Two days. Forty-eight hours. Two orientation sessions where I sat in an auditorium being told where the library is and how to report a fire and what number to call if I feel "emotionally overwhelmed," and the whole time my phone sat face-up on my thigh doing nothing.
I didn't text him. I thought about it maybe thirty times. Typed something twice. Deleted it twice. Because if I text first then I'll never know if he was going to, and I need to know if he was going to, and I hate that I need to know that about someone who's supposed to be my best friend.
Wednesday morning. 9:14 AM.
ETHAN:wya come get breakfast
I stare at it long enough for Kira to ask who died.
"Nobody," I say, swinging my legs off the bed. "I'm going to eat."
"Bring me back something," Nadia mumbles into her pillow.
"You don't even know where I'm going."
"Don't care. Bring me back something."
I change twice. The first outfit is trying too hard and I know it before I zip the jeans. The second one is a hoodie and shorts and I almost go back to the jeans before I stop myself because this is breakfast, this is Ethan, and if I show up looking like I planned this he'll know something's off because I've never planned anything around him before. That's the lie I tell myself while I put on lip gloss in the bathroom mirror. Kira watches me from her bed and doesn't say a word but her eyebrows say plenty.
The dining hall is half-empty. Wednesday morning, most freshmen are still asleep or pretending to be. I spot him before he spots me — back corner, tray already loaded, scrolling his phone with a piece of bacon hanging out of his mouth. He's wearing a wrinkled t-shirt he's had since junior year. The collar is stretched out. I bought him a new one last Christmas and I've never seen him wear it.
He looks up when I'm three steps away and his whole face opens. "Yo, took you long enough. I been here twenty minutes."
"You texted me nine minutes ago."
"And?"
I sit across from him and steal a piece of his bacon and he swats at my hand but not fast enough and this — this right here — is the thing I missed for two days. Not the talking. Not the texting. Just being close enough to take food off his plate while he complains about it.
"Your orientation yesterday was dead too right?" he says, mouth full. "They spent forty-five minutes explaining how to use the library website. Forty-five minutes. I wanted to leave my own body."
"Mine had a group activity where we had to say one interesting fact about ourselves."
"What'd you say?"
"That I can eat an entire pizza by myself in under fifteen minutes."
He grins. "That's not interesting. That's just sad."
"The girl next to me said she could play the harp. The harp, Ethan. I panicked."
He laughs. There it is. Right across the table from me, easy, instant, real, directed at something I said, and my chest does the stupid thing it always does when I'm the reason for it.
We eat. He talks about the guys he met during orientation — a kid named Marcus from his finance program who apparently knows everything about cryptocurrency and won't shut up about it, another guy who showed up to the first session still drunk from the night before. He tells it the way he tells everything, big and animated, leaning across the table, doing voices. I'm laughing and eating his food and for fifteen minutes campus feels small and manageable and mine.
Then I say it. I don't even decide to. It just falls out.
"I saw you Monday."
He stops mid-bite. "Monday?"
"On the quad. By the fountain. You were with people."
His face does this quick shuffle — confusion, then recognition, then something that almost looks guilty before it settles into casual. "Oh yeah, that was some orientation thing. This group from my floor, we just ended up out there." He chews. Swallows. "Wait, you saw me? Why didn't you come over?"
And there it is. The question that proves everything I already knew. He wasn't avoiding me. He wasn't choosing them over me. He just forgot I existed for a while, and forgetting came so easy to him that he doesn't even understand why I wouldn't walk over and announce myself.
"I had food," I say. "Wings were getting cold."
"You chose wings over me?"
"They were lemon pepper."
"Damn. Okay. Respect."
He moves on. Just like that. Picks up his phone to show me something someone posted in the group chat and he's laughing again and the conversation slides forward and Monday night folds itself into nothing and I let it because what am I supposed to say? That I stood there with a bag of food watching a girl touch his arm and felt my whole body go wrong? That I went home and listened to his voice notes to fall asleep? That I've been waiting two days for a text that took him nine minutes to forget he hadn't sent?
"You good?" he asks, and I realize my face has been doing something without my permission.
"Yeah. Bacon's just dry."
He slides his tray toward me. "Take whatever you want, I'm done."
I take another piece. It's not dry. He watches me eat it with his chin in his hand and his eyes half-closed and sleepy and completely unaware of what that looks like from where I'm sitting.
After breakfast he walks me halfway back to my dorm because his building is in the other direction. We pass the fountain from Monday night and he doesn't even glance at it. Why would he? Nothing happened there for him.
"Saturday night there's some welcome thing," he says, walking backwards so he's facing me. "Like a mixer or whatever. You coming?"
"Depends. You gonna text me about it or am I gonna find out from the quad again?"
He catches it. I see him catch it. His step falters for half a second and something moves across his face — not guilt exactly, more like the first flicker of realizing he did something careless without meaning to.
"I'll text you," he says. Softer than his usual voice. "I gotchu. I'll text you."
"Sure."
He jogs backward a few more steps.
He stops jogging. Turns around properly.
"Yo, Bella."
"What."
He walks back toward me and the playfulness is gone from his face. Not completely — Ethan can't be fully serious for more than ten seconds without his body rejecting it. He stops in front of me, close, hands in his pockets, head tilted slightly to the side.
"I should've texted you. That's my bad. For real."
"It's fine."
"It's not fine because you're doing that thing where you say it's fine and your face is saying something completely different." He pokes my forehead. "This whole area right here is very loud right now."
I swat his hand away. "Don't touch my face."
"Come here."
"No."
"Bella."
"I said no."
He opens his arms wide, takes a step closer, and I take a step back and he takes another step and I'm backing up and he's grinning now because he knows I'm about to lose this battle. My back hits the lamppost behind me and I've got nowhere to go and he wraps both arms around me and pulls me in and I stand there stiff for exactly three seconds before my body gives up the act and my arms go around his waist and my face presses into his chest and he smells like bacon grease and something underneath both of those things that's just him.
"We good?" he says into the top of my head.
"We're okay."
"Nah. We good?"
I tighten my arms around him once. Quick. Then let go and push him back. "We're good. Now get off me, you smell like the dining hall."
"You literally just had your nose in my chest for five seconds."
"Moment of weakness. Won't happen again."
He grins. Points at me with both hands while walking backwards toward his building. "Thursday. I'll text you. Watch."
"I'll believe it when my phone buzzes."
He turns around and jogs off. I watch him disappear around the corner of his building, my back still against the lamppost, my arms crossed, my hoodie warm in the spot where his chest was pressed against it.
I push off the post and walk back to the dorm alone. Nadia is going to ask where her food is. I forgot to bring her something. She's going to be dramatic about it.
I'm already smiling.