her notebook back into her bag and making her way down a couple of steps to where Tamara sat.
“Guess that makes us partners,” May said.
Tamara grinned. “Looks that way.” She shifted her bag to the floor, clearing the seat beside her. “May, right?”
“Yeah.” May slid into the seat, tucking one leg under the other. “And you’re—”
“Tamara,” she supplied, leaning back casually. “Though I’ll answer to pretty much anything if there’s coffee involved.”
May huffed a laugh. “Noted. This project is supposed to be about media framing, right?”
“That’s what he said,” Tamara replied, tilting her head toward the professor as if to confirm. “We’ve got three weeks, two sources, and a ten-minute presentation. Which is just long enough for the class to start regretting giving us their attention.”
There was something disarming about the way she said us, like they were already a team.
May pulled out her phone. “We should probably figure out when we can meet. My schedule’s a little—”
“Packed?” Tamara guessed.
“Predictable,” May corrected. “Classes most of the day, studying after. I don’t really have a lot of…” She trailed off, suddenly hyper-aware that the next word in her head was friends.
Tamara didn’t seem to notice. “I work part-time at a bookstore-slash-café near campus,” she said, thumb flicking over her phone screen. “It’s quieter in the evenings, if you don’t mind the smell of espresso and old paper while we work.”
May raised a brow. “Sounds like a bribe.”
“It’s a perk,” Tamara countered, sliding her phone across the desk so May could add her number. “We’ll make it work. I’m pretty good at juggling.”
May keyed in her contact info and slid the phone back, noticing the faint ink smudge on the side of Tamara’s hand, like she’d been writing earlier.
They fell into a brief back-and-forth about topic ideas, neither committing yet, both tossing out half-formed notions about headlines, bias, and public opinion.
When class wrapped, May found herself oddly reluctant to leave.
“See you,” Tamara said, already shouldering her bag.
“Yeah. See you.”
May stepped back into the sunlight with the faintest trace of a smile tugging at her mouth. It was ridiculous — they’d barely talked, and it wasn’t like she didn’t meet new classmates every semester. But something about Tamara’s ease, the way she treated May like just another person instead of someone defined by her last name, had lodged itself in her mind.
She crossed the quad, the noise of campus washing around her, already half-thinking about the readings waiting on her desk.
By the time May got home, the afternoon sun was bleeding gold through her bedroom blinds, casting lines across the stack of school books on her desk. She dumped her bag onto the chair and kicked off her shoes, telling herself she was going to dive into her assigned chapters on social stratification.
She made it three pages before her brain slid sideways.
Instead of the words in front of her, she kept replaying little fragments of class: the tilt of Tamara’s grin, the way she said we’ll make it work, the faint smudge of ink along her hand. It wasn’t like May to get stuck on someone she’d just met — especially not over details that didn’t matter.
She leaned back in her chair, spinning lazily side to side. This was ridiculous. It was just a class partner. They’d meet, do the project, and that would be it.
…Probably.
Her laptop was still open from earlier…
Before she could talk herself out of it, she pulled it closer and typed Tamara Colins into Instagram’s search bar.
The profile popped up near the top — public, with a black-and-white profile picture of Tamara holding a paper cup of coffee like it was a shield and a statement all at once. May hesitated for exactly two seconds before hitting Follow.
While the page loaded, she told herself it was purely practical. Knowing your partner a little made working together easier. Nothing weird about that.
Her feed was a mix of candid bookstore shots, latte art, quick campus snaps, and the occasional selfie — some solo, some with friends. And then, as she scrolled further back, May slowed.
Several photos showed Tamara with three different women in LAPD uniforms. In one, they were lined up in front of a patrol car, Tamara in jeans and a hoodie, the other women in crisp black and white uniforms. Another looked like it had been taken at some community event, all four holding coffee cups and laughing at something off-camera.
The captions didn’t offer much: “Best night,” “Family,” a few emojis. But the officers’ badges were visible enough to catch last names — Chen, Lopez, Juarez.
May frowned slightly. It wasn’t exactly common for a college student to have close friends who were full-time LAPD. She didn’t linger on the thought long enough to spiral into guesses, but the curiosity stuck like a burr.
She closed the laptop with a quiet click and leaned back in her chair.
It was nothing. Just curiosity.
Probably.
Her phone buzzed against the desk. May glanced at the screen — a notification from Instagram.
Tamara Colins has followed you back.
May stared at it for a second, feeling a flicker of something she couldn’t quite name, before setting the phone face-down and reaching for her textbook again.
She didn’t get much further than a paragraph before she caught herself smiling.
She wasn’t sure why that felt like a win.