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The concrete steps outside the lecture hall were still cold, chilled by the spring air.
Most of the snow had melted into uneven gray patches along the grass, but the wind hadn’t softened with it, moving cleanly across the open quad, cutting between buildings and slipping through the branches. A few students crossed campus in scattered pairs, heads down, backpacks slung low. It was quiet enough to feel private without feeling isolated.
Pearl sat halfway up the steps, shoulders squared against the cold. Her coffee steamed faintly in her hands. Another cup rested beside her, untouched.
She spotted Grian before he spotted her.
He jogged the last stretch across the quad, backpack half-zipped and threatening to spill notebooks. He slowed when he reached the steps, breath visible in the air.
“You’re late,” Pearl said mildly.
“By, like, two minutes,” he replied, dropping down beside her.
She handed him the cup. “Two sugar, right?”
He took it automatically. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Thanks for coming on short notice.”
He glanced at her like the statement was nonsense. “Well yeah? You texted.”
He twisted the lid off his coffee and took a cautious sip, wincing at the heat. Pearl watched the steam curl between them before looking back out at the quad.
For a minute, they let the wind fill the space.
“So,” he said eventually, nudging her knee lightly with his. “How’s the prosthetic project?”
She huffed out a breath that almost passed for a laugh. “Behind schedule. Gonna get my ass handed to me by the faculty.”
“Isn’t that the third time?”
“Fourth this semester.”
“Ouch.”
She shrugged. “I’ll make it work.”
He nodded like that meant something concrete to him. “Problems with labs on my end,” he said. “Marine bio practical.”
“You were fine on the last one.”
“Yeah, until I found out my water samples were radioactive.” He took another sip, grimacing. “Ruined the whole batch. Data’s useless.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
“For now,” he agreed while sipping.
She rolled her eyes faintly. It steadied her more than she’d admit.
Another gust of wind cut across the steps. A pair of students passed below them, mid-conversation, laughter trailing behind.
Grian watched them for a second, then looked back at Pearl.
“So,” he said, casual. “You wanted to ask me about Gem?”
He didn’t press. Didn’t lace it with implication. He just placed the name between them and waited.
Pearl stared at the slush at the base of the steps.
“I don’t know—” she began slowly, “How… When am I supposed to tell her something this complicated?”
Grian lifted one shoulder. “Complicated like academic misconduct, or complicated like ‘it’s complicated’?”
She almost smiled despite herself. “Second one. Medical.”
The humor left him without drama.
“Ah.”
Steam drifted from their cups in thin spirals.
“She knows I’ve had surgeries,” Pearl said. “I told her that. In broad terms.”
“But not why.”
“Not what.”
He nodded once.
The wind shifted again, tugging loose strands of her hair across her face. She didn’t brush them away.
“I keep thinking,” she continued, words gathering speed now that they’d started, “that if I don’t say anything and it comes out later, it’ll look like I never wanted her to know.
She stares at the concrete for a moment before speaking.
“What if… she thinks I hid it on purpose?”
The words come out measured, almost clinical. Then she immediately undercuts herself.
“Well. I am hiding it on purpose.” A quick exhale. “But what if she thinks it’s because I don’t trust her?”
She pauses, jaw tightening.
“Well, I—I don’t. Not fully.” The admission catches in her throat. She shakes her head slightly, frustrated with her own phrasing.
“It’s not about her,” she stated, contradicting herself in the same breath. “Well, it is. I want to trust her with this. I really want to.”
The thoughts begin stacking faster now, less ordered.
“But what if she’s only okay with me because she doesn’t know?”
“What if she feels trapped?”
“What if she feels like I waited until she cared too much to leave?”
Panic fills her voice.
“What if I’m manipulating her?”
Each question lands harder than the last.
Her fingers tighten around the cup, knuckles paling briefly before she loosens her grip. She looks away from Grian, scanning the nearly empty quad as if someone else might interrupt the spiral. Her breathing edges quicker, uneven between sentences.
“No, that’s— that’s not right,” she mutters, half to herself. “I’m not trying to manipulate anyone.”
A beat.
“I mean. I don’t think I am.”
She swallows.
“I just—” She cuts herself off. Starts again. “I just want this to be real. I don’t want it to be built on a secret.”
Her words trip slightly over each other now.
“But I… I’m scared of what will happen if I tell her.”
The corrections pile up. Every statement is followed by a retraction, every fear challenged and then replaced by another. It’s not polished. It’s not strategic. It’s raw in a way Pearl rarely allows herself to be.
After a few more halting starts and half-finished sentences, Pearl’s voice falters. She inhales sharply, holds it for a second too long, then lets it go.
Pearl stares at the slush at the edge of the quad. “What if telling her changes how she sees me?”
“It will.”
The answer is immediate. Simple.
She stiffens slightly beside him. There’s a flicker of irritation in her expression, like she expected reassurance and got something else.
“That’s not helpful.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “Well, that’s how knowing someone works.”
She looks at him, searching his face for mockery or perhaps the sense of a joke. There isn’t any. He isn’t trying to scare her. He’s stating a fact.
People learn things. Perspectives shift.
Pearl looks away again. “What if it ruins it?”
“Then it wasn’t stable to begin with.”
The words aren’t sharp. But they’re blunt and matter-of-fact so they hurt all the same.
She goes quiet at that.
After a moment, he adds, “Pearl, you’re not some static character sheet. People don’t lock in their understanding of you at level one. They learn more.”
It’s slightly nerdy and inelegant. Another reminder of Max Blunder.
Her mouth twitches despite herself, but the tension doesn’t fully leave.
She exhales hard through her nose and folds in on herself slightly, elbows braced on her knees.
“I’m being stupid,” she mutters. “She’s amazing. Why would she care?”
She's frustrated. Directed squarely at herself.
“She hasn’t given me a reason to doubt her. This is just—” She gestures vaguely, like she could pluck the anxiety out of the air. “Me. Overanalyzing it. Again.”
Her jaw tightens.
“You’re not stupid,” Grian says immediately.
Flat. Certain.
She cuts him a look, one corner of her mouth twitching despite herself, like she wants to argue but doesn’t have the energy.
Then he adds, dry, “Your fear is.”
She lets out a small, incredulous breath. “Wow. Thanks.”
“I’m serious,” he says. “It’s loud, convincing. But that doesn’t make it right.”
She stares down at her hands.
“I know that,” she says quietly. “Logically, I know that.”
Her fingers tighten together briefly.
“It just doesn’t feel logical.”
He doesn’t argue with that.
The bluntness softens into something steadier. Familiar. Protective without being sentimental.
He watches the quad for a second before speaking again, tone dropping just slightly.
“Look. Even if something, for some reason, happens…” He shrugs, then looks at her. “You’ve survived worse.”
The hospital rooms. The arguments. Growing up in the kind of home that taught you to earn your worth as a person. He means to say she is stronger than she gives herself credit for.
It lands.
Just not the way he thinks.
For a split second, the steps disappear and she’s back in a house that never felt like hers. Dust in the air. Closets half-emptied. Her father’s things left where no one wanted to sort them. Grief curdled into some sharp, visceral impulsion.
She remembers the weight of the gun in her hands. Heavier than she expected. Cold in a way that felt like a needle in the back of her throat.
She remembers sitting on the edge of her old bed, numb. Hollow. Unplugged from her own body. As if she were watching from somewhere slightly behind her own eyes.
She remembers the warmth of the brass sitting alone in her palm, her finger catching on the slide as it snapped back.
Her movements were graceless. Mechanical. She hadn’t felt like the one doing them.
She remembers the click of the drop safety.
She remembers sitting back down, anger and loss braided so tight she couldn’t tell them apart.
She remembers lifting it. Pressing it to her temple. The plastic cold against her skin.
Her finger resting on the trigger.
Then tightening.
Just barely.
She remembers the resistance.
She hadn’t fired.
But she had gotten close enough that the memory ironed itself into the fabric of her mind.
The present snaps back into place with the wind blowing into her face.
Grian is still beside her, unaware of the specific shape of what he’s just referenced. He thinks he’s talking about survival in the abstract.
Pearl swallows.
He’s right.
If she lived through that, she can live through telling Gem the truth.
The wind cuts across the steps again, sharper now, tugging at loose strands of Pearl’s hair.
She keeps her eyes forward.
“You haven’t told her anything, right?” she asks quietly.
It isn’t accusatory or dramatic. Just careful.
Grian turns his head toward her, brows lifting just slightly. Somewhat offended on principle.
“Of course not.”
The absence of elaboration says more than anything else could.
Pearl studies him for half a second, then nods. A small breath leaves her, tension easing out of her shoulders in a way she doesn’t consciously control.
The wind moves between them again, filling the space with a low, restless sound.
After a moment, Grian asks, evenly, “Do you want her to know?”
Pearl’s fingers tighten slightly around her empty cup. She watches a scrap of old snow loosen from the edge of the grass and collapse into slush.
There’s hesitation.
“…Yes.”
Grian nods once. “Then that’s your answer.”
The words settle between them, simple and solid.
After that, neither of them speaks.
Grian drains the last of his coffee and sets the empty cup beside him before pushing himself to his feet. He adjusts his sleeve automatically.
“If you need to talk again,” he says, like it’s an obvious logistical detail, “you know I’m around.”
Pearl nods. “Yeah. I know.”
It doesn’t fix anything. The fear isn’t gone. But something is steadier than it was before.
“Thanks,” she adds.
He gives a small shrug, as if to say it’s not worth thanking him for, and starts down the steps.
He makes it halfway down the stairs before she notices the abandoned backpack still sitting beside her.
“Grian—”
He stops, looks down at himself, swears under his breath, and jogs back up to grab it.
Before turning away again, he pauses.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, adjusting his shoulder, “every time she speaks, she somehow comes back to you. I don’t think you need to worry about anything.”
He says it casually, then he shrugs and heads off for real, cutting across the campus without looking back.
Pearl stays seated.
Students drift past at a distance. A door opens somewhere behind her. The wind threads through the near-empty quad, restless but indifferent.
After a minute, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone.
She opens Gem’s contact.
The screen glows in her hands.
She doesn’t type anything, doesn’t think to call her. She just looks at her name, her thumb hovering without moving.
Then she locks the screen and slips the phone back into her coat.