CHAPTER TWELVE
SERAFINA
THE PAST
The living room smelled of coffee and banana bread.
Our textbooks lay scattered across the table in organized chaos that only two people who had been studying for six hours straight could produce.
Pens and highlighters were uncapped and abandoned, handwritten sticky notes were plastered on most surfaces that we could reach, and the remains of a shared bag of sweet popcorn lay between Elyssa and me.
The silence between us had been punctuated only by the scratch of pens and the occasional frustrated sigh.
I pressed my thumb against the bridge of my nose, trying to massage away the headache that had been building behind my eyes for the past hour. The words in my Art Historical Theories and Methodologies textbook had begun to blur into an indecipherable smear of black ink.
Across from me, Elyssa closed her notebook with a decisive snap and stretched her arms above her head, her spine arching like a cat’s. She let out a long, exhausted sigh.
“I need a break,” she announced, her eyes fluttering closed for a second before she forced them open again.
“My brain’s gone soft. I’ve read the same paragraph four times, and I still couldn’t tell you what it says.
I need a shower before I start hallucinating Medieval Byzantine structures on the ceiling. ”
I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost nine in the evening. We had been at this since two. Yes, a break sounded reasonable.
“Can I borrow your notes for the Medieval Byzantine Art and Architecture section?” I asked, gesturing toward her opened laptop. “I think I missed some of the key points during the lecture last week.”
“Yeah, of course.” Elyssa stood, rolling her shoulders. “The folder is called ‘ART HIS Notes Spring Semester,’ and it will be under the document labeled ‘Art History Midterm—Don’t fail Elyssa.’ You can just email it to yourself.”
I almost smiled. “Charming title.”
“I’m a realist.” She padded toward the hallway, already pulling her hair tie loose.
Her blonde hair fell in waves around her shoulders, slightly flattened from being up all day.
Her hair was longer now than the short bob she had when we first met.
“I’ll be out in twenty,” she called over her shoulder before disappearing into the bathroom.
The door clicked shut, and a moment later, I heard the familiar groan of the pipes as the shower turned on.
I set my own notebook aside and reached for Elyssa’s laptop on the armchair where she’d left it. The desktop was as cluttered as her closet—folders scattered across the screen with names that made no sense to anyone but her: “Random Stuff,” “Important Probably,” and “Don’t Open This One.”
I smiled despite myself and navigated to her Documents folder, searching for the notes. I found them quickly enough, labeled exactly as she’d said. But as I prepared to attach it to an email, my gaze drifted to the opened tab beside the one I was on, a Google Doc titled Manuscript.
My cursor hovered over it.
I shouldn’t. This was Elyssa’s private work, whatever it was. I had no right to spy on her.
But curiosity, that treacherous and persistent thing, nudged my hand forward.
I clicked it.
The first thing I noticed when I opened the document was the word count on the bottom left.
Over 70,000 words long. The first page read: Untitled by Sera Thorn.
A pen name, I was sure. I scrolled past the copyright page and the dedication that said: For the ones who carry their ghosts in the dark and began to read the first chapter.
Elyssa wrote the way she spoke, with a directness that cut straight to the bone, but layered beneath it was a vulnerability so raw it made my chest ache.
I read another chapter. Then another.
Each one was better than the last.
By the time I heard the shower turn off, I had read five chapters and was so thoroughly absorbed that I was startled when the bathroom door opened.
Elyssa emerged wrapped in a towel, her hair dripping onto her shoulders, a second smaller towel draped around her neck. She padded into the living room barefoot, still flushed from the heat of the shower, and reached for the glass of water she’d left on the kitchen counter.
I clicked away from the opened tab but didn’t move from where I sat, the laptop still open on my knees.
“Did you find the notes?” she asked, taking a long drink.
I set the laptop on the couch beside me and turned to face her fully. My heart was beating faster than it should have been, and I wasn’t entirely sure why, whether it was the thrill of what I’d discovered or the fear of admitting I’d trespassed.
“Yes.” I paused. The guilt was already settling in, a cold knot in the pit of my stomach. I had crossed a line, and the least I could do was acknowledge it rather than let the transgression fester in the dark.
I valued our friendship too much to lie to her. “Elyssa,” I said carefully. “I found your manuscript.”
The glass froze halfway to her mouth. For a fraction of a second, panic flashed across her expression before the color drained from her face. Not dramatically, because nothing about Elyssa was ever dramatic. But the warmth left her flushed cheeks, and her expression was guarded now. Uncertain.
Then she slowly set the glass down and wrapped the towel tighter around her chest, her fingers fidgeting with the edge.
“Oh.” The word came out flat. She glanced at the laptop, then back at me.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have opened it. I was looking for your notes, and the document was open in a different tab and—” I stopped, biting the inside of my cheek. Justifications were meaningless. I felt like a terrible friend.
She was quiet for a moment and then licked her lips before speaking again. “You read it?”
“Some of it. The first few chapters. I’m sorry. That was an invasion of your privacy, and I was wrong for doing that.”
“It’s fine. It’s not like it’s a secret-secret. It’s just... a thing I do.” She exhaled through her nose, a sound that was half sigh and half laugh. A flush crept up her neck, spreading across her cheeks. “Well, that’s embarrassing.”
“It shouldn’t be.” I leaned forward, almost excitedly now that I knew she wasn’t upset at me for intruding on her privacy. “Elyssa, it’s incredible. I mean that. This is publishable.”
She glanced away, and I saw it then—the shyness. The genuine self-consciousness of a young girl who had never been praised for something she actually cared about.
Elyssa shrugged, but the gesture was too quick, too practiced. A deflection. Her gaze dropped to the carpet, and I watched her teeth worry at her lower lip. I’d come to recognize that action as her trying to downplay something that mattered to her.
“It’s just a hobby,” she said, tucking a strand of wet hair behind her ear. “Something I do when I can’t sleep. When my brain won’t shut up.”
“That’s not a hobby. That’s talent.” I held her gaze, refusing to let her minimize this. “You could make a career out of this. You should.”
The flush on her cheeks deepened, and her eyes flickered with something that looked almost like hope before it was quickly buried beneath another careless shrug. She tried to look everywhere but at me. “Maybe someday. It’s not really something I’ve thought about seriously.”
“You should think about it seriously.” I paused, then added, “I’d love to read more. All of it, if you’d let me. I could beta read for you, maybe give you feedback, and help with revisions. Whatever you need.”
Elyssa’s head lifted. A ghost of a smile touched her mouth. “Really?”
“Really. You know how much I love to read; it’s all I do in my spare time.”
“I already have a beta reader,” she said, a full smile forming now. “Someone I met online through a writing/reading app. She’s an incredible writer too, and she’s been reading for me for about a year now. But I’d love for you to read it too. A second perspective would be amazing.”
“I’d be honored.”
She nodded, and for a moment we just looked at each other—two people who had, in the span of two years, learned to navigate each other’s silences and secrets.
Then she tilted her head, studying me with that direct, unhurried gaze that had unnerved me the first day we met and now felt like the most honest thing in the world. Elyssa wasn’t a pretender, and I loved that about it.
It made our friendship genuine.
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you have any hobbies? Besides reading, I mean. Because I’ve literally never seen you do anything except study and read.”
The question landed with a weight that surprised me. I opened my mouth and then closed it.
What could I say? That my hobbies had been curated since childhood to serve a single purpose—to make me an ideal wife?
That I’d been trained in piano and the waltz, not because I enjoyed them but because they were assets in a marriage portfolio?
That the closest thing I’d ever had to a genuine interest was reading, and even that had been severely monitored when I was younger; certain books were deemed inappropriate, and some themes were forbidden.
“I’m a little boring,” I said, and the admission came out more honest than I’d meant it to. “I read. I study. That’s... kind of it.”
Elyssa’s expression shifted. Not to pity, because she never pitied me, and I was grateful for that, but she looked more thoughtful. She approached me and sat on the arm of the couch, the towel still wrapped around her, and fixed me with a look that was equally curious and concerned.
“Serafina,” she said slowly. “What do you do for fun? Like, actual fun. Not the kind of fun that looks good on a wifely résumé.”
The silence stretched between us, and in it I heard the full, damning truth of my answer: nothing.
I had never done anything just for fun. Not the reckless kind that Elyssa was referring to. The type of fun that left you breathless and stained with the evidence of having lived without permission.