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The air in Room 104, the empty chemistry classroom at Northwood High, hung thick and still. It smelled of the ghost of burnt sugar from a lab three days past, layered with the faint, bitter bite of old erasers and floor wax. It was Friday afternoon, the kind where late sunlight sliced through the blinds like lazy, golden knives, casting striped shadows across the scarred wooden desks.
Three voices fractured the silence. There was Lena Vance's light, teasing laughter; Ryan Sterling's deep, effortless baritone; and Ethan Hayes's voice quieter, always trailing just half a beat behind, ensuring the other two had finished speaking before he began.
Papers rustled under their elbows: equations, scribbled margins, the quiet evidence of a senior year afternoon they were supposed to be spending on advanced equilibrium.
Lena leaned over the table, her ponytail swinging like a pendulum. As she moved, the scent hit Ethan vanilla and coconut. It was a smell that used to mean safety, but lately, it just made his chest ache with a longing he couldn't name. She tapped Ethan's notebook with her pen.
"Ethan, seriously, your handwriting. It's too neat. It looks like you wrote the notes with a ruler and a death wish for spontaneity."
Ryan snorted, sprawling back in his chair with that easy, genetic grace that made his simple button-up shirt look like couture. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, displaying the kind of forearms that belonged on a magazine cover, not bent over a solubility chart.
"Leave him alone, Lena. Ethan's the machine. Without his flawless documentation, we'd both have failed Mr. Hargrove's last three pop quizzes." He shot Ethan a grin, the kind that crinkled his eyes and carried the weight of a thousand effortless victories. "Right, man? You're the brains. I'm just the charm."
Ethan forced a laugh, a dry sound that felt like sandpaper scraping his throat. He sat wedged between them on the bench, close enough to catch the crisp, expensive soap Ryan always smelled like—a scent of privilege and ease.
Too close. His knee brushed Lena's under the table—accidental, always accidental—and he pulled back a fraction too quickly, heat crawling up his neck like a fever.
Three years.
For three years, he had mastered this agonizing geometry: the perfect distance to be included in the light, but far enough away not to cast a shadow of awkwardness. He'd loved her since freshman orientation since she'd tripped over an untied shoelace in the gym and he, the boy who flinched from his father's raised voice, had somehow managed to catch her elbow before she hit the floor.
"Steady there," he'd mumbled.
She had grinned up at him like he'd handed her the moon, not just a moment of physics defiance. That single stolen moment of heroism had morphed into an impossible, complicated relationship. They were together. Officially. Since last fall, when she'd pulled him behind the dusty bleachers and kissed him, soft and quick, whispering, "I've been waiting for you to ask."
But moments like this her leaning into Ryan's jokes, their shared, silent eye-rolls over Mr. Hargrove's eccentric tie made the relationship feel brittle. Like a pane of glass he was terrified to breathe on. He was her "safe place," the one who saw her. Ryan was the one who effortlessly defined her world.
Lena nudged him with her shoulder, her touch lingering just a beat too long, warm through his faded Northwood High hoodie.
"Don't say that, Ethan Hayes. You're the best part of these sessions. Ryan's just here to make sure his mother sees a passing grade and for the vending machine snacks." She reached across Ethan to snag a chip from Ryan's open bag, her arm grazing Ethan's chest.
Ryan didn't flinch; he just watched her with that lazy half-smile, a proprietary look that suggested everything she did was for his private amusement.
Ethan swallowed the knot in his throat, eyes dropping back to his notebook. The neat lines of equations stared back at him, precise and controlled the one thing in his life that never lied, never shifted. He'd kissed her plenty stolen, desperate moments in his beat-up car, her lips tasting of cherry gloss and promises. But she'd always pulled back, gentle, murmuring, "Not yet, Ethan. I want it to be right."
He'd waited, every time. Because pushing her felt wrong. It felt like betraying the frightened fifteen-year-old he'd been, the one who fled the shouts of his father, Mr. Hayes, and the cold judgment of his siblings, Chloe and Derek, back home.
Home was a minefield. His father treated love like a transaction based on GPA. His mother was a ghost in her own kitchen. His brother Derek treated him with open disdain. Here, with Lena, Ethan was safe. He was chosen.
Ryan crumpled his chip bag, tossing it toward the trash with a perfect, infuriating arc. "Speaking of vending machines, Lena your turn for the soda run. Loser buys." His voice dropped playful-low, the kind of tone that demanded engagement.
Lena groaned, but her eyes sparkled with the game. "Fine, but only if Ethan comes with. Moral support. You scare the machine, Sterling it always eats your quarters."
Ethan's heart did its usual frantic flutter. Walk with her? Alone? Without Ryan's gravity pulling at them?
"Uh, yeah. Sure." He stood too fast, his chair scraping loud against the tile, and followed her out into the dim hallway.
The school felt massive, empty, the distant echoes of gym laughter fading into silence. They walked shoulder-to-shoulder, the squeak of her sneakers on the linoleum the only sound.
"You okay? With the chem, I mean," he asked, hands shoved deep in his pockets, fingers twisting the frayed lining. "That last problem is a killer, even for you."
Lena glanced at him, her smile softening, reserved just for him. "Better now. Thanks to you, Professor Hayes." She bumped his arm deliberately this time, and his pulse jumped. "Hey... about tonight. My parents are out late some awful neighbors' dinner. We could hang at my place after this? Just us. Watch that dumb horror flick you like."
Just us.
The words hung sweet and heavy. This was the moment. The "not yet" might finally melt away. The patience was paying off.
"Yeah," he breathed, voice barely above a whisper. "I'd really like that."
She squeezed his hand, a quick, electric charge, then let go as the vending machine loomed at the end of the hall. "Two Cokes and a Mountain Dew. Ryan's treat, remember?"
As he fumbled the quarters the last of his cash from his pathetic lawn-mowing gig his phone buzzed in his back pocket. He pulled it out.
Chloe (Sister): Dad's home early. The Miller account fell through. He's on a warpath. Don't come home late.
Ethan's stomach dropped. The Miller account was his father's biggest project. If that had failed, the house wouldn't just be loud; it would be a war zone. Any grade less than 100%, any door closed too loudly, would be grounds for a verbal evisceration.
He shoved the phone away, unread. He didn't need that storm right now. Not when he was this close to the sun with Lena.
They headed back toward Room 104, the sodas sweating cold against his palms. As they neared the door, laughter spilled out Ryan's, low and rumbling, followed by Lena's gasp of mock-horror.
Ethan paused. His chest felt tight.
"Forgot my pencil," he muttered, more to himself. "Left it by the fountain. Be right back."
Lena waved him off, barely looking back. "Hurry up, slowpoke. Ryan's telling that story about the lake house again."
He nodded, but his feet carried him past the door, toward the deserted water fountain around the bend. He drank, the cold metal jarring his teeth, and stared at his reflection in the safety mirror: pale skin, messy brown hair, eyes too wide and uncertain.
You're enough, he told his reflection. She said so. Just us.
But the doubt gnawed, sharp as ever. Ryan was everything he wasn't: the kind of effortless success whose gravity pulled everyone into his orbit. Was this ever really his?
Just check. Make sure.
He slipped back toward Room 104, silent as a shadow. He didn't want to interrupt; he just wanted to hear them talking about him. Maybe Ryan saying, Ethan's a good guy, or Lena saying, I can't wait for tonight.
Voices filtered through the half-open door—Lena's giggle, cut short. Then a hush.
Then, a sound that stopped his heart.
The rustle of fabric. A soft, breathless intake of air. And a zipper's rasp.
Ethan's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. No jokes now. Just movement. His hand trembled on the brass knob. Paranoid. Stupid. You're being the jealous idiot Derek says you are.
But the sound clawed at him, familiar yet profoundly wrong: the same breathy hitch Lena made when they kissed, now layered under something deeper, urgent.
He dialed her number before he could stop himself. He needed to prove himself wrong.
The ringtone pierced the quiet—that silly pop song she'd set last week—blasting from inside like an accusation.
The door creaked open under his push, slow and inevitable. Time fractured.
Lena was straddling Ryan on the edge of Mr. Hargrove's desk, her skirt hiked up, blouse untucked and clinging to sweat-damp skin. Ryan's hands gripped her hips, his shirt rucked open to reveal the hard planes of his chest.
They froze, mid-breath. Her vanilla-scented hair was wild across her flushed face. Ryan looked up, his eyes widening not in shame, but in lazy, startled annoyance.
Ethan's phone clattered to the chalk-dusted floor. The ringtone looped once more, mocking, before cutting to voicemail.
For a heartbeat, the world held suspended in the sour air. Lena's mouth formed his name, a gasp: "Ethan—wait—"
But the silence that followed was louder than any sound. It wasn't anger. Just a sudden, vast, yawning nothing, swallowing the boy who'd waited three years for a kiss that meant forever.
He bent, numb, scooping his phone. His eyes snagged on his notebook still open on the desk—his neat script beside Ryan's scrawl, and Lena's doodles in the margin: hearts, initials.
E + L.
Proof of a life he'd borrowed. Never owned.
"I... forgot this," he whispered, voice cracking like thin ice. He snatched the notebook up, pages fluttering like dying wings.
Ryan shifted, half-sitting, voice rough but utterly casual, like they'd just been caught skipping class. "Dude. It's not come on, man. Sit down. We can talk."
Lena slid off him, skirt falling crooked, tears streaking her cheeks. "Ethan, please. It was nothing. A mistake. I love you."
Love.
The word he'd clung to since the bleacher kiss, now laced with the lie he could taste: the flush on her neck, the way Ryan's hand lingered on her thigh.
He backed away, door banging shut behind him. The hallway stretched endless, lockers blurring as tears burned hot tracks down his face. He walked, notebook clutched to his chest, his footsteps echoing a hollow whisper: What now?
Home was a war zone. His safe place was a lie. And the silence of the hallway felt less like peace, and more like a tomb.