Prologue
He's been on and on about some stupid party. The kind of party bratty teenagers go to when they shouldn't, like when they're meant to be studying for their finals, or when they need to get some work done, or when they have problematic homes.
That is me in all those cases, except I really don't want to go, but I have to.
My boyfriend Jett is currently dragging me to one of those parties and I really don't have a say. I don't even know why I call him my boyfriend, I basically slave around while he links up with other girls, sometimes in front of me. He really doesn't care about what we have, but he won't ever let me go. He refuses to leave me be, he refuses to break up with me. On the subject of breaking up, he sugarcoats his words, making me feel like the only girl on earth. I try to enjoy those times because that's the only time he treats me like I'm meant to be treated.
We are now at the gates of the party and it's pretty hard to miss the reek of alcohol, the sweaty bodies of teens out and about the front of the house, the scene of dealers and addicts exchanging their only reason for living. It's quite hard to miss the booming speakers and the horny bodies on each other. I don't know why Jett wants me here, but I can tell it's not for a good reason. Jett is an addict, and an alcoholic, I was dumb for believing he'd change. Just a promise isn't enough, action matters, and, he never acted on those promises, which is quite disappointing
One
The bass didn't just hit my ears; it vibrated in my teeth. Jett's hand was a cold weight on the back of my neck, steering me through the sea of humid bodies like I was a piece of luggage he was afraid of losing, but didn't actually want to carry. The smell of stale beer and cheap cologne turned my stomach, a sharp contrast to the sterile, quiet library where I should have been sitting with my biology notes.
"Stay close," he muttered, his eyes already scanning the room for his dealer—or his next distraction. He didn't look at me. He hadn't looked at me since we left the car.
He finally looked at me, but his eyes were glassy, reflecting the neon beer sign flickering above the fridge rather than actually seeing me. He leaned in, his breath a sour mix of menthol and whatever he'd been drinking in the car. For a second, his hand moved from my neck to my cheek, his thumb brushing my skin with a tenderness that made my heart stutter—the "sugarcoating" beginning to settle over his jagged edges.
"Baby, you're so smart, you don't even need to study," he cooed, his voice dropping into that low, persuasive hum that used to make me feel safe. "Just one hour. Relax with me. You're always so tense, always thinking about the future. Live a little with me tonight?"
He didn't wait for an answer. His hand dropped, the warmth vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. A girl with glitter on her eyelids and a plastic cup in each hand bumped into his shoulder, giggling. Jett's focus snapped to her instantly, his grin widening into something predatory and bright.
"Yo, Jett! You actually made it!" a voice shouted from across the room.
Without a word to me—without even a backward glance—he let go. The sudden lack of his physical weight made me stumble slightly. He moved into the crowd toward a guy holding a small, clear plastic baggie, his body language shifting from "boyfriend" to "seeker" in a heartbeat.
I was left standing by a counter covered in spilled soda and cigarette ash. My phone vibrated in my pocket: a calendar notification for my 8:00 AM Biology final.
I looked at the back of Jett's head as he threw his arm around a stranger, already forgetting I existed. The realization hit me then, sharper than the smell of the room: I wasn't his girlfriend. I was his anchor, and he was more than happy to let me drown as long as I kept him from drifting too far away from himself.
I reached into my pocket, my fingers brushing against the cold metal of my own house keys. I had two choices: I could wait in the shadows of this house until he was high enough to be manageable, or I could find the door.
TWO
The kitchen felt like it was shrinking. I watched Jett retreating back, his shoulders relaxed and his gait confident now that he had found his "people." The girl with the glitter eyelids trailed after him like a lost planet caught in his gravity.
I didn't want to follow. Every cell in my body screamed at me to turn around, walk through the front door, and breathe the cold, gasoline-tinged night air. But there was that familiar, sick tug in my chest—the one he'd spent months cultivating. It was the part of me that felt responsible for his wreckage.
I trailed ten paces behind them, weaving through the heat of the living room. They headed toward a narrow hallway in the back of the house, away from the main dance floor. Here, the music was a muffled heartbeat behind closed doors, replaced by the low, frantic murmurs of deals being struck and secrets being traded.
Jett pushed open the door to a small, dimly lit bedroom. I stopped in the doorframe.
The room smelled of heavy incense trying—and failing—to mask the chemical tang of something being burned. Jett was already sitting on the edge of a stained mattress, the glitter-eyed girl perched next to him. Across from them sat a guy I didn't recognize, his eyes hooded, a glass plate balanced on his knees.
"Jett," I whispered. My voice felt small, like it belonged to a child.
He didn't look up. He was watching the guy on the bed arrange thin white lines with a credit card. "Don't be a buzzkill, Emmaline," he said, his voice flat. The "sugarcoating" from five minutes ago had dissolved completely. "Go get a drink or something. I'll be out in a second."
"You said one hour," I said, my voice gaining a desperate edge. "You said we'd leave. Jett, look at me."
He finally looked up, but the person I loved wasn't behind his eyes. There was just a hollow, impatient hunger. The girl next to him leaned her head on his shoulder, her hand sliding familiarly over his bicep. Jett didn't flinch. He didn't move away. He just looked at her, then back at me, a cruel smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"I'm busy, Emmaline. If you're gonna stand there and judge, just go wait in the car. Give me the keys."
He held out a hand, palm up.
It was a test. It was always a test. If I gave him the keys, I was stranded here, at the mercy of his timeline, his addiction, and his whims. If I kept them, I was "the bitch," the one who ruined his night, the one he'd punish with silence or "accidental" flirting for the next three days.
I looked at the girl's hand on his arm. I looked at the white lines on the plate. Then, I looked at my own hands. They were shaking, but they were empty.
"I'm not giving you the keys, Jett," I said, the words feeling like stones in my mouth.
The room went silent. The dealer stopped moving. Jett's expression shifted—the smirk vanished, replaced by a cold, dark mask of anger. He started to stand up, his movements slow and deliberate.
"What did you just say to me?"
THREE
I didn't wait to see if Jett obeyed. I turned and ran.
The hallway was a blur of peeling wallpaper. Instead of heading for the front, I felt a desperate need to avoid the crowd at the gates entirely. I turned toward the back of the house, pushing through a heavy sliding glass door that led to the pool area.
The air out here was marginally better, but the scene was just as grim. The pool was a murky, neon-blue rectangle, reflecting the flickering string lights draped haphazardly over the fence. A few people were dangling their legs in the water, oblivious to the thin film of oil and discarded cups floating on the surface.
I retreated to the far edge of the concrete, near the shadows of the overgrown hedges. I needed a moment for my heart to stop trying to climb out of my throat.
"You're the one from the room."
I jumped, spinning around. It was the guy from the bedroom—parker. He had followed me out, stepping into the dim light of the patio. Away from the suffocating heat of the house, he looked even more out of place.
"I'm sorry," I breathed, clutching my keys so hard they left indentations in my palm. "I didn't mean to... thank you for back there."
"Don't thank me," he said, his voice barely audible over the dull roar of the music coming through the glass. "I just hate seeing people get cornered. Especially by guys who think 'love' is a synonym for 'ownership.'"
He walked toward the edge of the pool, looking down at the chemical-blue water. "He's going to come looking for you. Not because he's worried, but because you took away his sense of control. If you're going to go, you should go now."
I looked back at the house. Through the glass, I could see Jett's silhouette. He was back in the kitchen, pacing, his phone pressed to his ear. My pocket buzzed instantly. He was calling me.
"I have a final at eight," I whispered, more to myself than to Parker.
"Then why are you still standing by a pool that smells like bleach and bad decisions?" Parker asked, a small, tired smile tugging at his mouth.
I looked at the water, then at the phone vibrating in my hand, and finally at the gate leading to the side alley. The "sugarcoating" was gone. The fear was still there, but beneath it was a cold, hard layer of necessity.
"I'm going," I said.
FOUR
The night air was supposed to be my sanctuary, but the backyard was just another cage with wider bars. I stood by the edge of the neon-blue water, my fingers trembling against the cool metal of my car keys. I thought I had a head start. I thought Parker's intervention had bought me the minutes I needed to disappear into the night.
I was wrong.
The sliding glass door didn't just open; it crashed against the frame. Jett exploded onto the patio, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. The "sugarcoating" hadn't just melted; it had evaporated, leaving behind the jagged, ugly truth of who he was when he didn't get his way.
"You think you can just walk away from me?" Jett's voice carried over the music, sharp enough to make the people lounging by the water sit up in alarm. "You think some random loser tells me when I'm done talking to my girlfriend?"
"Jett, stop," I said, backing away. My heel caught on the edge of the concrete pool lip. "I'm leaving. I told you, I have my final—"
"I don't give a damn about your final!" he screamed. He was in my space in three strides, his eyes wild and unfocused. The alcohol and whatever was in that room had taken the wheel. "You're always acting like you're better than this. Better than me. You want to be 'clean' so bad?"
He reached out, grabbing my shoulders. I saw the flash of movement from the corner of my eye—Parker stepping out of the shadows—but he was too far away.
"Let's see how clean you feel after this," Jett hissed.
With a violent shove, he slammed his palms into my chest.
The world tilted. My stomach stayed on the pool deck while the rest of me plummeted backward. The transition from the humid night air to the shock-cold water was instantaneous. The chlorine burned my nose and throat as I went under, the weight of my denim jacket and sneakers immediately pulling me down like lead weights.
The surface was a shimmering, unreachable ceiling. I thrashed, my hands clawing at the water, but I didn't know the rhythm of swimming. I only knew the rhythm of sinking. Panic, hot and thick, filled my chest where air should have been. I caught a glimpse of Jett standing on the edge, looking down with a twisted, satisfied smirk, before the blue swallowed me again.
Splash.
A second impact hit the water nearby. Strong arms wrapped around my waist, hoisting my head above the surface. I coughed violently, lungs burning as I gasped for air, clinging to the damp fabric of a black hoodie.
Parker hauled me to the shallow end, his movements efficient and urgent. He guided my hands to the ladder, making sure my feet found the steps before he hoisted himself out of the pool in one fluid, angry motion. He didn't even stop to wring out his clothes. He went straight for Jett.
Jett was laughing, a hollow, jagged sound. "See? She's fine. Just needed to cool off—"
Parker didn't let him finish. He didn't punch him, but he stepped into Jett's personal space with a lethal stillness that cut the laughter right out of Jett's throat. Parker was dripping wet, his chest heaving, his eyes fixed on Jett with a look of pure loathing.
"You are a pathetic coward," parker said, his voice a low, dangerous whip-crack. "She can't swim. You knew that, and you threw her in anyway. That's not a 'lover's spat,' Jett. That's a crime."
"Stay out of it, man," Jett spat, though he took a nervous step back, his bravado crumbling under Parker's gaze. "She's mine. I do what I want."
"She is no one's," Parker barked, stepping closer until Jett was backed up against the patio table. "If I see you near her again tonight—if I even see you look in her direction—I'm not calling the cops. I'm handling it myself. Do you understand me?"
The party had gone silent. Everyone was watching. Jett looked around, looking for an ally, but even the girl with the glitter eyes looked disgusted. Shamed and outmatched, Jett muttered something under his breath and retreated toward the house, his tail between his legs but his eyes still burning with a promise of future resentment.
Parker turned back to me. I was shivering on the concrete, soaked to the bone, my biology notes likely ruined in my pocket, and my dignity shattered.
He reached out a hand, his expression softening instantly. "Are you hurt?"
I looked at his hand, then up at the house where Jett had disappeared. The realization finally sank in: Jett hadn't just tried to scare me. He had let me drown.
FIVE
The shivering started in my bones and worked its way out, a violent tremor that had nothing to do with the cold water and everything to do with the adrenaline crash. I looked down at my hands. They were empty.
"My keys," I whispered, the word coming out as a wet croak. "Jett… he pushed me, and the keys… they were in my hand."
Parker followed my gaze to the shimmering, neon-blue floor of the pool. There, nestled near the drain in the deep end, was the silver glint of my car keys and my keychain—a small, rubber heart Jett had given me months ago. It looked like a piece of trash at the bottom of a grave.
"I'll get them," Parker said. Before I could protest, he dived back in. He moved through the water with an effortless grace that made my own near-drowning feel even more pathetic. A few seconds later, he broke the surface, gasping, and climbed out with the keys dripping in his palm.
He handed them to me, but as I reached out, my fingers brushed the rubber heart. I didn't want it. I didn't want anything that reminded me of the "sugarcoated" version of a monster. I ripped the heart off the metal ring and tossed it into the bushes.
"Can you walk?" Parker asked. He was soaked, his black hoodie heavy with water, but he didn't seem to care about his own discomfort.
"I have to," I said, my voice gaining a bit of osteel. "I have eight hours until my life is supposed to start, and I'm currently standing in a puddle of chlorine and failure."
Parker walked me toward the side gate, his presence a silent shield against the prying eyes of the lingering party-goers. As we reached the street, the silence of the neighborhood felt heavy. My car sat under a dim streetlight, looking like a beacon of hope.
"Wait," Parker said as I reached for the door handle. He reached into his own pocket and pulled out a dry, gray sweatshirt from his backpack—something he must have kept in his car earlier. "You can't drive like that. You'll freeze, and you'll never be able to focus on those notes if you're preoccupied with hypothermia."
I took the sweatshirt. It was warm, smelled of laundry detergent and woodsmoke, and was the first kind thing I'd felt in years. "Why did you help me?" I asked, looking up at him. "You don't even know me. You could have stayed in that room."
Parker looked down the dark street, his jaw tight. "I had a sister who stayed with a guy like Jett. She kept waiting for the 'sugarcoating' to become the whole cake. It never did. By the time she realized it, it was too late to go back for her finals."
He didn't explain further, and I didn't ask. The weight of his silence told me everything I needed to know.
"Go," he said softly. "Go study. Pass that test. Don't let a guy who would watch you drown be the reason you don't graduate."
I climbed into the car, the heater blasting on high. I watched in the rearview mirror as Parker walked back toward the house—not to join the party, but to make sure Jett didn't follow me.
I drove two blocks away, pulled into a brightly lit 24-hour gas station lot, and parked under the fluorescent lights. I stripped off my soaked denim jacket, pulled on Caleb's dry sweatshirt, and opened my Biology textbook to page 142.
The pages were damp at the edges, blurred by a few drops of pool water, but the words were still there.
The human heart is a pump, I read, my voice trembling but certain. It is designed to withstand pressure.
I took a deep breath, the scent of Parker's sweatshirt grounding me, and I started to memorize the path of the blood—how it leaves the darkness of the lungs and finds its way back to the light
SIX
The fluorescent lights of the school hallway felt like physical blows against my eyes. I was operating on three hours of shaky sleep and a gallon of gas-station coffee. Every muscle in my body ached from the frantic thrashing in the pool, a dull throb that reminded me I was alive every time I took a breath.
I looked like a ghost. I was still wearing Parker's gray sweatshirt—it was the only thing I had that didn't smell like chlorine or Jett's cologne.
I leaned against the lockers, my Biology textbook open in my hands, trying to force one last look at the diagram of the respiratory system. My brain felt like a dry sponge, but I pushed forward, tracing the path of oxygen through the bronchioles.
"Emmaline?"
The voice didn't belong to Jett. It was lower, steadier.
I looked up, squinting against the glare. Walking toward me, clutching a physics binder, was Parker. In the harsh, clinical light of the high school, he looked different—less like a shadowy guardian and more like a student. He wore a clean flannel shirt, but the tired kindness in his eyes was unmistakable.
I froze, my heart doing that familiar double-tap against my ribs. "Parker? You... you go here?"
He stopped a few feet away, a small, knowing smile tugging at his lips. "Senior wing. I usually keep my head down. I'm guessing you've never noticed me behind the stacks in the library or in the back of the cafeteria."
The realization hit me like a splash of cold water. I had been so consumed by Jett's orbit, so blinded by the chaos of his addiction and the constant need to manage his moods, that I had become invisible to the world—and the world had become invisible to me. I hadn't noticed Parker because I hadn't been allowed to notice anyone but Jett.
"I didn't know," I whispered. "I thought you were... I don't know, just some guy at a party."
"I was just some guy at a party who recognized a girl who looked like she was drowning long before she hit the water," Parker said softly. He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Did you study?"
I nodded, clutching my textbook. "All night. Even the pages that were damp."
"Good." He reached out, his hand hovering near my shoulder before he thought better of it and dropped it. "Jett's in the parking lot. He's telling everyone who will listen that you're 'crazy' and that you 'fell' into the pool. But nobody's really listening,Emmaline. He's losing his audience."
"I don't care what he says anymore," I said, and for the first time, I meant it. The fear that usually gripped my stomach when I heard his name was replaced by a strange, hollow pity.
The first bell rang, a shrill, metallic sound that signaled the start of the finals.
"Hey," Parker called out as I started to turn toward the exam hall. I looked back. "You've got enough oxygen now. Just remember to breathe."
I walked into the gym, where rows of desks were set out like a graveyard of expectations. I found my seat, sat down, and waited for the proctor to hand out the packets. When the paper landed in front of me, I didn't hesitate.
Question 1: Describe the process of gas exchange in the alveoli.
I picked up my pen. My hands weren't shaking. I thought about the pool, the weight of the water, and the moment Caleb pulled me out. I thought about the "sugarcoating" that had finally washed away, leaving me clean.
I started to write.
SEVEN
The final bell didn't just signal the end of a test; it sounded like a prison door swinging open.
I walked out of the gym, my hand cramped and my brain buzzing with the lingering definitions of cellular respiration and oxygen transport. I felt raw, but steady. That was until I pushed through the heavy double doors of the school and saw him.
Jett was leaning against my car. Not his—mine .
The "sugarcoating" was gone. He looked like he hadn't slept, his hair matted and his eyes dark with a simmering, toxic resentment. As soon as he saw me, he pushed off the hood, his boots scuffing the pavement.
"You blocked me," he said, his voice a low, dangerous vibration. "I spent all night calling you, and you blocked me."
"I told you I was done, Jett. Move away from my car." I tried to reach for the door handle, but he stepped in my way, his chest nearly brushing my shoulder.
"You aren't done until I say so," he hissed, grabbing my wrist. His grip was tight, meant to remind me of the power he thought he still had. "You think you're better than me now? Because you took some stupid test? You're coming with me. Now."
"Let go of her, Jett."
The voice was calm, but it cut through the humid afternoon air like a blade. Parker was standing a few yards away, his backpack slung over one shoulder. He wasn't running or shouting; he was just... there. A solid, immovable force.
Jett's head snapped around, a sneer curling his lip. "You again? I told you to stay out of my business at the party. This is a private conversation."
"It stopped being a conversation the second you put your hands on her," Parker said. He walked forward, his pace deliberate. "And the whole parking lot is watching. Let go of her wrist, or we're going to have a very public problem."
Jett's grip tightened for a split second—a reflex of pure spite—and I winced.
Parker didn't wait. He dropped his bag and stepped into Jett's space. He didn't throw a punch; instead, he grabbed Jett's forearm with a precision that forced Jett to loosen his hold on me.
"I'm not going to tell you again," Parker said, his voice dropping to that lethal, quiet register I'd heard by the pool.
Jett looked at Parker, then at the groups of students starting to linger and whisper, and finally at me. He saw that the fear he relied on was gone. I wasn't the "luggage" anymore. I was a person who had just passed a final while he was still stuck in the mud of last night.
"Fine," Jett spat, shoving Parker's hand away. He looked at me one last time, his face contorting into something pathetic. "Have fun with the charity case, Emmaline. You'll be begging me to come back in a week."
He turned and stormed toward his own car, tires screaming as he peeled out of the lot.
The silence that followed was heavy. I looked down at my wrist—the red marks were already fading. Then I looked at parker. He was breathing hard, the adrenaline clearly hitting him now that the threat was gone.
"You okay?" he asked, his eyes searching mine.
"I am," I said, and the weirdest thing was that I meant it. "I'm actually okay."
I looked at the school building behind us. I thought about the diagrams I'd spent all night memorizing, specifically the ones about how the body protects itself from trauma.
"He's like a virus," I whispered, almost to myself. "And I think I finally developed the antibodies."
Parker let out a short, surprised breath of a laugh. "That's the most biology-student thing I've ever heard." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, folded piece of paper—the grade posting from the hallway. "By the way, I saw the list. You got an A-minus."
I stared at him, the sun finally feeling warm instead of scorching. "I did?"
"You did." He gestured toward the street. "Some of us are going to get food to celebrate actually surviving this year. No masks, no 'sugarcoating,' and definitely no pools. You want to come?"
I looked at my car, then at the open road ahead of me. I realized I didn't need to drive away from something anymore. I could finally drive toward something.
"Yeah," I said, a smile finally breaking across my face. "I'd love to."
EIGHT
The weeks following the final exams felt like a slow recovery from a fever. For the longest time, my life had been a series of high-tension alarms—Jett's calls, Jett's moods, Jett's emergencies. Without him, the silence was terrifying at first. It felt like a vacuum.
But Parker—who I had first known as the quiet guy in the corner of that dark room—didn't let the vacuum suck me back in.
It started with small things. A text at 2:00 PM that didn't demand anything: Found a used copy of that Anatomy textbook you mentioned. It's at the bookstore on 4th if you want it. Then, it became library sessions. He'd be buried in physics equations, his brow furrowed as he calculated the velocity of objects I couldn't imagine, while I sat across from him, finally reading for pleasure. We didn't always talk. We just existed in the same space. It was the opposite of being with Jett; with Jett, I was constantly "on," a satellite orbiting a dying star. With Parker, I was just... me.
"You're doing it again," Parker said one afternoon, looking up from his laptop. We were at a small coffee shop, the air smelling of roasted coffee beans instead of stale beer.
"Doing what?" I asked, my thumb hovering over my phone screen.
"Checking the 'Blocked' folder. You're looking for the ghost of a ghost, Emmaline."
He was the only one who used my full name. To Jett, I was "Em" or "Baby" or "Mine." To Parker, I was a person with three syllables and a future.
"It's a habit," I whispered, putting the phone face down. "Like checking a bruise to see if it still hurts."
"It'll stop hurting faster if you stop poking it," he said gently. He reached across the table, not to grab my hand, but to slide a sugar packet toward me. "The physics of momentum, remember? An object in motion stays in motion. If you keep looking back, you're just applying the brakes."
I smiled, a small, genuine thing. "You and your physics."
"It works," he shrugged. "Speaking of motion... I'm going to get a milkshake. A real one. From that old diner with the red booths. My sister used to say their mint chocolate chip could cure a mid-life crisis at seventeen. Want to go?"
I looked at my books, then at the sunlight streaming through the window. For the first time, I didn't have to check a schedule. I didn't have to wonder if someone would be angry if I was late.
"Yeah," I said, standing up. "I think I do."
NINE
The ice cream shop was a relic of a different era—bright neon signs, checkered floors, and a smell that was purely, unapologetically sweet. It was the polar opposite of the kitchen at the party. There was no smoke here, no chemical tang, just the sound of a malt machine whirring and the distant bell of the door.
I sat across from Parker in a red vinyl booth. I felt self-conscious in the oversized gray sweatshirt he'd lent me—it had become a sort of armor—but for the first time, I didn't feel like I had to perform.
"You're staring at your mint chocolate chip like it's a lab specimen," Parker said, leaning back. He had a simple vanilla cone, his expression relaxed.
"I'm just... waiting for the catch," I admitted, poking the green scoop with my plastic spoon. "Usually, when things are this quiet, it means a storm is coming. Jett used to say that silence was just the fuse burning down."
Parker's expression softened. "That's the thing about people like him. They keep the environment unstable so you're too busy trying to stay upright to realize you can just walk out the door. But out here? The weather is actually fine, Emmaline."
I took a bite, the cold sweetness a sharp contrast to the heat of the parking lot confrontation. "Why did you stay at that party so long? You didn't seem like you belonged there either."
Parker looked at the checkered floor. "I told you about my sister. She didn't get out in time. Now, whenever I hear about a party at that house, I stick around. I'm not a hero. I think I'm just trying to give someone else the exit sign she never found."
He shifted the conversation, gesturing to the physics binder on the table. "So, Biology. You're obsessed with the way the body works. Is that the plan? Pre-med? Research?"
"I want to understand the things that are hard to see," I said. "The way a heart can be physically healthy but emotionally shattered. I want to study the science of why we survive."
Parker nodded slowly. "I like physics. Gravity, friction, torque. If you drop something, it falls at $9.8 \text{ m/s}^2$. It doesn't lie to you. It doesn't promise to be better and then break your ribs. It just... is."
When we walked out into the evening air, the sun was setting, painting the sky in bruises of purple and gold.
"Emmaline," Parker said as we reached my car. "The invite for the beach trip next weekend still stands. A group of us go every year. There's a pier, fire pits, and no one is allowed to bring anything stronger than a soda."
I looked at the car door. "The beach? Parker, I told you... I can't swim. The pool was enough of a disaster."
"You don't have to swim to enjoy the ocean," he said gently. "It might be good for you to see something that powerful that isn't trying to hurt you."
TEN
The ocean was a far cry from the chemical blue of the pool. It was a vast, churning grey-green that seemed to breathe with the rhythm of the planet. I stood at the edge of the dunes, my toes sinking into the cool, damp sand, watching the white foam hiss as it reached for my ankles.
"It's $3.5\%$ salt," Parker said, appearing at my side. He wasn't wearing his black hoodie today. Instead, he had on a faded t-shirt, and his hair was being tossed around by the salt breeze. "Enough to make you buoyant, but not enough to keep you from feeling the weight of it."
"It's loud," I whispered.
"It's honest," he countered.
We walked toward the fire pit where a few other seniors—the ones Jett would have called 'boring'—were roasting marshmallows and laughing. There was no alcohol. No smell of smoke that wasn't just wood. I felt a strange, fluttering sensation in my chest that I realized, with a start, was safety.
But the safety was short-lived.
A familiar roar cut through the sound of the waves—the aggressive, high-pitched whine of a motorcycle engine. I froze. My blood turned to ice water before I even saw him. Jett skidded his bike into the sandy parking lot at the top of the dunes, kicking up a cloud of grit. He didn't belong here. He wasn't invited.
He hopped off the bike, stumbling slightly, and I could see even from this distance that the "sugarcoating" was gone. He was in the "sour" phase, the part where his frustration turned into a blunt instrument.
"Emmaline!" he roared, his voice carrying over the surf.
The group by the fire went silent. Parker's posture shifted instantly, his shoulders squaring, his eyes tracking Jett's descent down the dune.
Jett marched across the sand, his boots heavy and clumsy. He looked like a dark smudge on a beautiful painting. "I knew I'd find you here with this loser," he spat, pointing a shaking finger at Parker. "You think you can just ignore my texts? You think you can just trade me in for a guy who does your homework?"
"Jett, leave," I said. My voice was small, but it was steady. "You weren't invited. You're trespassing on a life you aren't part of anymore."
"Trespassing?" He laughed, a harsh, jagged sound. He stepped closer, the smell of cheap whiskey clinging to him like a second skin. "I made you, Em. You were nothing before me. Just a quiet little nerd with a bad home life. I gave you a reason to be cool."
He reached out to grab my arm, but I stepped back—this time, I didn't hit a wall or a pool edge. I had the whole horizon behind me.
Parker stepped in, but he didn't use force. He just stood like an anchor. "She said leave, Jett. The tide is coming in, and you're already underwater. Don't make this harder than it has to be."
Jett looked at the ocean, then back at me, his face twisting with a sudden, desperate change in tactics. The "sugarcoating" tried to surface one last time. "Baby, please. I'm messed up. I need you to help me get clean. You're the only one who can save me. If you stay with him, I'll… I'll go off the deep end. You know I will."
It was the ultimate trap. The "Save Me" card. For two years, that card had kept me in his pocket.
I looked at Jett—really looked at him. I saw the addiction, the manipulation, and the hollow emptiness. Then I looked at the ocean. It was powerful, dangerous, and deep, but it didn't ask me to save it. It just existed.
"I can't swim, Jett," I said, my voice finally finding its full strength. "I can barely keep myself afloat. I'm not diving in to save you when you're the one who threw me in the water in the first place."
Jett's face fell. The realization that his best trick had failed turned his sadness back into a snarl. He looked like he wanted to swing, to break something, to reclaim his power through violence. But he looked at the group of students standing behind us, all of them watching, all of them witnesses.
He spat on the sand near my feet. "Fine. Drown in your boring, perfect life. See if I care."
He turned and trudged back up the dune. We watched in silence until the roar of his motorcycle faded into the distance.
The silence that followed wasn't heavy. It was clean. Parker turned to me, his hand hovering near mine, waiting for permission. I reached out and took it. His palm was warm, solid, and didn't squeeze too tight.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said, looking out at the waves. "I think the salt water is finally washing the sugar away."
ELEVEN
The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, turning the Atlantic into a sheet of liquid copper. The group by the fire was singing something low and acoustic, their voices lost to the wind, but Parker and I stayed by the shoreline.
Jett's departure had left a vacuum, but for the first time, I wasn't rushing to fill it with panic. I was watching the water.
"You're still looking at it like it's a predator," Parker said. He had kicked off his shoes, his feet buried in the wet slurry where the sand met the sea.
"It almost killed me once," I reminded him, my eyes fixed on a particularly large wave as it curled and crashed. "In a backyard, under neon lights. The water doesn't feel like a friend, Parker. It feels like a weight."
"The pool was stagnant," Parker said, stepping a few inches deeper into the surf. "It was confined. Just like everything else he put you in. This?" He gestured to the endless blue. "This is a different kind of physics. It's not about fighting to stay up. It's about displaced volume. Archimedes' Principle."
I looked at him, skeptical. "Are you really trying to use science to get me to walk into the ocean?"
"It's the only language that doesn't lie," he grinned, reaching out his hand. "Come here. Just to your knees. I promise, the ground beneath the water is just as solid as the ground you're standing on."
I took a breath, my heart doing that frantic bird-flutter in my chest. I placed my hand in his. His grip was a tether—firm, but the moment I pulled back, he let his fingers loosen, giving me the choice. I took a step.
The first touch of the water was a shock. It was cold, biting at my ankles, but as the wave receded, it pulled the sand from under my heels, a strange, tugging sensation.
"The undertow," I whispered, freezing.
"Just the water going back where it belongs," Parker said. He led me deeper, until the hem of my shorts was soaked. The water swirled around my thighs, heavy and powerful. "Stop looking at your feet, Emmaline. Look at me."
I looked up. His eyes were calm, reflecting the orange glow of the sunset.
"Now," he said, his voice dropping. "Trust the displacement. Lean back."
"Parker, I can't—"
"I have you. I'm not Jett. I'm not going to let go."
I closed my eyes. This was the leap. It wasn't a jump off a cliff; it was a slow, terrifying surrender to gravity. I let my muscles go limp. I felt the water rise up the back of my neck, the cold shocking my skin, and then... the lift.
For a second, I panicked, my hands splashing, but Parker's arms were right there, cradling my shoulders and the small of my back. I wasn't sinking. The salt water was holding me up, pushing against me with the same force I was giving it.
"See?" Parker whispered, his face just inches from mine. "You're floating."
I opened my eyes. The world looked different from this angle. The sky was a vast, inverted bowl of violet. I couldn't hear the party or the distant memory of Jett's motorcycle. I only heard the rhythmic pulse of the ocean.
𝐹𝑏=𝜌×𝑉×𝑔
The formula for buoyancy flashed through my mind. The buoyant force is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced. I wasn't a weight. I wasn't luggage. I was a body in space, governed by laws that were fair and predictable.
"I'm doing it," I breathed, a laugh bubbling up in my throat—a sound that felt like it had been trapped under a layer of ice for years.
"You're doing it," he echoed.
He didn't pull me closer, and he didn't push me away. He just held me there, in the space between the sand and the sea, until the sun vanished entirely. When he finally helped me stand back up, I didn't feel like a victim of the water anymore. I felt like I had reclaimed a piece of the world that Jett had tried to take from me.
We walked back to the fire, dripping wet and shivering, but I didn't reach for parkers gray sweatshirt this time. I sat by the heat of the flames, watching the sparks fly up into the dark, knowing that tomorrow, I'd be packing for a life that was finally, truly, my own.
TWELVE
The end of summer was a blur of cardboard boxes and the frantic scrubbing of a life I wanted to leave behind. I had spent weeks preparing for the transition to Northwood University, a school three hours away—just far enough to ensure Jett wouldn't show up on my doorstep, but close enough that the air still felt like home.
Parker and I had stayed in touch, but as August bled into September, our texts grew shorter. He was busy with his own move, buried in advanced physics prep, and I was drowning in the sheer logistics of moving into a dorm. We never explicitly asked where the other was going. Maybe we were both afraid that saying it out loud would break the spell of the summer.
I pulled my car into the crowded lot of Maple Hall, the air thick with the smell of new asphalt and nervous energy. I lugged my final bin—mostly biology textbooks and a few framed photos that didn't include Jett—up to the third floor.
Room 312.
The door was propped open with a heavy doorstop. Someone had already claimed the bed on the left. A black duffel bag sat on the mattress, and a very familiar-looking physics textbook was perched on the desk. My heart did a strange, erratic skip. It's a common book, I told myself. Half the world takes Physics 101.
"Need a hand with that?"
I spun around, the heavy plastic bin slipping slightly in my grip. Standing in the doorway was a guy holding a crate of electronics, his back to the hallway light. I didn't even need to see his face clearly to know who it was.
I recognized the style immediately—the well-worn flannel thrown over a dark tee, the clean lines of his silhouette that somehow managed to look grounded and effortless at the same time. Then there were his muscles; the way his forearms strained slightly against the weight of the crate, a strength I remembered from the moment he had hauled me out of the deep end of that pool.
He stepped further into the room, and that's when I saw it—that smile. It wasn't the jagged, predatory grin I had lived with for years; it was the slow, tired, and incredibly kind expression that had become my favorite constant over the summer.
"Emmaline?" he breathed, the box in his hands tilting dangerously as his smile widened in total shock.
"Parker?" I dropped my bin on the floor with a heavy thud. "You're... you're my roommate?"
He set the box down on the empty desk and let out a breathless, disbelieving laugh. "I thought the housing portal was glitching when I saw the name 'E. Vance,' but I didn't want to hope. I'm an RA (Resident Assistant) for this floor, but since the dorms are over-capacity this year, they paired some of us up in the larger corner rooms."
I looked around the room—the two beds, the shared space, the large window overlooking the quad. "I didn't even know you were coming to Northwood."
"I got a late research grant for the astrophysics lab here," he said, stepping toward me. He looked older in the campus light, more certain. "I was going to tell you at the beach, but... I didn't want you to feel like I was following you. I wanted you to choose your future for you, not because of me."
I felt a surge of warmth that had nothing to do with the late summer heat. For two years, my life had been dictated by Jett's demands. Now, by some strange stroke of universal luck—or perhaps just the simple physics of two people heading in the same direction—I was standing in a room that felt like a fresh start.
"Well," I said, a playful smile tugging at my lips as I gestured to his messy pile of cables. "If we're going to share 200 square feet, I have some rules. No 'sugarcoating' the cleaning schedule."
Parker laughed, that deep, honest sound. "Deal. And no bio-metaphors before 8:00 AM."
"I can't promise that," I said, reaching out to take his hand.
As we started to unpack, the room filled with the sounds of a new life. There was no dread, no shadow at the door, and no one trying to pull me under. We were two bodies in motion, finally moving at our own velocity.
I pinned a diagram of the human heart to the wall above my desk. It wasn't a symbol of pain anymore. It was just an organ—a pump, resilient and strong, beating steadily as I turned the page to Chapter 1 of my own story.
THIRTEEN
Living with Parker was like learning a new language where the words actually meant what they said. There were no hidden traps, no walking on eggshells, and no frantic checking of the atmospheric pressure to see if a storm was brewing.
In the first two weeks, our room became a sanctuary of overlapping interests. My side of the room was a forest of sticky notes and diagrams of the nervous system; his was a mountain range of charcoal sketches and half-finished circuit boards. We fell into a rhythm that felt dangerously easy. He'd brew coffee at 6:00 AM while I summarized the Krebs cycle aloud, and I'd remind him to eat when he got too deep into the mechanics of dark matter.
"Emmaline," Parker said one Friday evening, looking up from a pile of blueprints. "We've been in this room for fourteen days, and the most 'social' thing we've done is debate the ethics of CRISPR over ramen. We need to leave."
I looked at my biology binder, then at him. "I have a lab report due Monday."
"The report will be there in three hours," he said, standing up and stretching. The movement made the fabric of his t-shirt pull across his shoulders—a casual reminder of the strength I'd recognized the day I moved in. "There's a vintage arcade and pier about twenty minutes away. No textbooks, no biology metaphors, and definitely no Jett-sized shadows. Just a date. As friends."
I hesitated. The word "date" still carried a faint, bitter aftertaste, but Parker's easy smile acted like a neutralizer.
"As friends," I agreed.
FOURTEEN
The pier was alive with the smell of salt, fried dough, and the mechanical whir of old games. It was loud, but it wasn't the suffocating noise of a party; it was the bright, chaotic hum of people actually having fun.
Parker turned out to be surprisingly competitive at Skee-Ball.
"It's all about the trajectory and initial velocity," he claimed, leaning over the machine with intense focus. He rolled the ball, and it landed perfectly in the 50-point ring. He let out a triumphant shout, his face lighting up with a boyish excitement I hadn't seen before.
"It's about luck, Parker. Physics doesn't account for a bumpy wooden ramp," I teased, stepping up to the next lane.
I was terrible at it, but for the first time, I didn't care about looking "cool" or being perfect. When I missed the rings entirely, Parker didn't roll his eyes or make a comment about my incompetence. He just laughed and showed me how to adjust my grip, his hand briefly covering mine to guide the motion. It was a simple touch—warm and steady—and it didn't make me want to flinch.
After we traded our tickets for two plastic rings and a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur, we walked out onto the wooden planks of the pier. The ocean was dark beneath us, the waves rhythmic and calm.
"You're doing it again," Parker said softly, leaning his elbows on the railing.
"Doing what?"
"You're breathing like you're waiting for permission. Look around, Emmaline. You're three hours away from your old life. You passed the test. You're in college. You're standing on a pier with a guy who thinks your dinosaur is cool. The permission is already yours."
I looked at the glowing green plastic in my hand, then at the vast horizon. "It's just hard to believe the ground isn't going to tilt again."
"If it tilts," Parker said, turning to look at me, "we'll just calculate the new angle and adjust. That's what equilibrium is. It's not staying still; it's being able to stay balanced even when things move."
He didn't lean in to kiss me. He didn't push for more than what we were. He just stood there, a solid constant in the middle of a changing world. We stayed there for a long time, talking about everything and nothing, until the pier lights began to dim.
As we walked back to the car, I realized that "as friends" was the most important foundation I had ever built. It was the first time I had ever been liked for my brain, my bad Skee-Ball skills, and my obsession with biology, rather than for what I could do for someone else's ego.
When we got back to Room 312, I didn't head straight for my bed. I sat at my desk and opened my journal.
October 12th:Homeostasis achieved. The environment is stable. For the first time, I'm not surviving—I'm just living.
FIFTHTEEN
The "friends" label was starting to feel like a lab coat that was two sizes too small—functional, but restrictive.
Back in Room 312, the boundary lines we had drawn during move-in week were beginning to blur. It wasn't just about sharing a cleaning schedule anymore. It was the way Parker would leave a piece of dark chocolate on my keyboard when he knew I was stressed about a lab, or the way I had started to learn the specific "clink" of his favorite mechanical pencil.
One rainy Tuesday, the equilibrium shifted. I was sprawled on the floor, surrounded by heavy textbooks, trying to visualize the concept of Kinetic Energy for a general science requirement I was taking to help Parker with his tutoring.
"I don't get why the velocity is squared," I muttered, frustrated. "It makes the impact so much higher than the mass."
Parker dropped from his bunk, landing silently on the carpet beside me. He smelled like rain and old library books. "Because speed changes everything, Emmaline. If you're moving slow, you're just a mass. But when you find momentum? That's when the energy explodes."
He leaned over my notes, his shoulder brushing mine. The contact sent a jolt through me that felt significantly more powerful than anything in my textbook. He didn't pull away. Instead, he took the pen from my hand, his fingers lingering against my palm.
"You're doing that thing again," he whispered.
"What thing?" My voice was barely audible.
"Analyzing the physics of why you shouldn't be happy." He turned his head, and we were so close I could see the golden flecks in his eyes—the eyes that had watched me drown and watched me float. "Emmaline, we've been 'friends' for a long time. But I think our potential energy is about to become kinetic."
The air in the room didn't feel curdled like it used to with Jett. It felt charged, like the atmosphere right before a summer storm. Parker reached out, his hand sliding up to cup my jaw. His touch was light, giving me every opportunity to pull back into the safety of our friendship.
I didn't pull back. I leaned into the heat of his palm.
"Is there a formula for this?" I asked, my heart hammering a rhythm that was definitely not resting-state.
"No," Parker said, a small, lopsided smile breaking across his face. "This part is purely experimental."
He leaned in, and when he kissed me, it wasn't a snatch or a grab. It was a slow, steady constant. It felt like the beach at sunset; it felt like passing a test you thought you'd fail; it felt like finally, finally coming home. There was no pressure to be someone else, no fear of a sudden shift in mood. There was just Parker.
When he pulled back, he didn't look away. He kept his hand on my cheek, his thumb tracing the line of my bone. "Status report, Bio-major?"
I let out a breath I felt like I'd been holding since that night by the pool. "Homeostasis is overrated," I whispered. "I think I prefer the momentum."
We stayed on the floor for hours, talking about how the transition from "roommates" to "something more" was going to work. It was the first time I'd ever entered a relationship with my eyes wide open, looking at a partner who was also my best friend.
As I fell asleep that night, listening to the steady sound of Parker's breathing from across the room, I realized that the greatest discovery wasn't in a textbook. It was the fact that you don't have to drown to feel the depth of the water.
SIXTEEN
The "experiment" of us was working. We had moved beyond the awkwardness of the roommate-to-more transition and found a new, higher frequency. But in any biological system, you can't have growth without a stress test.
Ours arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, just as the first frost was beginning to crystallize on the windows of the student union. I was walking back to the dorm alone, my mind busy with the logistics of an upcoming chemistry lab, when a familiar shadow stepped out from behind a concrete pillar.
"Em."
The name hit me like a physical blow. I stopped dead. Jett looked worse than he had at the beach. He was thinner, his skin sallow, wearing a jacket that was too thin for the November cold. He didn't have his bike. He looked like he'd hitched a ride to a life he was no longer invited to.
"Jett," I said, my voice cold and flat. "You shouldn't be here. You're three hours from home and trespassing on a campus that doesn't know you."
"I took the bus," he said, his voice cracking. He tried to step closer, but I instinctively stepped back, my heels clicking against the frozen pavement. He didn't reach out to grab me this time; instead, he did something worse. He folded. He let his shoulders slump, his eyes welling up with practiced, heavy tears.
"I'm clean, Em. Three weeks. I swear," he rasped. "But it's hard. Everyone back home... they don't get it. You were the only one who actually cared. You were the only thing that kept me straight."
It was the old script. The "Save Me" monologue.
"I can't go back there," Jett continued, his voice dropping to a desperate whisper. "I'll fall apart if I don't have you. Please. Just come home for the weekend. Talk to me. We can start over. I'll go to meetings, I'll do whatever you want. I just need my girl back."
In the past, this would have worked. I would have felt that crushing weight of responsibility, that "biological" urge to heal the wound in front of me. I would have felt guilty for being happy while he was hurting.
But then I saw Parker.
He was walking across the quad, heading toward me from the library. He saw Jett, and for a split second, I saw his jaw tighten, his hand balling into a fist. But he didn't run over to play the hero. He stopped ten feet away, giving me the space to handle my own ghost. He stood there like a lighthouse—not interference, just a steady beam of light showing me where the shore was.
I looked back at Jett. I didn't see a boyfriend. I didn't even see an enemy. I saw a parasitic loop—a cycle that required my energy to survive.
"I'm not your medicine, Jett," I said. My voice didn't shake. "And I'm not your savior. If you're clean, stay clean for yourself. But you need to understand something: the girl you're looking for doesn't exist anymore. She drowned in that pool, and the person standing here now is someone you don't even know."
"Em, don't say that—"
"I'm not 'Em,'" I interrupted. "I'm Emmaline. And I have a lab to get to."
Jett looked at me, then at Parker, and then at the ground. He realized the "sugarcoating" was gone, and there was no more honey left to trap me with. He looked small. For the first time, he didn't look like a monster; he just looked like a person who had made his choices and now had to live with the silence they created.
"Go home, Jett," I said softly. "Get help. But don't come back here."
I turned away from him. I didn't look back to see him walk away. I walked straight to Parker. When I reached him, he didn't ask what Jett said. He just reached out, his hand sliding into mine, his thumb tracing the back of my knuckles.
"Status check?" he asked, his eyes searching mine.
"System clear," I said, leaning my head against his shoulder. "The antibodies worked."
We walked back to Maple Hall, the frost crunching under our feet. The air was cold, but my lungs were full, and for the first time in my life, I knew that no matter what ghost tried to haunt me, I finally had the physics of my own life under control
SEVENTEEN
If life was a series of chemical reactions, Parker was the catalyst I never saw coming.
In the weeks leading up to our first "friend date," the atmosphere in Room 312 had begun to change. It wasn't a sudden explosion; it was more like thermal expansion—a slow, steady increase in warmth that made the molecules of our friendship take up more space.
Parker started doing things that didn't fit into the "roommate" job description. It started with the physics of the room. He rearranged his desk so that when we were both studying, he was facing me instead of the wall.
"The light is better over here," he'd say, but I'd catch him looking at me over the top of his laptop, his pen still, a thoughtful, unreadable expression on his face.
One evening, I was struggling with a complex diagram of the nervous system, trying to memorize the way signals leap across a synaptic gap.
"It's about the connection," Parker said, leaning over my shoulder. He didn't just point at the book; he let his hand rest on the back of my chair, his arm brushing against mine. "The signal only travels if the two sides are in sync. If there's too much distance, the message gets lost."
I looked up at him, and for a second, the air felt thin. "And if they're too close?"
Parker's smile was slow, the kind that reached his eyes and stayed there. "Then the reaction is instantaneous. No lag time."
He started hinting in ways that were purely "Parker"—logical, yet deeply personal. He stopped wearing his oversized hoodies around the room, opting for t-shirts that showed the steady, grounded strength of his arms. When we walked to the dining hall, he didn't just walk beside me; he'd place a hand on the small of my back to guide me through the crowd, a gesture that felt like an anchor in a stormy sea.
The biggest hint came the night before the pier. I was sitting on my bed, shivering slightly as the old radiator clanked and failed to produce heat. Without a word, Parker walked over and handed me his favorite black hoodie—the one he'd been wearing the night he saved me.
"You're shivering, Emmaline," he said. "The law of thermodynamics says heat moves from a warmer object to a cooler one. Since I'm fine, you might as well take the energy."
As I pulled the heavy fabric over my head, I realized it didn't just smell like laundry detergent anymore. It smelled like him—woodsmoke, coffee, and safety.
"Thanks, Parker," I whispered, the sleeves swallowing my hands.
"Don't mention it," he said, lingering by the edge of my bed for a second longer than necessary. He reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers grazing my skin. "It looks better on you anyway."
He went back to his desk, but he didn't start working. He just sat there, watching the snow fall outside, while I sat in his warmth, realizing that the "physics" of our friendship was about to undergo a massive phase change.
EIGHTEEN
The beach was different this time. The first time I had been here, I was a ghost of a girl, shaking the salt from my lungs and watching the world through a lens of trauma. This time, the only weight I carried was the light canvas bag on my shoulder and the steady, grounding presence of Parker beside me.
The dunes were silent, the summer crowds having long since retreated, leaving the coastline to the gulls and the rhythmic, low pulse of the Atlantic.
"The conditions are perfect," Parker said, scanning the horizon. "Low tide, minimal swell. The physics of the ocean are in your favor today, Emmaline."
I looked at the water. It wasn't the neon-blue trap of the pool. It was a shifting mosaic of deep sapphire and foam. I still felt that old spark of fear, but it was dampened now, neutralized by the man holding my hand.
We waded in until the water reached my waist. Parker didn't push me; he let me find my own footing in the shifting sand. He stood in front of me, his chest a solid barrier against the oncoming ripples.
"Swimming isn't about fighting the water," he explained, his voice low and calm over the roar of the surf. "It's about becoming part of the fluid dynamics. If you relax, you become a vessel."
He placed his hands under my back, supporting my weight as I leaned into the swell. "Deep breath. Fill your lungs—they're your natural life jackets."
I closed my eyes and breathed in the salt air. I let my head drop back into the cool water. For the first time, I didn't feel like I was falling. I felt the upward thrust of the ocean holding me up. I began to move my arms in slow, rhythmic arcs. I was navigating it.
When I finally stood up, gasping and laughing, Parker was beaming at me. The look in his eyes wasn't pity—it was pride.
As the sun began to dip, Parker built a small, efficient fire in a pit tucked behind a driftwood log. The sky was a violent, beautiful collision of orange, pink, and deep violet—a spectrum of light scattering through the atmosphere.
There was no one else on the beach. No Jett, no crowds, no noise. Just the crackle of the wood and the distant hiss of the tide. We sat close together on a shared blanket, the warmth of the fire fighting off the evening chill.
Parker went quiet for a moment, staring into the flames. He reached up, rubbing the back of his neck as if he were trying to find the right words in a complex equation. Finally, he turned to me, his expression more serious and vulnerable than I had ever seen it.
"Emmaline," he started, his voice steady but soft. "Hey, I need to get this off my chest. I think you're extremely pretty, sweet, and amazing. You make my life more fun and I want to be your boyfriend. Wanna be my girlfriend?"
The air around the campfire seemed to still. For so long, I had been told what I was—a possession, a burden, a ghost. But as I looked at Parker, I saw the truth. He didn't want to own me; he just wanted to walk beside me.
"Yes," I whispered, reaching out to take his hand. The callouses on his palms felt like safety. "The answer is definitely yes."
As he leaned in to kiss me, the last sliver of the sun disappeared below the horizon, leaving us in the soft, glowing twilight of a brand new world.
NINETEEN
The drive back from the coast was quiet, but it wasn't the heavy, suffocating silence I had grown used to in the past. It was a shared, comfortable peace—the kind that happens when two separate variables finally solve for x.
When we pulled into the Northwood parking lot, the moon was high, casting long, silver shadows across the brick face of Maple Hall. Parker insisted on carrying the beach bag and the leftover wood, his hand finding mine the second his fingers were free.
As we walked through the lobby, the night-shift security guard gave us a tired nod. We moved past the bulletin boards covered in flyers for "Stress-Relief Yoga" and "Pizza Study Groups," climbing the stairs to the third floor. Everything looked the same—the peeling linoleum, the smell of industrial floor wax, the distant hum of a vending machine—but the air between us felt completely different.
We reached Room 312. Parker paused, his key hovering near the lock. He turned to look at me, a playful, slightly nervous glint in his eyes.
"So," he whispered, "technically, the housing contract says we're 'co-habitants.' But I'm thinking the internal policy has officially changed."
"Is that a scientific observation?" I teased, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe.
"It's a factual one," he replied. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, tossing the bag onto his bed before turning back to me. He didn't move to his desk or grab a textbook. He just waited for me to step into our shared space.
I walked in and felt the familiar warmth of the room, but my eyes landed on the door. On the outside, there was a small whiteboard where we usually left notes like 'Out of milk' or 'Library until 10.' I grabbed the dry-erase marker and wiped away the old notes. In clear, bold letters, I wrote:
Emmaline & Parker (Please knock—we're probably debating physics.)
Parker laughed softly, stepping up behind me. He wrapped his arms around my waist, resting his chin on my shoulder as we both looked at our names sitting side-by-side on the board.
"I like the sound of that," he murmured. "It has a nice ring to it. Balanced. Steady."
"It feels like equilibrium," I agreed, leaning back against him.
For the first time since I'd moved in, the room didn't feel like a temporary shelter or a place to hide from the world. With Parker's arms around me and our names linked on the door, it finally felt like a home.
He kissed the top of my head and then let go, heading to the small fridge to grab two waters. "So, girlfriend," he said, the word sounding natural and right on his tongue. "Do you want to finish that Biology prep, or should we just watch a movie and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist for a few hours?"
I looked at my desk, at the diagram of the heart I had pinned up weeks ago. I realized I didn't need the diagram to understand how it worked anymore.
"Movie," I said, kicking off my shoes. "Definitely the movie."
As we settled into the small space between our desks, the light from the laptop screen the only glow in the room, I knew that the "experiment" of our summer was over. We had moved past the hypothesis. We were the proof
TWENTY
The semester had been a grueling marathon of midterms and lab practicals. The walls of Room 312, though filled with the warmth of our new relationship, were starting to feel a little too static. I was hunched over a microscope slide, my eyes burning from staring at the cellular structure of a lily pad, when Parker's hand landed gently on my shoulder.
"Emmaline," he said, his voice carrying that specific tone—the one he used when he was about to propose a new experiment. "What do you know about the physics of a vacuum?"
I blinked, rubbing my eyes. "That it's an empty space? No matter, no pressure?"
"Exactly," he grinned, leaning against my desk. "And I think we're under too much pressure. We need a vacuum. No textbooks, no campus, no cafeteria food. My grandfather left me his old truck for the weekend, and I've got a map, two sleeping bags, and a destination that doesn't have a zip code."
I looked at my Biology binder, then at the spark in his eyes. "A road trip? Parker, we have finals in three weeks."
"Which is exactly why we need to recalibrate our systems now," he countered. "It's a three-day loop. Up the coast, through the redwood forest, and back. Just us, the open road, and a lot of bad radio stations. What do you say? Do you trust the navigator?"
I looked at his outstretched hand. Two years ago, the idea of leaving the "safety" of my routine would have terrified me. But with Parker, the routine wasn't my safety—he was.
"Let me pack my flannel," I smiled.
The truck was an old 1990s Ford, smelling of motor oil and peppermint gum. As we pulled out of the Northwood parking lot, the heavy iron gates fading in the rearview mirror, I felt a physical weight lift off my chest.
Parker was in his element. He had a physical map spread out on the dashboard, though he barely looked at it. He drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the center console, palm up, waiting for mine.
"First stop," he announced as the city skyline transitioned into rolling green hills. "A diner I found online that claims to have the world's best blueberry pancakes. We need to fuel up. It's a matter of energy conservation."
The first day was a blur of wind-whipped hair and laughter. We sang along to static-filled country songs and stopped at every "Scenic Lookout" sign we saw. At one point, we pulled over near a cliffside to watch the sunset. Parker pointed out the way the light refracted through the mist, explaining the Rayleigh scattering that made the horizon turn that deep, bruised purple.
"You see beauty," I teased, leaning my head on his shoulder. "And you see a math problem."
"I see both," he whispered, kissing the top of my head. "The math just proves that the beauty isn't an accident."
That night, we camped in the bed of the truck under a sky so clear it looked like someone had spilled silver ink across a black canvas. We laid side-by-side, wrapped in heavy blankets, staring up at the Milky Way.
"It's a lot of space," I whispered, feeling small but, for the first time, not insignificant.
"It's $93$ billion light-years of observable universe," Parker said. "But right here, in this truck? This is the only part that matters to me."
He turned on his side, his face inches from mine in the dark. "I wanted to bring you out here because I wanted you to see that the world is bigger than a dorm room. It's bigger than what happened in high school. It's vast, Emmaline. And you can go anywhere in it. I just hope I'm always the one in the passenger seat."
I reached out, tracing the line of his jaw. "You're the one driving, Parker. I think I'll stay right here."
TWENTYONE
The three days we spent in that old Ford truck felt like a glitch in the matrix—a pocket of time where the laws of "real life" didn't apply. We weren't students, we weren't roommates, and we weren't the people our pasts had forced us to be. We were just two souls moving through space at sixty miles per hour.
Our first stop was the "World Famous" diner Parker had found. It was a chrome-plated relic on the edge of a forgotten highway.
"The nutritional value of these pancakes is questionable," I noted, watching a thick slab of butter melt over a stack of blueberry hotcakes. "But the glucose levels are definitely going to help with our alertness."
Parker grinned, stealing a bite of mine before I could protest. "It's about the experience, Em. You can't calculate the joy of a perfect pancake using a spreadsheet."
After breakfast, we took a spontaneous detour. Parker saw a hand-painted sign for a "Mineral Museum" in the basement of an old library. Most people would have driven past, but Parker's eyes lit up. We spent two hours in a dusty room looking at geodes and quartz. He explained the crystalline structures—how atoms arrange themselves in a repeating pattern to create something beautiful and strong.
"Like us," he whispered as we walked back to the truck. "Good patterns. Steady growth."
By the second day, we had reached the edge of the redwood forest. The trees were so tall they seemed to hold up the sky, their thick bark smelling of damp earth and ancient secrets.
We hiked a trail that led to a hidden creek. I sat on a mossy log, watching the water rush over smooth stones. Parker didn't try to fill the silence. He sat behind me, his chest against my back, his arms wrapped around my waist.
"Did you know these trees communicate?" I asked, leaning my head back against his shoulder. "They use a fungal network in the soil to send nutrients to the weaker trees. It's called a mycorrhizal network."
"Biological teamwork," Parker murmured, his breath warm against my neck. "I like that. No tree stands alone."
That afternoon, we found a flat stretch of beach near the forest edge. The sand was dark and coarse. Parker taught me how to skip stones. He explained the angle of attack needed to make the stone bounce across the surface of the water. I failed ten times, splashing the water into his face, but he just laughed, wiping the salt from his eyes and guiding my arm again. When I finally got a stone to skip three times, I felt a rush of pure, unadulterated triumph.
On our final night, we parked the truck on a high ridge overlooking the valley. We didn't bother with a tent; the weather was clear enough to sleep in the truck bed.
Parker had brought an old telescope, but we ended up just lying on our backs, using his green laser pointer to trace the constellations.
"There's the Great Bear," he said, the green beam stabbing into the dark. "And there's Orion's Belt. The light you're seeing from those stars left them thousands of years ago. We're looking at the past, Emmaline."
"I like our present better," I said, turning to look at him.
He put the pointer down and pulled me closer, the heavy wool blanket cocooning us. We talked about the things we were afraid of—not just the past, but the future. We talked about grad school, about where we wanted to live, and about the fact that neither of us wanted to imagine a version of those plans that didn't include the other.
He didn't make a grand speech. He just held my hand under the blanket and told me about a specific star that had burned out long ago, yet its light was still guiding travelers home.
"That's how I feel about you," he said. "Even on the days when I feel like I'm losing my way, your light is already there, showing me where the center is."
When we finally fell asleep, the only sound was the wind through the pines and the steady, synchronized beating of our hearts. We weren't just a boy and a girl on a road trip anymore. We were a system in perfect balance.
TWENTYTWO
The bubble didn't burst so much as it slowly deflated as the Northwood University skyline appeared on the horizon. The transition from the redwood-scented air of the Ford truck to the smell of bus exhaust and industrial heaters was jarring.
We pulled into the parking lot of Maple Hall late Sunday night. The campus felt different—smaller, somehow. Or maybe it was just that I felt bigger.
"Back to the lab," Parker sighed, killing the engine. The silence that followed was heavy. We both sat there for a moment, reluctant to open the doors and let the 'real world' back in.
"It doesn't have to be the same as before," I said, reaching across the center console to squeeze his hand. "The variables have changed, remember?"
We lugged our bags up to the third floor. As we turned the corner toward Room 312, I saw a group of guys from Jett's old circle standing near the vending machines. My heart did a familiar, sharp gallop against my ribs, but before the panic could settle, I felt Parker's arm drape over my shoulder. He didn't say anything to them; he didn't need to. His presence was a physical shield, a reminder that I wasn't an isolated target anymore.
We reached our door, and I saw the whiteboard we had updated before we left.
Emmaline & Parker(On a Road Trip - Do Not Disturb)
Parker erased it with a grin, and for a second, I expected him to write something about study hours. Instead, he drew a small, simplified diagram of a vector.
"Magnitude and direction," he whispered. "That's us now. We aren't just sitting here; we're moving somewhere."
Inside, the room was exactly as we had left it. My biology books were still piled on my desk, and his charcoal sketches were scattered on his. But as I started to unpack my flannel and my boots, I realized the 'halves' of the room were gone.
I sat on his bed to help him untangle his charging cables, and he ended up sitting at my desk to help me organize my notes for the upcoming final. We had reached a state of osmosis—the barrier between "his" and "mine" had become entirely permeable.
"Hey, Em?" Parker asked, looking up from my anatomy textbook.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for coming with me. I know leaving the 'safety' of these walls is hard for you. But you did it. You drove three hundred miles and you didn't look back once."
I walked over and sat on the edge of the desk next to him. "I didn't need to look back. Everything I need was in the passenger seat."
He pulled me into a kiss that tasted like the salt air we had left behind. We weren't just roommates who happened to be dating. We were a team, prepping for a future that suddenly didn't feel so terrifying.
TWENTYTWO
The pressure of finals week had turned the air in Room 312 into a pressurized chamber. For the first time, the "equilibrium" we had worked so hard to maintain began to crack under the weight of sleep deprivation and external expectations.
It started with something trivial—a spilled cup of coffee over my meticulously labeled Biology flashcards—but it quickly spiraled into a release of months of repressed tension.
"Parker! Watch it!" I snapped, scrambling to save the ink-blurred diagrams of the endocrine system. "I spent three days on these. My entire grade depends on this exam!"
Parker, who hadn't slept in thirty-six hours due to a grueling astrophysics project, didn't offer his usual gentle apology. He dropped his pen with a sharp clack. "It was an accident, Emmaline. And honestly? Maybe if you weren't so obsessed with perfection, you wouldn't be on edge every single second of the day."
I felt a cold flash of heat behind my eyes. "Obsessed? I'm trying to build a future, Parker. I don't have the luxury of 'winging it' like you do. Not everyone has a natural intuition for their major."
"Winging it?" He stood up, his height suddenly feeling imposing in the small room. "I spend fourteen hours a day in the lab. You think this is easy? You think I'm just standing around while you do all the 'hard' work?"
"I think you're being insensitive!" I yelled, the sound of my own voice shocking me. It was a roar I hadn't used since Jett. "You're acting like my stress doesn't matter because yours is 'calculated' and mine is just 'emotional'."
"That is exactly what I mean!" Parker shot back, his face flushing. "Every time things get hard, you retreat into this shell and act like I'm the enemy. I'm not Jett, Emmaline! Stop treating me like the person who's going to break you!"
The room went deathly silent.
That was the word. The ghost in the room. I looked at Parker, and for a split second, I didn't see my best friend; I saw the fear he was pointing out. I saw the way I was using my studies as a shield to keep everyone—even him—at a distance.
"Is that what you think?" I whispered, my voice trembling. "That I'm just waiting for you to hurt me?"
"I think you're so afraid of losing control that you're pushing away the only person who's trying to help you keep it," he said, his voice dropping to a jagged edge. "I can't be your constant if you keep trying to solve the equation without me."
He grabbed his jacket and walked out, the door clicking shut with a finality that felt like a physical bruise.
For two hours, I sat in the silence. I stared at the ruined flashcards, but the letters didn't make sense. I thought about the Second Law of Thermodynamics—the idea that entropy, or disorder, always increases in an isolated system.
We had become an isolated system. We had stopped talking, stopped sharing the load, and let the pressure build until the pipes burst.
I realized he was right. I was terrified. Not of him, but of the fact that I loved him enough that losing him would actually destroy me. I was treating our relationship like a lab experiment I could control, rather than a living thing that needed to breathe.
I didn't wait for him to come back. I went to find him.
I found him in the student union, sitting in a dark corner with a cold cup of tea, staring at nothing. I didn't say anything at first; I just sat down across from him.
"Entropy," I said softly.
Parker looked up, his eyes tired and red-rimmed. "What?"
"The Second Law," I said. "Everything naturally moves toward disorder unless you put energy back into the system. I stopped putting the energy in, Parker. I was too busy trying to keep the walls up."
Parker sighed, a long, shaky breath. He reached across the table and took my hand. His grip wasn't a "hold" anymore; it was an anchor. "I shouldn't have brought him up. I shouldn't have yelled. I'm just... I'm tired of feeling like I have to prove I'm on your side."
"You don't have to prove it," I said, squeezing his hand. "The data is already there. I just need to trust the results."
We didn't go back to studying that night. We went back to Room 312, made a pot of tea, and sat on the floor talking until the sun started to peak over the horizon. We didn't fix everything in one night, but we put the energy back into the system. We chose the disorder of being human over the perfection of being alone.
TWENTYTHREE
The morning after the fight, the light in Room 312 felt different. It wasn't the harsh, fluorescent glare of a study session, but the soft, filtered gold of a sunrise that signaled a reset. The air was no longer thick with static; the pressure had finally equalized.
Parker was sitting on the edge of his bed, rubbing his face. I brought him a mug of tea—no caffeine this time, just peppermint to soothe the jagged edges of the night before.
"We should talk about the 'why,'" I said, sitting on the floor by his feet. "Not the coffee or the flashcards. The real stuff."
Parker leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "I think it happened because we stopped being roommates and started being each other's only support system. I took on the role of your 'protector' so hard that I started to resent the fact that you still had walls up. I felt like I was failing if you weren't perfectly happy."
"And I," I added, looking at the tea leaves at the bottom of my cup, "was treating our relationship like a negative feedback loop. In biology, a negative feedback loop is meant to bring a system back to its set point—it's how your body maintains its temperature."
"I thought that if I could just control every variable—my grades, my schedule, my emotions—I could prevent another disaster like Jett," I continued. "I was using you as a stabilizer, but I wasn't letting you be a person. I was so afraid of the 'disorder' of a real relationship that I was accidentally suffocating it."
Parker reached down, his fingers interlocking with mine. "The irony is that in physics, a perfectly stable system is a dead one. Movement requires friction. Growth requires a little bit of chaos."
"I don't want to be 'perfectly stable' if it means we can't be honest," I whispered. "I'm sorry I acted like you were a threat just because you were close."
"And I'm sorry I snapped," Parker said, his thumb tracing the back of my hand. "I'm not your caretaker, Emmaline. I'm your partner. That means I get to see the messy parts, too. You don't have to be 'Summa Cum Laude' for me to love you."
We spent the rest of the morning doing something we hadn't done in weeks: absolutely nothing productive. We didn't open a textbook. Instead, we worked together to clean the room, erasing the physical mess of the fight. We threw away the ruined flashcards—a symbolic clearing of the old, rigid way of thinking.
As we worked, the "feel-good" chemistry of the room returned. It wasn't just about the absence of fighting; it was the presence of understanding. We discussed how to handle the next three weeks of finals: scheduled breaks where we had to leave the room, a "no-physics-talk" dinner rule, and an agreement that if one of us felt a "wall" going up, we'd say it out loud immediately.
By the time the sun was high in the sky, we weren't just "back to normal." We were better. We had tested the limits of our structure and found where it needed reinforcing.
"Status check?" Parker asked, leaning against the doorframe as I pinned a new, blank piece of paper to my corkboard.
"The system is resilient," I smiled, walking into his arms. "And the variables are exactly where they need to be."