The clock read 2:17 a.m.
Sleep had abandoned me tonight. Or maybe I had abandoned it first.
And tonight, of all things, I remembered Rhys. When I thought my mind was back to that strange Amber hue.
Not the Rhys who later became complicated. Not the boy I heard whispers about in the college courtyard. No, the Rhys I remembered tonight was seventeen. And I was sixteen. I didn't expect to recall it so vividly, how he sat on the last desk in room 207 facing opposite mine.
I remember that day. It was July, the beginning of the school year. The fans in the classroom made more noise than the wind. The smell of ink and chalk and heated concrete clung to our uniforms.
I forgot the exact lesson. Mr. Walker kept ranting like one of the sulking professors.
But I wasn't looking at the board.
Something tugged at me. A strange instinct, like being watched. Like heat at the back of my neck. And I turned my head to the window.
And there he was.
Rhys Mercer.
Not doing anything remarkable. Just… sitting there, eyes fixed on me. Not the flirty kind of gaze boys usually used when they wanted to be caught. Not the accidental glance either.
It was still. And held. As if in the seconds between classes, he had found a way to pause time.
I didn't smile. Neither did he.
He didn't wave. I didn't look away.
For someone who never had friends, attention from the quarterback is a big deal. That moment, suspended in the frame of that classroom window, became the earliest memory I had of him that felt mine.
Later, I'd find out his class was across the hall. He'd excuse himself to refill his water bottle or visit the infirmary a suspicious number of times. But always, he passed by my room.
Always, he looked in.
But the fact he was among those girls, who treated people like they owned them didn't sit well with me.
Sometimes your brain hands you something soft and warm like a blanket. Sometimes it slices you open with precision.
Rhys had been both.
That year, he was our school's golden boy. Tall, athletic, not overly talkative but sharp when he did speak. Teachers loved him. Girls loved him. Boys tried not to hate him.
But I had never been in his orbit. Not truly. We were from different batches, different social layers. If he were sunlight, I was the kid sitting on the last bench watching it from the shadows.
Another night passed after that. Then another. And he kept showing up.
I told myself it wasn't about me. I wasn't the kind of girl boys paused for.
I was that girl on scholarship.
I wore thrifted clothes, while he was in the latest designers.
My hair was too frizzy, his was perfectly combed and fixed.
My shoes were always dusty because I walked too much and cared too little.
Neither of them bothered me; I was content with what I had. but his stare did.
It made me burn, my stomach twisting in knots, the hair on my hands standing rooted.
And again, we were from different worlds.
But still, he looked.
Just those empty, blood-rushing glares, silent talk through eyes, took most of my first year.
During the first college camping trip,
I didn't want to be around people that evening. Their laughter felt too sharp, too practiced, like something they'd packed along with their sleeping bags. So I slipped away, just far enough that no one would call my name and ask why I was being "quiet again."
There was a trail, half-covered by leaves and roots, leading away from the tents and firepit. I followed it without meaning to.
The pond appeared suddenly, folded into the trees, like it had been waiting. The water didn't ripple. It just held the color of the sky on its back, soft and heavy and blue. I always had a thing for these lonely ponds.
And for the first time all day, I let myself exhale.
The name had returned to me without permission.
Rhys Mercer.
He had been one of those memories that chose you, not the other way around. I saw him standing at the edge of the campfire circle when I first arrived, one hand in his pocket, eyes on the treetops like he didn't want to be seen. Like he hadn't once looked through a classroom window and found me.
I leaned forward now, tracing a fingertip near the water's edge, letting it smear a line through a reflection that looked too much like me. I was about to pull away when slippery moss underneath me slid.
I let out a sharp breath, bracing on my elbow as I hit the slope hard. The sting was instant—dirt under my nails, mud seeping through the side of my jeans, a dull pain blooming in my ankle.
"Shit," I muttered, trying to push myself up. But something went wrong when I moved. My breath caught.
"You okay?"
The voice came from behind, quiet but unmistakably familiar.
I froze. I don't want another reason to get picked on. Not for now.
There was a beat of silence. I didn't turn.
"I saw you from the tents," the voice spoke, a little closer now. "You slipped."
Slowly, I looked over my shoulder. And there he was.
Rhys. I didn't want to meet him like this. Not when the mud was smeared on me
His hoodie was slightly damp from the dew, and his hair was pushed back like he'd been running a hand through it.
"I'm fine," I said too quickly.
"You're not," he said, crouching beside me before I could protest.
I watched him. I didn't know how not to.
"You twisted it," he added, gently brushing away some loose dirt from my calf. "Don't move,Let me help you."
When was the last time someone offered to help? I hesitated. "I don't need..."
But his hand was already there, open, steady, waiting.
So I took it.
And the moment I touched him, skin against skin, warm against cold, I felt something give again.
He pulled me up slowly, careful not to jolt my leg. I tried not to wince. Failed. He saw it.
"We should get it looked at," he said.
"I don't want to go back yet.", I protested, I don't want to look like this.
"You can't walk properly."
"I don't care."
Something in my voice must've made him pause. He didn't argue. He just stood beside me, both of us staring at the pond like we were in the middle of a story neither of us had read out loud yet.
I didn't know what to say to him. How do you talk to someone who once memorized your face from the other side of a window but never said a word?
And for a long time, we just sat there—me with a throbbing ankle and a heart I couldn't quite steady, him with a gaze I remembered too well.
This time, there was no glass between us.
No corridor.
No, silence, we didn't choose.
Only the still water, and the kind of memory that didn't fade when you blinked.