MIA POV
I answer the phone.
I don't plan to. My thumb just moves. Like muscle memory. Like two years of loving someone lives in your fingers, even after your brain has decided something different.
"Mia." Jake's voice is wrecked. Rough and cracked at the edges, like someone who spent the night not sleeping. "Mia, please. Please just let me."
"Don't come over," I say.
Silence.
Then: "I'm already here."
I close my eyes.
Of course he is.
I open the door, and he looks terrible.
I want to feel nothing when I see that. I want to look at his red eyes and his messy hair and the gas station flowers he's holding pink and white, slightly squashed, the plastic wrap still on them, and feel absolutely nothing at all.
I don't feel anything.
That's the most unfair part of loving someone. You don't get to turn it off just because they hurt you. You don't get to look at a person you have cried with and laughed with and stayed up until three in the morning with and just switch it off like a light. The hurt and the love sit right next to each other, and they're both loud, and you don't get to choose which one you hear.
"Can I come in?" he asks.
I step back from the door.
He cries almost immediately.
Jake is not someone who cries easily. In two years, I have seen it maybe twice, once when his dog died, once when his grandfather died. So when his eyes go glassy before he even finishes his first sentence, something in me reacts before I can stop it. Something old and soft and stupid.
"It meant nothing," he says. "I need you to know that first. It meant absolutely nothing. I was stupid, and I was scared, and I made the worst choice of my entire life, and I have been sick about it since the second you walked out that door."
He's sitting on my couch. I'm in the chair across from him. There is exactly one coffee table between us, and I am grateful for it.
"Scared of what?" I ask.
He blinks. Like he didn't expect a question. Like he expected tears or yelling or me throwing him out, and instead I'm just sitting here, asking him to explain himself, which is somehow harder.
"Of us getting too serious," he says. "Of everything moving so fast. College, the future, all of it." He shakes his head. "I panicked. It was stupid. It was the stupidest thing I've ever done."
I look at him.
I think about the two coffee cups on his nightstand.
I think about Priya's earrings.
"How long?" I ask.
He goes very still.
"How long has it been going on?" I say. My voice is calm. I don't know how it's calm. "Because two coffee cups and earrings on a nightstand are not a one-time panic, Jake."
His face does something complicated. And in that moment, before he even answers, I know. I know it's not the first time. I know panicked is not the right word for what he was.
"Three weeks," he says quietly.
Three weeks.
I nod. I look at my hands. I think: three weeks ago we went to the movies. Three weeks ago, he held my hand the whole time, bought me popcorn, and said I was his favorite person.
Three weeks ago, he was already lying.
Here is the thing I don't say out loud:
Last night happened.
The bar. The stranger with the dark eyes and the low voice and the no-names rule. The glass of water on the nightstand.
It sits inside me like a small, complicated secret while Jake talks about how sorry he is, how he'll do anything, how he knows he doesn't deserve forgiveness, but he's asking for it anyway. And I keep thinking, turning it over, looking at it from different angles, are we even now?
It's a terrible way to think about it. I know that. I'm not proud of it. But my brain keeps doing the math without my permission.
He hurt me first. I didn't plan what happened. I was broken and alone, and someone was kind to me in a way I needed, and one thing became another. I didn't go looking for it. It just happened.
Maybe this is how we reset. Maybe this is the thing that puts us back at zero. A clean slate. Both of us are carrying something, both of us are starting fresh.
I know, somewhere deeper than I want to look, that this is not how any of that works. You don't balance betrayal against betrayal like a math equation and come out even. That's not what forgiveness is. That's not what a fresh start is.
But I'm eighteen years old, and I'm tired, and I loved this boy for two years, and he's sitting across from me with red eyes and crushed gas station flowers and saying my name like it's the only word he knows.
And I think about being at university without him. I think about the plan, same campus, same future, and how hollow it feels now with this crack running through it. I think about whether I'm strong enough to throw the whole thing away.
I don't know if I am.
"Do you still love me?" Jake asks.
The question lands quietly between us.
I look at him. Really look past the red eyes and the flowers and the apology. At the boy I said yes to two years ago. At the person I built plans with.
The honest answer is: yes. Smaller than before. Dented. But yes.
"That's not the problem," I say.
"Then what is?"
"The problem is that love isn't supposed to feel like this." I gesture at the space between us. At the flowers. At everything. "It's not supposed to hurt in this direction."
He leans forward. "I know. And I will spend every day making sure it never hurts like this again. I swear to you, Mia." His voice breaks slightly on my name. "Please. Please give me the chance to fix it."
The room is very quiet.
Outside, a car passes. Someone in the building above me is walking around. The world keeps doing its normal thing while I sit here holding a decision that feels too heavy for my hands.
I think about the stranger. You get better. I think about the glass of water. I think about waking up alone and feeling not destroyed. Just new. Like someone had scraped me clean and I got to decide what went back in.
I think about Jake's face if I say no. About doing this whole year without the person I came to university for. About being brave enough to be alone when I have never actually tried it.
I'm not brave enough.
Not today. Not yet.
"Okay," I say.
Jake's whole face collapses with relief.
"Okay?" he repeats.
"I'm not saying everything is fine," I say quickly. "I'm saying I'm not throwing it away today. I'm saying we try." I look at him hard. "But Jake, if you ever, ever do anything like this again."
"I won't." He's already shaking his head. "I promise you. I won't."
He crosses the room and hugs me.
His arms go around my shoulders, and he pulls me close, and he exhales like a man who has been holding his breath for twenty-four hours. He smells familiar, the same soap, the same warmth, and that familiarity does something to me that I both understand and resent.
"We're going to have the best four years," he says into my hair. "I promise you. The best four years."
I put my arms around him.
I stare over his shoulder at the wall.
The wall is blank and white and says nothing, and I stare at it anyway, looking for something I can't name. Reassurance maybe. Or permission. Or just some sign that the feeling in my chest, that low, quiet wrongness, like a note played slightly off-key, is just fear and not something more honest than that.
The wall gives me nothing.
Best four years, he said.
I think: I hope so.
I think: Why do I already feel like I'm settling?
I think about dark eyes and a low voice saying you get better, which is more useful. I think about how the stranger said it like a fact, not a comfort. Like he knew. Like he'd been through the version of this that I haven't reached yet.
I push the thought down.
I hug Jake back.
I say nothing.
He leaves an hour later, lighter, promising to text, already making plans for move-in week like we just skipped straight past the broken part and landed in the healed part without doing any of the middle.
I close the door.
I stand in the quiet of my apartment for a long moment.
Then my phone buzzes on the counter.
I pick it up.
One message. From Cara.
Please tell me you did NOT take him back.
I stare at it.
Cara has been my best friend since we were twelve years old. She has seen every version of me. She was the first person I told when Jake and I started dating. She smiled and said he better be worth it and then spent the next two years watching him with quiet, careful eyes that I chose not to ask too many questions about.
She already knows. Of course, she already knows. She probably knew before I did.
I stare at her message for a long time.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard.
I think about what to type. It's complicated. Or: I needed to give it a chance. Or: Please don't lecture me right now.
I type nothing.
I put the phone face-down on the counter.
But I don't walk away from it.
I just stand there, in my quiet apartment, with the acceptance letter on the kitchen table and the memory of a glass of water on a nightstand and Cara's message burning through the back of the phone screen.
Waiting for me to be honest with myself.