Chapter 3
three
. . .
Violet
“You’re this shaken up by him? How?”
The question lands like a dart to the chest, but Whitley’s tone isn’t sharp. It’s puzzled. Protective. Worried, really, which always makes it harder to brush off.
Our condo is quiet, the kind that settles in after the world outside finally slows down.
A lamp glows in the corner, casting everything in warm light and softening the edges of the space we’ve made ours.
There’s a stack of mail on the kitchen counter we’ve both been ignoring, a pair of Whitley’s shoes kicked off near the door, and a blanket that definitely belongs folded neatly over the back of the couch but somehow always ends up with me.
She’s perched on the edge of the armchair, brow furrowed. I’ve cocooned myself on the couch, half buried beneath that same blanket, a crinkled bag of peach rings balanced on my stomach. My fingers fish one out, and I shoot her a look before biting off the orange half.
The sugar hits my tongue, almost too sweet—nothing like the heaviness sitting in my chest. Which is the point.
Whitley became my person in college, the one I never saw coming.
We ended up as roommates, just two lost souls thrown together by some cosmic accident.
Somewhere between late-night study sessions and mornings soaked in coffee and regret, she became my emergency contact and my anchor, and then my permanent roommate when she moved back to my hometown with me after college.
She’s all snappy words, big feelings, and built of instinct and fire. Her copper-red hair tumbles in waves around her shoulders, and she has intense eyes that cut through the bullshit and see people for who they really are.
She doesn’t mean to hurt me with her question. She never does. But I can hear the disbelief in her voice, the confusion that I still let someone like him have this much space in my head after all this time.
I pop the rest of the peach ring into my mouth to buy myself a few seconds.
“I got out of that exam room as fast as I could,” I mutter around the chew. “Left Rowan with Dr. Langford and just…bolted.”
Whitley’s leg stops bouncing. I feel her eyes on me, but I don’t look up.
“What’s he even doing back here?” she asks.
I finally look up, meeting her eyes. “No idea. I didn’t exactly stick around to chat.”
Her eyes narrow, lips pressing into a thin line. “That stupid man. I swear, I should slap him. You’re pining for him after all these years when all he did was prance other girls around in front of you when you were in high school. And you’re still in love with him.”
I sigh, pulling the blanket tighter around me. “It was a long time ago. We were just kids. It’s ancient history.”
“Ancient history, my ass,” she mutters under her breath. “I know that look in your eyes. Seeing him again brought it all back, didn’t it? And you’re stress eating those impossible to chew peach things. That is absolutely your telltale sign.”
Dang it. It doesn’t even matter that I’ve had years of growing, of learning to stand on my own.
Because when I let myself sink into the memory of him, there’s that tragic, romantic part of me that still feels like that girl who couldn’t even look him in the eye without turning five shades of red.
The girl who sat three rows behind him in algebra, pretending to copy equations while actually memorizing the way his shoulders moved when he leaned over his desk.
The girl who waited for some sign, some signal that maybe he saw her the same way.
And I never quite stopped hoping.
The girl who clung to every casual smile he threw her way, every joke tossed over his shoulder like it was meant just for her, who secretly believed that it meant something.
I want to believe I’ve outgrown her and that the woman I am now—twenty-four, gainfully employed, rent-paying, mostly put-together—wouldn’t fall apart just because Rowan looked at her like no time had passed.
But today proved me wrong.
Suddenly, I was a teenager again, awkward, wide-eyed, and reckless with hope, with a stomach full of butterflies and a heart full of all the things I never said.
It’s like stepping into an old version of myself I thought I’d left behind.
She’s still here, lingering in the corners of my heart, waiting for him to make the same mistake again.
Whitley lets out a sharp exhale and slumps into the armchair, dragging a hand through her wild waves. “Jesus, Violet,” she mutters, her voice softer but threaded with that dry, exasperated affection she reserves for me. “You really were down bad for this guy, huh?”
I groan, shoving another ring into my mouth like that might help me smother all the stupid, painfully vivid memories. “It’s just been a phase. A decade-long, emotionally stunted, very quiet phase.”
“Mmhmm. And you just happened to phase yourself right into a minor crisis the second you laid eyes on him again.”
“I didn’t expect him to look like…that,” I mutter, trying to hide behind the fabric of the blanket. “My brain just…short-circuited.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you,” she says, crossing one leg over the other like she’s got all the time in the world to watch me unravel, “but your brain always short-circuits when you talk about this guy. The look on your face when you say ‘Rowan Wolfe’ is the same look most people get when someone says ‘free pizza.’”
I groan a little louder this time. “Why are you like this?”
“Because someone has to tell you the truth while also making fun of you a little. It’s my love language.” She grins, completely unapologetic, like she knows she’s getting under my skin and is absolutely okay with it. “What’s so special about him anyway?”
I go quiet. It’s not that I don’t have an answer. I’ve got more answers than I could ever voice. The truth is, every single one of them seems a little ridiculous when I try to put it into words.
“I don’t know,” I say finally, though it’s a lie. I know exactly what’s special about him. “He was just…different.”
Different, like the day he caught me trying to open my locker with one hand while using the other to keep my iced coffee from spilling down my front.
I’d been running late, nerves already fried, and naturally, the locker wouldn’t open.
So I was talking to it—like full-on whisper-threatening it under my breath.
Then suddenly, this voice came from behind me.
“Locker giving you attitude again?”
I jumped so hard I spilled coffee all over my shirt. A perfect, tragic arc. Right across the front.
I wanted the ground to eat me whole. But when I turned around, there he was, smirking like he’d just watched the whole thing go down in slow motion.
“Nice shot,” Rowan said, nodding at the coffee stain. “Bold choice. Very modern art.”
I wanted to melt into the floor. I think I said something like, “I hate Tuesdays,” which made no sense, because it was a Thursday. He just laughed and offered me his hoodie without a word.
It smelled like mint gum and trouble. I wore it the rest of the day.
Whitley raises an eyebrow, waiting for me to elaborate. “Different how?”
I sigh and shift so I’m lying on the couch, letting my head drop back against the cushions as I stare up at the ceiling.
“He wasn’t loud about it,” I begin, then pause, trying to find a way to capture the essence of him without sounding like I’m romanticizing the whole damn thing. “He didn’t try too hard. But he saw people. And I think... I think for a long time, I just wanted someone to see me.”
That last part escapes before I can stuff it back down. Whitley doesn’t jump in with one of her usual snarky comebacks. Her mouth is parted, but nothing comes out. So I keep going, because if I stop now, I’ll never get it out.
“He made me feel…less invisible. Not in a look-at-me, homecoming-king kind of way. Just in this quiet sense. He remembered things. Said hi in the halls even with his friends around. Asked about my family and waited for the answer. Once, when I had a panic attack before a test, he didn’t ask questions or tell me to breathe or whatever.
He just sat next to me and let me fall apart without making me feel stupid for it. ”
I swallow hard, the memory rushing in on me like a wave I’m not prepared for. It’s been almost ten years, but I remember every second of that moment. The way his knee brushed against mine, just a simple gesture, but it held me together.
“My dad used to light up when my brother walked into the room,” I continue, the words softer now.
“You know that. It’s still like that. He was the star quarterback, the straight-A student, the kid who never forgot to say thank you.
I was…background noise. Quiet. Good enough not to cause trouble, but never quite enough to shine. ”
I clear my throat. “Rowan was the first person who made me feel like I mattered. And you don’t just forget that.”
Whitley lets out a long, slow breath. Then she lets out a quiet, “Damn.” She takes a moment before adding, “Okay. That’s actually a pretty solid reason.”
I huff out a laugh, a little surprised by the sincerity in her tone. “Told you.”
But she’s not done. Her finger comes up, wagging at me like a caution sign. “But,” she adds, her voice taking on that no-nonsense edge of hers, “people change, Violet. And sometimes the version you built in your head isn’t the one that shows up in real life.”
“I know.”
But do I? Because the Rowan I saw today, and the way he looked at me like the air around us shifted, like I shifted something in him, didn’t feel like a faded memory. It felt like something…incomplete.
“You should talk to him.”
My gaze snaps to hers. “What?”
Whitley just looks at me, and I already know what she’s going to say. She’s not telling me to talk to Rowan. She wants me to talk to Travis, my current boyfriend.
“You’re not really in love with him,” she says, gently now.
I blink. “That’s not fair.”
She shrugs. “Am I wrong?”