19. Amiyah #2
I spot Jae on the east side of the quad, perched on the low limestone wall with his phone resting on his knee.
He’s scrolling through the campus feed with the quiet, fascinated amusement of a researcher studying an alien species.
His thumb moves in slow flicks, taking in the floating ducks, the hanging chairs, the chaotic energy—not filming a single second of it himself.
Just observing. Letting the madness wash around him without trying to capture it.
There’s an easy, detached calm to him that I’ve noticed before. While everyone else is desperate to document every second of their lives, Jae is completely content to just exist in the middle of it.
I walk over and drop onto the stone wall beside him. Our shoulders bump. Neither of us bothers with a greeting.
“Engineering seniors?” I ask, nodding toward the lobby chaos.
“Biochem majors,” he corrects, eyes still on the screen. “The petition to keep the chairs up has three hundred signatures.”
“Unbelievable.”
We sit in easy silence, watching the quad vibrate with post-finals mania.
Near the shuttle loop, a group of frat guys is attempting to duct-tape a full-sized mattress to the side of a parked campus bus.
The driver is standing a few feet away with his arms folded, staring at them with profound indifference.
“That tape isn't going to hold,” I say, not needing three seconds to run the math. “Standard polyethylene backing, low shear strength, and zero surface prep on painted sheet metal. The moment gravity takes over, the adhesive shears.”
Jae tilts his head, looking down at me with a slow, amused brow raise. “They might have used high-grade gaffer tape.”
“It’s cheap duct tape from the campus bookstore, Jae. Technique doesn't override physics.”
“Says the woman who tried to convince me that arcade basketball games are rigged against people under five-foot-six.”
“The rim ratio is mathematically biased, Jae.”
“You missed four shots in a row.” he reminds me.
“It was a structural anomaly.” I plant my hand against his shoulder and push.
He doesn't move an inch—his arm is solid muscle under his jacket—but he lets out a quiet chuckle. My palm lingers against his jacket a second longer than necessary before I drop my hand.
“If I were executing a campus prank,” I say, leaning back against the stone, “I wouldn't waste time with tape or dye. I’d break into the administration building and swap every official oil portrait of the Dean with an identical, custom-painted portrait of a Victorian cat. High quality. Gilded frames. It would take them three weeks to even notice.”
Jae considers this, his mouth pulling up at one corner before the other follows—slow, warm, infuriatingly attractive.
“Weak,” he decides.
“Excuse me?”
“Cats are subtle. Subtle isn't disruptive. Disruptive is replacing the fountain water with high-viscosity gelatin.”
“Gelatin would dissolve in the rain.”
“Not if you balance the powder-to-water ratio.”
“The ratio of what, Jae? Gelatin to utter insanity?”
He laughs—that low, deep sound that sends a sudden spike of heat straight to my stomach. “You lack artistic ambition.”
“I have plenty of ambition, thank you. It just involves fine art and feline aristocracy, not industrial dessert products.”
I’m halfway through formulating a second argument when I realize his phone is pointed straight at my face. The camera eye is gleaming, and the red record button is glowing on the screen.
“Hey—” I start, reaching out, but he’s already too fast. His thumb taps the display, and the upload confirmation flashes before I can grab the device.
I glare at him with the full, unyielding force of someone who hates being caught off-guard. “Delete that right now.”
“No.”
“Jae.”
“It’s already at fifty views,” he says, holding the screen just out of my reach.
The counter ticks up—fifty-four, sixty, sixty-eight.
The clip is eight seconds long: me mid-laugh, hair messy, gesturing wildly toward the bus while my head is tipped back and my eyes are crinkled. I look entirely unguarded. Happy.
“Delete it,” I repeat, but the sharp edge in my voice has melted out.
“You look amazing in it by the way,” he says, and the softness in his voice makes my chest tighten.
I reach over and slide the phone out of his hand. He doesn't resist. His fingers brush mine as the metal changes hands, warm skin dragging against warm skin, neither of us moving to pull away. I open the app, locate the video, and swipe it into the trash.
“Brutal,” Jae murmurs, though the smirk is still playing on his lips.
“Standard procedure.”
“I have a local backup.”
“I will literally fly to Seoul, track down your apartment, sneak inside, and replace every single coffee ground you own with decaf.”
He places a hand over his heart in mock terror. “You wouldn't dare.”
“Try me.”
The afternoon wears on. The mattress experiment fails with a loud snap of tearing tape, sliding down the side of the shuttle like a dying sail. The crowds begin to thin, students scattering toward dorms, cars, and summer flights. The rubber ducks keep floating. The pink fountain keeps bubbling.
Eventually, Jae and I move to the broad stone steps of Thornfield Hall.
The limestone building looms behind us, cool and quiet.
If I lean back, I can see the high arched windows of the second-floor alcove—the exact spot where two chairs face each other across a scarred wooden table, where a single amber lamp watched us spend four months testing each other's limits.
We sit close enough that the fabric of his jeans brushes against my bare leg.
The back-and-forth slows down into something quieter, softer.
He mentions his flight back to Seoul tomorrow morning—a flight he's clearly not looking forward to taking.
He talks about the city itself—the street stalls in Mapo, the late-night quiet of the river, the places he wants to show me someday—saying it so casually that the promise hanging in the air almost slips by unnoticed.
I mention my own travel plans—that I'll be heading abroad for the summer in a couple of weeks. I keep the details carefully generic, substituting a classified assignment in Prague with vague descriptions of European architecture, old cobblestone streets, and ancient libraries.
Neither of us is any good at saying goodbye.
We stand up. The goodbye is as clumsy as it is inevitable.
A hug that starts with polite distance and instantly collapses.
His arms wrap around my shoulders, his palm resting flat against the small of my back, solid and warm.
My hands press into the fabric of his jacket, my fingers hooking into his sleeve for one second too long.
I breathe in—his signature cedar scent carrying the steady, radiant heat of a bonfire in the dark—and let it fill my lungs.
Then we step back.
He holds my gaze, his voice low and grounded. “Text me when you get to your car.”
“Text me when you land in Seoul,” I answer.
A slow, crooked smile touches his lips. “Don't get soft without me there to check your logic over the break.”
“Not a chance.”
I turn and walk toward the parking structure. My sneakers hit the pavement in a steady rhythm, taking me further from the steps where he’s still standing, hands shoved into his pockets, watching me go. I don't look back. I don't have to. I can feel his gaze on my shoulders like a physical weight.
I unlock my car, slide into the driver's seat, and shut the door. The quiet inside the cabin cuts off the noise of the quad instantly.
Before I even put the key in the ignition, I pull out my phone and open our text thread.
Amiyah: At my car. Better delete that backup before I book a ticket to Seoul.
My screen lights up almost instantly with three animated dots typing back.
Jae: Threat received. Have a safe drive, hotshot.
I toss the phone onto the passenger seat, a quiet smile tugging at my lips, and start the engine. As I drive down the ramp and pull out onto the main street, Blackthorn recedes in my rearview mirror—shrinking until it’s just a memory waiting for autumn.