Lahat ng Kabanata ng Torn Between My Boyfriend & the Professor: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

LENAThe note sits in my palm, the paper still warm from being folded against my skin. *I see everything.* I read it again, and again, waiting for the words to lose their sharpness, but they don't. My bedroom is dark except for the glow of my phone screen, and for one long moment I let myself sit inside the fear, let it press down on my chest like a hand.Then something shifts.I don't stop to think, and that's how I know this is real. My old self would've spiraled, would've called Sophie, would've lain awake replaying every possibility until dawn. My old self would've texted first, would've asked permission to feel something. I don't text. I grab my keys off the dresser, and the note goes into my pocket, and I'm moving before I can talk myself out of it. I drive to Julian's building with my hands too tight on the wheel and my jaw aching from how hard I've been holding it, and I park crooked, and I don't care.His door is the third one on the left, the paint chipped at the bottom wher

LENAThe dorm room smells like burnt popcorn and the vanilla candle Ava refuses to throw away even though it's basically just wax now. I'm curled up on the end of my bed with my laptop balanced on my knees, half listening to Priya recount, for the third time, how Marcus totally checked her out during the a cappella showcase. Her voice has that particular pitch of joy that makes everything sound like breaking news, and I find myself grateful for the noise of it, the ordinariness."He literally missed his cue," Priya says, flopping backward onto Ava's comforter like she's been shot. "Two years of pining and the man forgets the words to 'Dreams' because I wore the red dress.""You've been talking about that dress since September," Ava says from her desk, not even looking up from her chemistry notes. "I was starting to think it was imaginary. Like Bigfoot. The Loch Ness dress.""It's real. It's magic. I'm getting married in it.""You've had one date.""One date and eye contact that could

LENAI knock once on Julian's office door and don't wait for an answer before I push it open. He looks up from a stack of papers, and whatever he sees on my face makes him set his pen down slowly, like sudden movement might set something off."Who is Camille Whitfield?"The color drops out of his face so fast I almost feel bad for asking. Almost. He stands, sits back down, stands again, as if his body can't decide what version of this conversation he's having."Where did you hear that name?""She teaches in your department now. She knew my name before I said it. She knew my class schedule. She said you mentioned me." I cross my arms because I need somewhere to put my hands that isn't around his throat. "So I'm asking again. Who is she?"He rubs both palms over his face, and when he drops them, his eyes look older than they did thirty seconds ago. "She's my ex-wife."The words land in the room and just sit there."Your what.""Ex-wife. We were married for three years. It ended badly."

LENASleep never comes, not really. I spend most of the night replaying Sophie's voice in the dark, the careful way she'd said *you're getting good at lying* like she was cataloging evidence for a case she hadn't decided whether to file yet. By morning I've convinced myself I imagined the edge in her tone. By the time I reach campus, I've convinced myself of nothing at all.My class ends at 2:15, a terse email from the department about a burst pipe in the lecture hall, and I stand in the hallway reading it twice like it might change into different words if I stare hard enough. Thirty minutes. Maybe forty if I don't rush. Sophie's voice hasn't left me all day, needling at the edges of every thought, and some reckless part of me decides that if I'm going to be watched no matter what I do, I might as well be watched doing something that's actually mine.I text him anyway. **Rios 214 is flooded. I have nothing until 4.**Three dots appear almost instantly, then disappear, then appear agai

LENAThe house smells like cinnamon and pine and the particular chemical sweetness of the candles my mother buys every December, the ones with names like Winter Hearth and Frosted Cabin that all smell exactly the same once you light them. It's Christmas Day now, three days into a break that already feels endless, the house long since settled into its holiday rhythm of cookies and carols and the same four Hallmark movies looping on the television in the den. I stand in the kitchen doorway and watch my mother arrange sugar cookies on a plate my grandmother left her, the good plate, the one that only comes out twice a year, its gold rim worn thin in places from decades of careful washing. I think about how this house has always been a museum of holidays done correctly, every ornament in its designated box, every tradition observed like liturgy, and how no one has ever once asked whether any of it meant anything to me."You look thin," my mother says without looking up from the cookies. "