I sit on the edge of the bed with my laptop balanced on my knees. The desk lamp is still on. I cannot remember the last time I turned it off. Its light barely reaches the walls, leaving the room half-finished, like the world decided not to intrude.
The cursor blinks.
I start typing before I can think too much about it.
The character has no name yet. He rarely does. He lives in a city I have never seen, walks streets I pretend are unfamiliar. I tell myself that is how fiction works. You borrow shapes. Rearrange them. Call it imagination instead of memory.
She appears three paragraphs in.
No entrance. No warning.
She is sitting on a windowsill, knees pulled close, watching the street like it might vanish if she looks away. She says something small. Almost throwaway. Sharp in a quiet, careful way.
My fingers stop.
I stare at the screen.
I did not plan her.
"She laughed like she didn't trust happiness to stay," I type.
I freeze.
The line sits there, exposed.
Too close.
I delete it and replace it with something safer. Something flatter. But the rhythm has already changed. The scene bends around her. Silence gathers instead of stretching thin.
I do not give her Lena's name.
Names make things solid. Names make things hurt.
So she becomes "her." Or "the girl." Sometimes she is just hands on a table, fingers tapping without meaning to. I avoid her face. I keep her incomplete, like if I look too closely, she might look back and ask why I stopped choosing her.
The words keep coming anyway.
The story fills with moments I swear are invented. Conversations that never happened. Apologies that arrive on time. Endings that pause before they break. I remind myself it is fiction. Just work. Just writing.
This is what writers do when feeling becomes inconvenient.
We build places to hide.
I lean back against the headboard. My shoulders ache. My eyes burn. The apartment is quiet in that late-night way where every sound feels louder because it is alone. Somewhere, Alice shifts in her sleep. The floor creaks. The building breathes.
I do not think of Lena.
I write her instead.
I write the way she listens. The way she notices things without pointing them out. I write the ache of wanting to protect someone who does not believe they are worth protecting. I write a love that never names itself and never survives long enough to be ruined properly.
On the page, I have control.
I can stop her mid sentence. I can keep her alive without choosing anything in the real world. No futures pressing in. No explanations. No consequences.
Just words.
Just enough distance.
I stop when my chest tightens, like the story pressed too hard against something I have been avoiding.
I save the file.
I didn't reread it.
I close the laptop as if that might lock her away.
The room feels emptier immediately.
I lie back and stare at the ceiling.
It is just a story.
She is just a character.
This is just work.
The lie does not settle.
She never left my life.
She just moved into my sentences.
⟡ ✧ ⟡
I do not hear it from Lena.
That is the first thing that feels wrong.
I hear it from Dr. Hargreave's assistant, who stops me outside the department office with a polite smile and a clipboard held close to her chest.
"Ash? Do you have a minute?"
Just a minute always means more.
Inside, the office smells like paper and old coffee. The blinds are half open. A thin stripe of afternoon light cuts across the desk and stops short of my chair.
Dr. Hargreave gets straight to it.
"We received a concern," she says gently.
I nod. "About what?"
"Your well-being."
Of course.
She lists it carefully. Increased alcohol use. Mood instability. Academic disengagement.
I almost laugh.
"From who?" I ask.
She hesitates. Only for a moment.
"A fellow student. Someone close to you."
The silence stretches.
"And there were concerns," she adds, "about the influence of the people you are living with."
Alice.
The name does not need to be spoken.
"Is this disciplinary?" I ask.
"No," she says quickly. "This is framed as care."
Care.
"Sometimes people don't realize how visible their struggles become."
Visible.
I think of late nights writing. Bottles left out because I was too tired to hide them. Laughing too loudly sometimes because silence feels worse.
I think of Lena watching without asking.
"I'm fine," I say. Calm. Measured. "My grades are consistent. I haven't missed deadlines."
She nods. "Yes. That's true. Which is why this surprised us."
Us.
A few minutes later, I am back in the hallway with a pamphlet in my hand I did not ask for.
Support resources. Gentle language. Neat bullet points.
I step outside.
Campus continues around me. Laughter. Raised voices. Someone drops a stack of books. Life uninterrupted.
The tightness in my chest sharpens.
It is not anger.
It is fear.
Because this was not impulsive. It was not emotional.
It was careful.
Lena did not confront me. She did not argue or cry. She did not ask me to explain.
She went around me.
She wrapped concern in something official. Something calm. Something believable.
And it worked.
The system listened.
That realization settles cold.
I walk home slowly, replaying conversations I dismissed. Questions about my drinking. Comments about Alice. The soft frown that always followed the word worried.
"You're pushing yourself too hard."
"I just want you safe."
"I know you better than you know yourself sometimes."
At the time, it felt like care.
Now it feels like being watched.
Halfway up the stairs, I stop.
My hands are shaking.
I try to tell myself she meant well. That she was scared. That I gave her reasons.
The explanations do not hold.
Love does not report you.
Love does not decide you are unstable and hand that decision to someone else.
Love asks.
Love waits.
Love trusts.
Now I wonder what else she might decide for me if she thinks it is necessary.
The thought lands hard.
I don't know where the line is anymore.
And I'm not sure she does either.