24. Jae
Chapter twenty-four
Jae
Twenty minutes ago, the extra shot of espresso in my large dark roast from Beaned & Brew’d hit my bloodstream.
I can still feel the caffeine climb—warm and sharp, stripping the jet lag out of my head until every single face on this quad stands out in hyper-sharp detail.
The sub-bass from a nearby Bluetooth speaker vibrates right through the soles of my shoes.
Near the east entrance, a freshman orientation leader smiles through a look of pure, unadulterated despair.
The textbook heavy against my hip— Property Law, unopened, smelling like chemical glue—cuts into my side with every step.
I landed at LAX late last night, dragging my bags into the same high-rise apartment my family secured for me last spring.
Everything inside was frozen in place: the single coffee mug upside down on the rack, the faint smell of eucalyptus cleaner, a stillness that made it feel like I’d only stepped out for five minutes instead of three months.
My internal clock is still dragging sixteen hours of jet lag behind it, but my final year in vet med doesn't care about time zones. Between forty-plus hours of clinical rotations at the teaching hospital, I somehow talked myself into two extra lecture electives. Property Law was the main one. When Amiyah mentioned her fall schedule during a late-night call two weeks ago, picking it as an elective felt like a no-brainer. It makes genuine sense for the veterinary practice I want to open after graduation—commercial leases, land use, zoning—but if I’m being completely honest, sitting in the same lecture hall on Tuesdays and Thursdays was the real selling point.
Then I clear the limestone archway and look across the grass.
She’s there.
She’s halfway across the quad, slicing through the dense crowd like she owns the pavement.
Bubblegum pink tie-front camisole. White wide-leg pants that catch the light and hold it.
Sunglasses—aviators, gold frame, pushed up into her blonde hair which is loose today, falling around her shoulders in soft waves that the morning sun turns almost honey at the crown.
She’s carrying a leather tote bag in one hand and something in the other I can’t quite make out from this distance.
My feet lock up.
My arm drops to my side, the paper coffee cup dangling from my fingers. The roar of nine hundred people drops out entirely, compressed into a low, meaningless hum.
I spent the whole summer trying to rebuild her from memory.
Late-night gaming sessions on Discord, headset calls stretching past two in the morning, random FaceTimes with our phones propped up on stacks of textbooks, her voice floating through my earpiece with that warm, dry clarity—sounding like she was sitting three feet away instead of eight thousand miles across the Pacific.
I memorized the cadence of her speech. The sharp, disbelieving way she says get fucked when I do something reckless in-game or send an unhinged text.
The quiet laugh that stays trapped in her chest until she’s too genuinely amused to keep it in.
But a headset and a front-facing camera flatten a person. They compress them into sound and pixels—a blue-light ghost in a dark room.
Watching her walk through actual sunlight in three dimensions knocks the breath right out of me. She has weight. She takes up space. The aviators pushed up into her hair are sitting crooked—the left frame noticeably higher than the right.
It’s such a small, human flaw. The version I built over the summer was calibrated to the millimeter—polished, precise, a closed system I could examine from a safe distance without getting burned.
The real Amiyah is walking across a crowded quad with one strap of her tote bag slipping off her shoulder, her sunglasses sitting crooked in her hair—a rare, accidental flaw in an otherwise weaponized defense system.
Holy shit, she is stunning, and the sight lands in my chest with a warmth that borders on dangerous.
I am smiling. I can feel how wide it is—completely out of my control. If anyone looks at me right now, they’ll see a guy losing his mind at nine-thirty on a Tuesday morning. I try to pull it back, but my face refuses to cooperate.
Then her eyes sweep the quad—that quick, razor-sharp scan she does whenever she enters a space—and catch on me.
She stops dead.
Total immobility for one solid second, her body locking up like she’s seen a ghost. Something unguarded flashes across her eyes before her legal-grade filters slam back down. The corner of her mouth twitches—a tiny, involuntary lift she catches and kills almost instantly.
Too late. I saw it. It’s pressed into my brain like a thumbprint in wet cement.
I lift my lukewarm dark roast in her direction. A stupid, helpless gesture, but my voice isn't working yet.
She tips her chin at me—cool, composed, the armor snapping right back into place. But her path changes. She pivots, cutting straight through the crowd toward me, closing the space between us in steady, deliberate strides.
Ten feet away, I notice the white paper cup in her hand—Beaned & Brew’d logo, the lid stained with a faint crescent of pink lip gloss that matches her top. She’s already finished it, her fingers crushing the center of the cardboard.
Eight feet. A silver chain at her throat catches the sun, resting in the small hollow above her collarbone.
Six feet. The bow on her camisole is tied in a flawless, symmetrical knot. Perfectly matched down to the millimeter. Of course it is. Amiyah doesn’t do uneven—which means those crooked sunglasses were a total anomaly, a slip-up from someone who was either in a rush or too flustered to care.
Four feet. A thin, jagged red line runs along her left wrist, from the base of her palm toward her forearm.
Fresh. Unexplained. A sudden, ugly knot tightens in my gut—the sharp realization that there were hours of her summer I wasn't allowed to see, moments that left marks on her skin I don't get to know about.
Two feet. Her sandals hit the pavement in that crisp, rhythmic cadence I’d forgotten I was missing.
Click. Click. Pause. Click.
She stops right in front of me. Close enough that the air between us suddenly smells like…her.
She looks up at my face. Specifically at my mouth, where that helpless smile is still stuck.
“You look fucking ridiculous,” she says.
Her voice. God, her voice in person. Pitch-perfect, low enough that it stays just between the two of us despite the crowd.
That slight, sharp lift at the end of her words that gives away her East Coast roots.
The undercurrent of warmth she tries so hard to bury under a layer of frost and fails at, every single time.
“I missed you too,” I say.
She rolls her eyes—a full, theatrical arc—but she’s losing the fight against her own face. The corners of her mouth twitch upward. She bites the inside of her cheek to stop it, the effort written all over her.
“How was Seoul?” she asks, turning to fall into step beside me as we move toward the main building.
No awkward transition.
No polite small talk.
Just locking back into our orbit like we never left it.
“Loud. My eighteen-year-old sister pressed her ear to my door and made kissing noises every time she heard your name.”
Amiyah arches an eyebrow, her lips twitching with a dry smirk. “An eighteen-year-old eavesdropping outside bedroom doors? Truly cutting-edge maturity.”
“She spent all summer lying on the couch complaining that she has no social life, but refused to move unless it involved teenage group chat drama.” I take a sip of my dark roast. “And Kiho dragged me out at three in the morning just to vent about whatever it is he actually does all day. Classic.”
A tiny, dry smirk catches the corner of her lips. “Sounds like a great time. Did you at least get free food out of it?”
“Two full bowls of beef bone soup,” I say. “He bitched about his boss for two hours straight, but he made sure I finished both.”
“Fascinating coping mechanism,” she mutters, though her tone softens. “At least you got fed.”
“Yep, and the free therapy apparently works for him.”
We walk shoulder-to-shoulder, the quad noise roaring around us.
She gives me the polished, high-level summary of her trip to Europe.
I give her the safe, edited version of Seoul—the one that leaves out my father’s quiet disappointments and the breakfast table silences that made my blood run cold.
Two people trading clean travel stories while our arms brush with every second step.
Three months of distance evaporates in less than thirty seconds. I spent all summer trying to build a wall between myself and whatever this is, and she knocks it down with crooked sunglasses and three sentences.
We reach the heavy stone steps of the main hall. The carved Latin motto above the archway glares down at us in the morning sun.
Amiyah hitches her tote bag higher on her shoulder. The leather strap catches on the silver chain at her neck, and she pauses on the bottom step to untangle it.
I watch her hands. Petite, elegant, with long, neat nails painted a soft pale blush—yet grounded by the tiny, calluses on the pads of her fingers.
My gaze drops to her wrist, where the thin red line cuts across her pale skin.
“You’re staring,” she says, her voice dropping an octave as she detangles the chain.
“What happened?” I nod toward her arm.
She pulls her wrist back slightly, her posture stiffening—that instinctual, lawyer-grade defense mechanism kicking in the second she feels perceived. “Kitchen knife. I was cutting peaches yesterday. I’m fine, Jae.”
“Maybe I don't like seeing you hurt,” I say quietly.
Amiyah pauses, her fingers hovering near the silver chain at her neck. She rolls her shoulders back, throwing up that familiar wall before I can get any closer. “It’s literally just a scratch. Don't be so dramatic.”
I step up onto the stone riser next to her, closing the last few inches until there’s no room left between us.
Up close, standing one step below me, she has to tilt her head back to meet my eyes.
The sharp morning air carries the warm scent of her perfume—vanilla, plum, and jasmine—so thick it makes my head swim.
“It could be a speck of dust, Amiyah,” I say softly, keeping my voice low enough that it stays strictly between the two of us. “If it touches you, I’m paying attention.”
Amiyah freezes. Her throat shifts as she swallows, her mouth parting just enough for a tiny, caught breath to escape.
The defensive edge in her shoulders melts away, replaced by something far more dangerous: total, unguarded stillness.
A flush blooms right at the dip of her collarbone, racing up her neck before she can stop it.
She stares at me for one long, suspended second, completely out of comebacks. Then she clears her throat, spinning on her heel toward the heavy double doors before the blush can take over her whole face.
We push into the cool, shadowed hallway, and the roar of the quad cuts off instantly. The air in here is quiet, echoing with the soft scrape of leather shoes on marble.
She walks beside me, her sandals clicking in time with my boots. I am so hyper-aware of her body next to mine that my skin feels hot.
I take a long, bitter sip of my cold dark roast and adjust the heavy strap of my bag.
The smile is still there on my face, stubborn and stuck.