CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
NINETEEN YEARS OLD
· · ·
Georgetown is overwhelming in the best possible way.
Everything is louder here.
Bigger.
Like someone turned up the volume on the entire world and forgot to tell me.
I love it.
It’s exciting. Different.
But I feel guilty that I love it.
Both of those things are true simultaneously and I’m learning to hold them at the same time.
Grief and joy in the same hand.
My therapist would be proud.
I don’t have a therapist yet at this point but I feel she would be proud regardless.
I call my dad every Sunday.
He’s attempting a cooking class.
He burned a roux last week so badly that the instructor pulled him aside.
I told him I was proud of him.
He told me that wasn’t the appropriate response.
I maintain that it was.
· · ·
I make friends.
Real ones.
Mara — who has never once been wrong about anything and will tell you so.
Jonah — who finds everything funny and makes you feel like you do too.
Others who fill in the edges.
I feel like I’m fitting in more and more.
· · ·
I’m okay.
Better than okay some days.
And every night I FaceTime Cassian and that’s when I’m the best.
He answers before it rings.
Every time.
Like his phone is already in his hand. Like he’s been waiting.
Cassian is going to community college because his grades weren’t great and he didn’t want any financial help from his dad. So he’s working part-time at an auto shop.
· · ·
The first night I called from Georgetown I was sitting on my dorm bed with boxes still unpacked around me and the room smelling like someone else’s detergent and I was fine — I was genuinely, surprisingly fine — right up until his face appeared on the screen.
· · ·
And then I wasn’t fine at all. In the best way.
· · ·
“Hey,“ I said.
“Hey.“ He looked at me for a second. ’You look terrible.“
“I haven’t slept in thirty hours.”
“So normal then.”
“Good night, Cassian.”
“Wait —" That smile. The rare one. “You look terrible and I missed you.”
· · ·
We talked until two in the morning. His voice in my ear while I finally unpacked my things and he narrated whatever was happening on his end — his roommate, his first class, the vending machine that kept eating his dollar and then giving him two things anyway.
I laughed more that night than I had in months.
· · ·
We found our rhythm fast. He called every night without me having to ask. Sometimes I’d fall asleep with him still talking, his voice low and easy carrying me under, and I’d wake up at 3am with the call still open and his breathing on the other end slow and even.
· · ·
I never hung up. I just lay there in the dark listening to him sleep.
I know. I know how that sounds.
One night in October — late, both of us in bed, screens the only light — I’m lying on my stomach watching him lie on his back and he’s not quite looking at the camera, just talking, easy and unhurried, and there’s something about the angle.
The low light catching the line of his jaw. The way his voice goes lower when he’s tired.
He’s sprawled across his twin XL, hair mussed, eyes lazy and hungry. “Hey,” he says, that rough edge I know too well in his voice already.
“Hey yourself.”
He looks at me for a long moment, that look he gets, the one that makes my skin too tight.
“Ro—” He says my name like it’s a secret. “I can’t stop thinking about you.” He’s got both hands in his hair, and for a second, I wish they were on me instead.
I watch as his hand drifts down, camera following. “Show me,” I say, voice barely steady.
He doesn’t hesitate. His shirt’s already off—he’s always been impatient. He gives me a look, slow and deliberate, lips parted just a little, waiting for my reaction. “You really want this?” he asks, low, voice catching.
“Yeah. Touch yourself. I want to watch.”
He grins, just a little crooked.
“Fuck, okay. You first.”
It’s not a question. I set the phone down, angling it so he can see everything, and pull my shirt off, stripping down until there’s nothing between us but hundreds of miles and a shitty camera lens. He’s watching, hungry, his hand already wrapped around himself, slow and teasing.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he says, voice uneven, eyes roaming every inch of exposed skin. “Tell me.”
He bites his lip, palm working down the length of his cock, slow, deliberate. “Been thinking about your mouth. The way you look right before you come. Wish I could hear you beg.”
I slide my hand down, matching his rhythm, letting my head fall back with a soft groan. “You’re gonna have to settle for this.”
His breath catches. “Ro—fuck, keep going. Please. Touch yourself the way I would. Show me.”
I do. I show him exactly what he does to me, every filthy thought I’ve had since the last time we touched, every broken moan.
"Look at me," I demand.
"Don't close your eyes. Look at me." He’s losing it—can’t keep that mask on for me, not at all. His hips jerk, his hand moving faster, his eyes locked on mine through the screen.
I moan for him, let the camera catch every second. He’s watching, breath coming sharp.
“Say my name,” he says, desperate now.
“Cassian,” I gasp, so loud it feels dangerous.
“Say you love me,” I beg, voice ragged. He does, over and over, like a litany, like a promise.
Ro, Ro, Ro, I love you.
He shudders, his hips jerking, eyes squeezing shut as he falls apart for me, my name on his lips, raw and ruined.
I follow, heat burning through me, every part of me wanting him, even through a screen.
We fall apart together—me clutching the sheets, him biting his lip, both of us shaking with it, desperate for a touch we can’t have yet.
After, there’s only breathing, and the low light, and his eyes still on mine. We’re both wrecked and smiling, breathing hard. “I want to feel you,” he says, quiet and raw. “I want—” He swallows, voice breaking. “I’ve wanted you so fucking long, Ro.”
“You don’t have to say it,” I tell him. “I know.”
He looks at me, soft, undone. “You kill me, Ro.”
“Good,” I say, voice hoarse. “You deserve it.”
· · ·
November.
The calls get shorter.
Not dramatically. Not enough to point at in an argument.
Just — shorter. Like something in him is taking up space that used to be for this.
I don’t say anything. I’ve said something before. I know how that goes.
But I notice.
I notice the way the nights that used to end at 2am now end at 11. The way he used to call first and now it’s always me. The way his voice sounds the same but something underneath it has changed, like music played in a different key.
Same song. Different feeling.
I know the shape of him when he's pulling back. The specific quality of the quiet. I have a degree in this. I know this.
· · ·
I do the math at night. I can’t help it. How many texts I sent versus how many he sent.
How many days since he called first.
How many times I said I love you into a phone that went quiet for just a beat too long before he answered.
He still answers. That’s what I hold onto. He still answers.
He’s still there.
So I just keep reaching.
Because maybe I'm just being insecure again.
I text him good morning every day.
Sometimes he responds right away.
Sometimes an hour later.
Sometimes not at all and then the next morning he does, like the gap didn't happen.
But I'm tracking it.
I am always tracking it.
I let myself believe he's just tired.
Because I want to believe it.
Because the alternative is a pattern I've been watching my whole life and I cannot watch it from this far away when there's nothing I can do.
· · ·
December — he comes home for winter break and it all evaporates. He’s so present with me. His hand in mine in the dark, his voice filling all the space it used to fill, sleeping over without explanation the way he always has.
Two weeks that feel like an exhale.
He's mine.
We're fine.
I convince myself the calls were just an adjustment.
Distance. The newness of everything finding its level.
· · ·
I go back in January with his hoodie in my bag. I didn’t ask. I just took it.
He texts a week later.
“Did you steal my hoodie?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Just that. Good. I wear it every night. It still smells like him.
· · ·
February.
The calls get shorter again.
Shorter than November.
And the math I was doing quietly in my head starts doing itself louder, at worse hours, whether I want it to or not.
I tell myself it has nothing to do with me.
He still answers.
But there’s something in the way.
There’s always something in the way.
The texts thin out.
I send more than I get.
I know I do because I know the exact ratio.
I know it exactly.
Three texts to his one.
Then four.
Then sometimes I send something and he reads it instantly, but the response doesn't come until the next day.
Or doesn't come at all.
I leave a voice memo one night.
Hey. I know you're tired. I know school is a lot right now. I'm not trying to pressure you. I just miss you and wanted to hear my own voice say it, I guess. Okay. Goodnight.
The next day I find myself checking my phone between every class.
During class.
In the bathroom.
During meals I don't finish.
He doesn't respond.