Raspberry
I have never been good at making friends. That has not changed.
Of course, I have Austin. That was something that had not changed, either.
I think we’ll always need each other, even if it’s just in the way it is now, where we spend most of our time with love, me with Zane and him with Blair, but every fourth Thursday we could sit in silence next to each other and just exist. Here’s the thing about me and Austin, we speak the same language.
We both speak the same gray skies, the same knowing of storms. Not in the same way, not at all.
Completely different words but they have the same meaning.
I have Cassidy. She was the kind of friend that reminded me how to breathe.
She reminded me how to move and how to stay still at the same time.
Cassidy didn’t speak the same language as me and Austin.
That’s okay. I think it’s for the better.
I don’t think we would have grown as close if she did.
She listens to me speak it, though, even if she doesn’t understand a word I’m saying.
I did not go to college and suddenly learn to play in the sandbox.
I tried, as much as I could, when I first came here.
Mostly, I was trying to listen to Lucy, my dad, even Zane.
They told me North Haven was a different place than West Bridge, as if I wasn’t already very aware of that fact.
They told me people would be different here, that they wouldn’t treat me the same way, they would not dangle me at their edges as decorations or keep me in a vase on their dining room table a week after I had already died.
Maybe they were right. I don’t know what the people are like here.
I tried, like I said. It turns out people don’t really want to be friends with someone who keeps them at arm’s reach while evaluating everything about them, just in case they were playing an elaborate trick, just in case they were wolves with strong jaws dressed in baby pink.
Once, when I was little, my dad brought me home a pint of raspberries from the farmer’s market.
He told me to wash them before I ate them in case the ones on the bottom had begun to mold.
It did not make sense to me then, and it does not make sense to me now.
I would wash them to remove the dirt of the wild, and from the fingers they found before mine, sure.
But why would I wash them to remove the signs of rot, when instead, I could hold up each and every berry to my eyes and check for proof of their motives, and see if they were trying to kill me, or not.
There were only two options that made sense to me, check every inch of that fruity surface for poison, or accept your fate and blindly shove a handful in your mouth.
Or I guess three options. Do not eat berries ever again.
I have practiced all three methods throughout my life.
My point is that I have not had much success in making friends here.
Which is why I was sitting at this table by the coffee cart alone, lost in my head, waiting for Zane and Cassidy.
“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
The voice invaded my brain, barely surfacing over my slightly depressing thoughts.
I looked up from the gray concrete my eyes had been pointed at while I pondered my lack of friends.
They found where the voice was coming from.
It was just a regular guy. One of thousands of them that went to this college.
Blond hair, brown eyes, extraordinarily unremarkable.
The blond guy’s smile did not reach his eyes; it was the kind of look people give you when they think you are a problem to be solved or a box to be checked. He started to drift closer, closing the distance in that way people do when they assume your silence is an invitation to occupy your air.
The concrete at my feet darkened. Zane didn’t make a scene.
He did not seethe with anger or puff out his chest. He simply existed in the space beside me, a sudden cliff of a man that forced the other guy to an abrupt halt.
Zane didn’t look at him at first; he looked at me, checking my eyes for the poison I was always looking for in others.
“She doesn’t want coffee,” Zane said, while simultaneously handing me the paper cup filled with it, the one he had gotten me himself.
His voice was calm, devoid of any performative aggression.
He sat at the empty chair beside me, letting his fingers rest on mine, just three seconds longer than they normally would.
The guy froze, his hand halfway through a gesture that now looked ridiculous. He looked at Zane, then at the way Zane was positioned, not like a boyfriend marking territory, but like a shield that had been forged specifically for my dimensions.
“I—hold on,” the guy said, the unremarkable features of his face scrunching in sudden realization. He looked at Zane’s jacket, then back up at his face. “Bio-stats? With Miller? You’re the guy who corrected the professor on the probability variance last Tuesday.”
The tension in Zane’s frame didn’t vanish, but it lost its jagged edge. He became a person again instead of a wall. “Row four,” Zane said flatly. “You spend the whole hour looking at your watch.”
The guy’s face went a dull, painful red. “Finn. Yeah. Look, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize… I mean, I just saw her sitting here. I wasn’t trying to be a creep.”
Zane shifted his weight, his posture losing that immediate strike-ready shift.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark jacket, the fabric pulling tight across his shoulders.
He looked less like a threat now and more like a foregone conclusion.
To Zane, protecting me was just his default setting.
“Apologize to her, not me,” Zane said. “I’m used to it. I expect it.” He didn’t gesture toward me with his hands; he just cut his eyes my way for a split second, a look so sharp and heavy it felt like a physical touch.
“She’s amazing,” he continued, the word landing with the weight of a stone dropped into deep water.
There was not any fluff in his tone, no romantic lilt.
It was just a fact, said with the same certainty he used for equations.
“People are always going to try to get close. But I am always going to be standing here, just in case.”
Zane wasn’t saying these words for anyone to hear, but me.
I was his only audience. I knew that. The guy, Finn, swallowed hard.
He wasn’t looking at me anymore; he was looking at Zane with a mix of awe and genuine confusion.
Zane wasn’t just bigger than him, he was certain.
He had the kind of gravity that made everything else in the quad feel like it was just floating.
“I get it,” Finn muttered, nodding subtly. “I really do. My bad, man.” He looked toward me for a fraction of a second. “…Sorry,” and then back to Zane. “I’ll see you later.”
He made a quick retreat; I did not feel the need to watch his back to see if he’d turn into a wolf. Zane’s presence had effectively neutralized the rot.
I stayed still, processing the way Zane had spoken.
From this angle, the sunlight caught the hard line of his jaw and the slight, messy dark hair that fell over his forehead.
Exhaustion sat heavy on his shoulders, softening the edges of him, like someone who was lifting the world just to keep me existing.
Zane was not really carrying the world though.
Just the two of us, and one of us was a twenty-one-year-old woman whose fucked up head must be very heavy.
I wondered if he ever grew tired from the weight of keeping me safe.
He finally looked down at me, the glare in his eyes replaced by that familiar love. One of his hands found my chin, gently tilting my head just to the right angle that I looked into his eyes.
“You’re doing that thing again,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Thinking too loud,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Whatever you’re analyzing, stop.”
“I’ve been watching you two stare at each other for like, thirty seconds,” Cassidy’s voice arrived at the exact same time she dropped a paper bag, containing what smelled like donuts, in the middle of the table that Zane and I were sharing.
The interruption was enough to break my spell and realize that, yeah, she was completely right and we had just been sitting here, staring at each other.
Cassidy slid into the metal chair next to me, the screech of it against the concrete acting like a splash of cool water. I blinked, finally pulling my gaze away from the pull in Zane’s eyes.
“The sexual tension is making the glaze melt off these donuts,” Cassidy remarked, completely unbothered as she reached into the bag. “Seriously. I could smell the pining from the parking lot.”
Zane didn’t flush. Cassidy didn’t get a rise out of him like she had years ago, teasing him about the crush he used to have on me. Instead, he just sank back into his chair, his long legs stretching out under the table until his boot brushed against the side of my sneaker. He didn’t pull away.
“You’re late, Cass,” he said, his voice had that dry, effortless tone. He reached into the bag and pulled out a chocolate-covered donut with the ease of someone who did not need to check for rot when the berries came from a friend.
“I’m not late,” she countered, tossing a napkin at me. “Seren, eat. You look like you’re halfway through a dissertation on the social dynamics of the common college idiot. Let me guess Zane already scared one off, didn’t he?”
“He was just offering me coffee,” I shrugged, finally reaching for a powdered donut. “Zane is just naturally scary sometimes.”
“Mm-hmm. So, what happened? He tried to buy you some caffeine, and Zane told him the coffee was poisonous and there was a sniper on the roof?” Cassidy teased, grinning at Zane.