Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
I walk the main drag, alone except for a pair of groundskeepers sunburned to the color of old bricks. My shadow stalks me across the concrete, haloed by the kind of blue-gold sun that feels more August than June. I breathe in, and the air tastes like wet grass and sunscreen, a memory of childhoods I only experienced through TV. Even the squirrels look surprised to see me, pausing in their foraging to flick their tails and size me up.
I’m not an undergrad anymore. The degree is real, a slab of parchment sitting on my dresser at the dorm, proof I’m not just a perpetual screw-up. But I signed up for the co-term, the five-year BA-to-MA bridge, and that means I get to spend another year in these borrowed buildings, walking these emptied-out halls. I’m a ghost in a place built for ghosts. I should find it sad, but mostly I feel lucky to be left behind.
My destination is the campus bookstore, an un-airconditioned cave that somehow smells simultaneously like cardboard and sugar cookies. I work here now, three days a week, stacking displays and slapping “required reading” stickers on the covers of books I’ll never read. It’s honest work, if you don’t mind paper-cuts and the stares of lifers who don’t recognize you without a backpack and a sense of dread.
Inside, the AC is a rumor, nothing more. My boss is nowhere to be found, which is normal. I duck behind the counter, drop my bag, and grab the cart of summer class books. I’ve gotten good at this: arranging the pyramid of paperback misery, the used copies always at the bottom, the new ones perched on top like a threat. Today’s project is a window display: “Century’s Best Beach Reads.” I laugh, thinking of anyone voluntarily reading Ulysses by a lake, but the poster says to put it there, so I do.
As I’m adjusting a stack of modernist poetry anthologies (no one’s beach read, ever), I feel the shift in the air before I see him. There’s a trick to it: the way his footsteps slow at the door, how he always hovers a second too long on the threshold, as if the world might pull him back. Even now, after everything, I catch myself attuned to his presence.
Liam steps in, dark hair still artfully wild, button-down rolled to the elbows, blue jeans faded at the knees. He looks out of place among the shelf of orientation t-shirts and century-old university pennants, but he owns the room in a way that makes everyone else background noise. I freeze, one hand on the cart and the other holding a copy of White Teeth.
“Hey,” he says, soft and private.
It’s been almost two months since I graduated, since we stopped pretending. The rules are different now: no more office hours, no more clandestine emails, no more whispered rendezvous in the stacks. We’re just two people with a significant age gap and a shared addiction to stories. I still catch myself waiting for a shoe to drop, but it hasn’t yet. He’s here, and I’m here, and somehow, that’s enough.
I set the book down, brush my hair behind my ear, and try not to grin like a fangirl. “Hey, yourself.”
He glances around the empty store. “Busy day?”
“You know it,” I deadpan. “I’ve already restocked the rainbow highlighters and the entire John Green section. I might go for Employee of the Month.”
He smiles, and it’s not the “good girl” smile that still thrills me to the bone. It’s something softer, with edges worn down by actual affection. I feel my insides heat up in a way that’s got nothing to do with the faulty AC.
He crosses to the counter, hands in his pockets. “I was hoping you’d be here. I finished my summer seminar early.”
I arch an eyebrow. “The seminar about postwar poetry?”
“It’s more of a confessional, actually.” He says it like an apology. “I made them all read Plath and Sexton. There were casualties.”
“Any survivors?”
He shrugs. “A few. One even wrote me a thank-you note, though it may have been ironic.”
I laugh. The image of some hungover sophomore scribbling “thanks for the trauma” on a library receipt is too perfect.
We stand there, basking in the weirdness of being public—no more shadows, no more secrets. There’s a freedom to it, but also a risk. Last week, a faculty couple saw us walking together at the park and the gossip spread like mold on bread. The only thing that keeps me from spiraling is how little my boyfriend cares.
Liam glances at the security mirror, then at me. “Is it safe?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper.
I scan the store. The only other person is a bored undergrad shelving textbooks, earbuds jammed in so far he’s practically immune to the world. “Safe as we’ll ever be,” I reply.