Chapter 23
ANDIE HAS A DIRTY SECRET!
SIMONE
Campus is weird in summer. It’s too bright, too empty.
The air buzzes with the absence of people, a kind of sonic negative that makes every footstep echo like a gunshot.
The old elms and their ghosts still line the quad, but the students are gone—home to suburban bedrooms, internships, jobs at the Dairy Queen, or whatever else keeps them tethered to real life while the rest of us, the stragglers, drift through the vacuum of “accelerated” summer term.
I walk the main drag, alone except for a pair of groundskeepers sunburned to the color of old bricks.
My shadow stalks me across the concrete, haloed by the kind of blue-gold sun that feels more August than June.
I breathe in, and the air tastes like wet grass and sunscreen, a memory of childhoods I only experienced through TV.
Even the squirrels look surprised to see me, pausing in their foraging to flick their tails and size me up.
I’m not an undergrad anymore. The degree is real, a slab of parchment sitting on my dresser at the dorm, proof I’m not just a perpetual screw-up.
But I signed up for the co-term, the five-year BA-to-MA bridge, and that means I get to spend another year in these borrowed buildings, walking these emptied-out halls.
I’m a ghost in a place built for ghosts.
I should find it sad, but mostly I feel lucky to be left behind.
My destination is the campus bookstore, an un-airconditioned cave that somehow smells simultaneously like cardboard and sugar cookies.
I work here now, three days a week, stacking displays and slapping “required reading” stickers on the covers of books I’ll never read.
It’s honest work, if you don’t mind paper-cuts and the stares of lifers who don’t recognize you without a backpack and a sense of dread.
Inside, the AC is a rumor, nothing more.
My boss is nowhere to be found, which is normal.
I duck behind the counter, drop my bag, and grab the cart of summer class books.
I’ve gotten good at this: arranging the pyramid of paperback misery, the used copies always at the bottom, the new ones perched on top like a threat.
Today’s project is a window display: “Century’s Best Beach Reads.
” I laugh, thinking of anyone voluntarily reading Ulysses by a lake, but the poster says to put it there, so I do.
As I’m adjusting a stack of modernist poetry anthologies (no one’s beach read, ever), I feel the shift in the air before I see him.
There’s a trick to it: the way his footsteps slow at the door, how he always hovers a second too long on the threshold, as if the world might pull him back.
Even now, after everything, I catch myself attuned to his presence.
Liam steps in, dark hair still artfully wild, button-down rolled to the elbows, blue jeans faded at the knees.
He looks out of place among the shelf of orientation t-shirts and century-old university pennants, but he owns the room in a way that makes everyone else background noise.
I freeze, one hand on the cart and the other holding a copy of White Teeth.
“Hey,” he says, soft and private.
It’s been almost two months since I graduated, since we stopped pretending.
The rules are different now: no more office hours, no more clandestine emails, no more whispered rendezvous in the stacks.
We’re just two people with a significant age gap and a shared addiction to stories.
I still catch myself waiting for a shoe to drop, but it hasn’t yet.
He’s here, and I’m here, and somehow, that’s enough.
I set the book down, brush my hair behind my ear, and try not to grin like a fangirl. “Hey, yourself.”
He glances around the empty store. “Busy day?”
“You know it,” I deadpan. “I’ve already restocked the rainbow highlighters and the entire John Green section. I might go for Employee of the Month.”
He smiles, and it’s not the “good girl” smile that still thrills me to the bone. It’s something softer, with edges worn down by actual affection. I feel my insides heat up in a way that’s got nothing to do with the faulty AC.
He crosses to the counter, hands in his pockets. “I was hoping you’d be here. I finished my summer seminar early.”
I arch an eyebrow. “The seminar about postwar poetry?”
“It’s more of a confessional, actually.” He says it like an apology. “I made them all read Plath and Sexton. There were casualties.”
“Any survivors?”
He shrugs. “A few. One even wrote me a thank-you note, though it may have been ironic.”
I laugh. The image of some hungover sophomore scribbling “thanks for the trauma” on a library receipt is too perfect.
We stand there, basking in the weirdness of being public—no more shadows, no more secrets.
There’s a freedom to it, but also a risk.
Last week, a faculty couple saw us walking together at the park and the gossip spread like mold on bread.
The only thing that keeps me from spiraling is how little my boyfriend cares.
Liam glances at the security mirror, then at me. “Is it safe?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper.
I scan the store. The only other person is a bored undergrad shelving textbooks, earbuds jammed in so far he’s practically immune to the world. “Safe as we’ll ever be,” I reply.
He leans across the counter, quick and sure, and kisses me. Not a chaste peck, not a nervous hover, but a real kiss, the kind that lands and lingers. His hand finds the back of my neck, thumb grazing the place where my hairline tapers, and my brain short-circuits, just for a second.
I hear a noise—a pair of feet scraping tile, followed by the polite, horrified cough of a man whose whole job is to not see things he isn’t supposed to. I pull away, cheeks burning, but Liam only grins, a little wild, a little victorious.
“I should go,” he says, but he doesn’t move.
I nod, suddenly shy. “Yeah, my boss might fire me if she catches me making out at the register.”
“Wouldn’t want to endanger your promising retail career.”
We trade smiles, both of us thinking about everything that had to collapse to make this moment possible.
As he turns to go, he stops at the door. “Can I pick you up after your shift? There’s a new coffee place on Hennepin. They’re supposed to do a cardamom latte.”
I pretend to think it over. “Maybe. Depends if I finish the window display.”
“Let’s live dangerously,” he says, and then he’s gone, leaving only the scent of his aftershave and a sense of static in the air.
I turn back to my cart, but my hands are trembling a little. I stack books, tidy the counter, try to look normal.
The undergrad, done with his shelf, passes by me on his way out. He pauses, smirks, and says, “Cute boyfriend, McCall. Does he have a brother?”
I manage a withering glare, but it doesn’t land.
“Go home, Trey,” I call after him. He gives a lazy wave, then vanishes into the bright, blue heat of the quad.
I finish the display, prop the last book at an angle that would make my old boss proud.
Then I sit on the stool, check my phone, and reread the last message from Liam.
It’s not a love note, not even a meme—just a line from a poem, followed by a time and an address.
But it’s better than any diamond ring or bouquet of roses.
It’s a promise, and for the first time in a long time, I believe in those.
At the end of my shift, I walk out into the gold, gummy light of late afternoon.
The campus is even emptier now, the shadows long and the air thick with the threat of rain.
I see Liam at the far end of the quad, sitting on a bench, head bowed over a book.
He looks up when I approach, eyes crinkling at the corners, so handsome that my heart stutters.
He stands, brushes imaginary dust from his jeans, and offers me his hand. I take it.
As we walk, I feel the stares from the windows, the whispered nothings floating behind us. I think about the girl I was a year ago, the one who would have died of shame for being seen like this. I think about the girl I am now, who laughs and flips off the gossips and lets herself want things.
We reach the coffee place, a weird little cube of glass and steel wedged between two brutalist dorms. Inside, the lights are low and the tables are mostly empty. We find a spot by the window, order our drinks, and sit with our knees touching.
He takes my hand across the table. It’s so simple, so easy, but for a second it makes my heart ache. I look at our fingers intertwined, and it feels both totally new and impossibly old.
We talk about nothing: the books we’re reading, the faculty feuds, the best place on campus to sneak a nap. I tease him about his summer poetry class, accuse him of turning his students into tiny versions of himself. He laughs and admits it’s probably true.
For a moment, I forget the weight of the world outside. I forget the surgeries, the scars, the years of running from myself. I just drink my coffee and let myself be held by the warm, solid presence of the only person who’s ever made me feel like myself.
The sun drops lower, painting the window with streaks of orange and pink. Liam watches me, the way he always does—like I’m a puzzle he’s just starting to understand.
“Are you happy?” he asks, and there’s a crack in his voice that almost undoes me.
I don’t hesitate. “Yeah. I am.”
We sit in the soft glow, letting the future unspool ahead of us, one quiet minute at a time.
For once, I’m not waiting for something to break.
For once, I’m just here.
The first thing I hear is the noise of chatter coming from outside. I know that Andie will announce herself long before she actually enters the café proper, and right on cue, her voice rings out over the espresso machine:
“Did you order for me, or do I have to live off your backwash like a baby bird?”