The second time Nora saw Evan, it was daylight and safe. Coffee shop, corner table, textbooks like barricades they didn’t actually need. He quizzed her on drug interactions. She corrected his pronunciation of hydrocortisone.
“You’re easy to talk to,” she said, surprised at how true it felt leaving her mouth. He smiled like someone recognizing a language he hadn’t spoken in a while.
They met again. And again. No labels. No hands held. Just air that felt wider. When she laughed, it didn’t echo against anything sharp.
One afternoon, he walked her to the bus stop and pressed a folded bus pass into her palm. “In case the app hates you again.” No pressure, no receipt, no ask.
At home, her mother noticed the new light in Nora’s face and said nothing, the way mothers sometimes choose trust as their only tool.
By the time midterms ended, Nora had built a future in pencil—classes finished by spring, a starter job by summer, a savings account that could finally be spelled without irony.
It all felt so possible that when the nausea started, she blamed stress. When it didn’t stop, she blamed cafeteria eggs. When the second pink line bloomed, there was no one left to blame but time.
She told no one. Not yet. The future didn’t erase itself; it just smeared at the edges like ink in the rain.
