Lahat ng Kabanata ng Torn Between My Boyfriend & the Professor: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

LENACampus looks the same, but it doesn't feel the same. The paths are shoveled into gray slush, the trees stand bare and skeletal against a flat white sky, and the air carries that particular bite that makes my eyes water the second I step out of the car. Everyone around me drags suitcases and duffel bags, breath fogging, phones already out, slipping back into the rhythm of a place that never stopped existing without us. It's the same quad, the same brick buildings, the same bell tower chiming the hour like nothing happened. But something underneath it all has shifted. I can feel it in my sternum, a low electric hum, because the semester itself seems to know what happened on New Year's Eve, know that my stalker found me at my parents' house, know that the unlisted number I thought was safe isn't safe at all. If they can reach me there, they can reach me anywhere. Including here.Sophie finds me in the hallway before I even get my key in the door. She barrels into me with a hug that

LENAJulian's voice drops when he starts talking, and that's how I know this is real. Not performance. Not another lesson disguised as conversation. I've spent enough hours in this apartment to recognize the difference between the version of him that performs and the version that simply exists, and right now, there's no audience left for him to play to - just me, and whatever this is.We came here separately, the way we always do now. I parked two blocks over and walked the long way, checking storefront windows for reflections that lingered too long. Julian insisted the blinds stay drawn before he'd even take off his coat. We're careful because carelessness has a cost we've already paid once, and yet here we are anyway, choosing this risk over the alternative, which is losing each other by degrees to caution.We're on his couch, the one piece of furniture in his apartment that looks lived in instead of staged. Everything else here feels curated, chosen for effect, but this couch sags

LENAThe sheets are wrong. That is the first thing I register before my mind catches up; the thread count is too high, the pillow feels too firm, and the faint scent of cedar mingles with a floral note that never belonged to my detergent. I lie motionless across the mattress, staring up until the details overhead sharpen into view. Pale yellow paint coats the plaster beneath heavy crown molding; this is not my apartment.I wake inside Tyler's childhood bedroom.Memory returns piece by piece, like waking from an involuntary dream that leaves a dull ache behind. I recall the dark drive out here after dinner, Tyler telling me to stay because the hour was late and his parents would welcome it; I said yes the way I say yes to everything lately, offering a practiced smile that moves my mouth without reaching anything deeper. I cannot recall the exact moment of consent. What I remember is failing to refuse; there is a distinct boundary between the two, and I have learned to occupy that hollo

LENAThe apartment smells like garlic before I even get the door open.I stand in the hallway for one full second with the strap digging into my collarbone, the logger inside the canvas wrapped tight in a wool scarf from the backseat. The scent hits my throat, and my mind runs the calculations before I take another step: Sophie is home, Sophie is cooking, and the lie I texted Tyler forty minutes ago is currently taking shape in real time.I push the door open.Sophie stands over the stove with a wooden spoon in her grip, her hair piled into that crooked knot she never pins properly. Oil snaps in the skillet as she glances back over one shoulder."You eat yet?""No," I say, and the word lands flat and even."I made too much again." She turns back to the heat, flicking oil off the edge of the spoon. "Sit down if you want some."I drop my bag near the sofa rather than carry it straight down the hall; ducking into the bedroom right away looks like an evasion, and Sophie always registers a

The door opens. I register it the way you register a shift in pressure; the air rearranges itself around someone else's arrival. My thumb hovers over Sophie's message asking if everything is okay. The banner has been sitting on the glass for eleven minutes because I counted.Tyler drops his keys on the hook with one deliberate sound."Hey." He walks around the couch, stopping when he reaches my line of sight; I can feel him looking at me the way he does when he audits something, not watching so much as cataloging an inventory. "You okay?""Yeah." The word leaves me before I can measure the speed, hollow and clipped; I know Tyler caught the uneven timing the instant I let it go.I type back that I just left the library exhausted, adding that all is good, because those are the casual words Sophie expects to close the loop. My fingers feel detached, like someone handling the screen for the first time instead of the hundredth, but I press send anyway.Tyler sits down beside me on the cush