The Loans We take For Love 💕

chapter 12

The Loans We Take for Love

Chapter 12: The Winter I Realized That Cold Is Easier to Bear When You Stop Expecting to Be Warm

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December arrived like a wound that refused to scab.

The campus transformed overnight—strings of lights wrapped around bare trees, a towering pine erected in the student union, the sound of carols bleeding from every speaker. Students walked through the halls with shopping bags and gift wrap and the particular glow of people who had somewhere to go for the holidays.

Naomi had nowhere to go.

Her mother's door was locked. Her father's couch was still unavailable. Liana had invited her—"It's not much, but it's warm"—but Naomi had declined. Liana's apartment was small, her roommate already staying for the holidays, and Naomi had learned that being a burden was a debt she could not afford.

She would stay on campus. She had done it before. She would do it again.

The dorms emptied like a drain. By the second week of December, Naomi was one of a handful of students left in her building—strangers who nodded in the hallway but did not speak, ghosts haunting the same empty halls.

She worked more shifts at the café. The bakery closed for the holidays, so she picked up extra hours at a grocery store, stocking shelves at night. She told herself she was grateful for the work. Grateful for the money. Grateful for anything that kept her from sitting alone in her dorm room, counting the cracks in the ceiling.

She did not buy a single gift. She could not afford to.

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The loneliness arrived in waves.

Some days, she barely noticed it. She woke, she worked, she studied, she slept. The routine was a narcotic, numbing her to everything except the next task, the next shift, the next problem set.

Other days, the loneliness was a physical thing—a weight on her chest, a hand around her throat. She would be walking across campus, the cold air sharp against her face, and she would see a family walking together, a mother holding a child's hand, a father carrying a stack of presents. She would feel the absence of her own family like a missing limb.

She had a family. Technically. But her mother had locked the door, and the maternal side had judged her guilty, and her father was three states away with a woman who did not want her, and her sister was barely surviving.

She was alone.

She had always been alone.

But the holidays made it harder to pretend otherwise.

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Eli texted her every day.

"Did you eat?"

"Yes."

"What did you eat?"

"Food."

"You're impossible."

"You're persistent."

He called her on Christmas Eve. She was in her dorm room, wrapped in a blanket, a textbook open on her lap. The heating in the building was unreliable, and she could see her breath when she exhaled.

"Merry Christmas," he said. His voice was warm, familiar, a reminder that there was a world outside her cold room.

"Merry Christmas."

"What are you doing?"

"Studying. You?"

"Family dinner. My mom made too much food. She's trying to guilt me into eating a second plate."

"Eat the second plate."

"I'm going to. But I wanted to call you first." A pause. "I wish you were here."

Naomi closed her eyes. "Me too."

"Next year. You're coming next year. I'll tell my mom you're my project partner. She'll feed you until you burst."

Naomi almost smiled. "Project partner?"

"Engineering project. You're helping me with thermodynamics. It's not a lie. You are helping me. Just not right now."

"You're ridiculous, Eli."

"I know. But you're smiling. I can hear it."

She was. A small, fragile smile, the first one she had smiled in days.

"Thank you," she said.

"Don't thank me. Just eat something. And not instant noodles. Real food."

"I'll try."

"Try harder."

They hung up. Naomi sat in the silence, the phone warm in her hand, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was still cold. Still alone. Still counting the days until the semester started again.

But she was not forgotten.

That was something.

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Liana sent her a gift card.

Fifty dollars to the grocery store. The text that accompanied it was brief: "Eat something that isn't rice and beans. Love you."

Naomi walked to the grocery store on Christmas Day, the streets empty, the sky gray. She bought eggs, bread, cheese, milk, a bag of apples. She bought a small package of coffee—not the cheap kind, the kind she used to buy before the loans. She bought a frozen pizza, because she had not had pizza in months, because she wanted to taste something that reminded her of being a child.

She walked back to her dorm with her bags heavy in her arms. She cooked the pizza in the communal oven, ate it sitting on her bed, and pretended she was not crying.

The tears came anyway.

She let them.

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The loans edged closer to default.

Naomi sat at her desk on the last day of December, the spiral notebook open in front of her. The deferment had bought her time, but time was not money. Interest was accruing. The mountain was growing. She had calculated her post-graduation payments so many times that the numbers had lost their meaning.

She would graduate with nearly forty thousand dollars in debt. Forty thousand. It felt like a life sentence.

She closed the notebook and put it back under her mattress.

Then she opened her laptop and applied for three more scholarships. She had stopped counting the rejections. She had stopped hoping. But she kept applying, because applying was something, and something was better than nothing.

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The new year arrived without celebration.

Naomi watched the clock tick from 11:59 to 12:00, alone in her dorm room, the campus silent around her. She did not make resolutions. Resolutions were for people who believed in fresh starts. She believed in survival, and survival did not require a new year.

She went to sleep.

She woke the next morning to a text from Eli: "Happy New Year. You made it. One more semester. One step closer."

She typed back: "One step closer."

She got dressed. She went to work.

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The dorm filled again in mid-January.

Students returned from their holidays with new clothes and new stories and new resolutions. The hallways buzzed with laughter and gossip and the particular energy of people who had been loved over the break. Naomi moved among them like a ghost, present but not present, seen but not known.

She had stopped expecting to be warm. The cold was easier to bear when she stopped fighting it.

Eli returned on a Sunday afternoon. He texted her when he arrived: "I'm back. Coffee tomorrow?"

"Coffee tomorrow."

She met him in the library on Monday morning. He looked different—tanner, relaxed, like he had actually slept over the break. He placed a cup of coffee in front of her—black, no sugar—and sat down.

"You look better," he said.

"I look the same."

"You look less tired. That's better."

She shrugged. "I slept."

"Good. You needed it."

They studied in silence. The library was quiet, the semester not yet in full swing, the world holding its breath before the chaos began. Naomi solved problems. Eli took notes. The coffee grew cold.

"You're going to make it," Eli said, not looking up from his notebook.

"I know."

"I'm not saying it to make you feel better. I'm saying it because it's true. You've survived worse than a semester of engineering. You'll survive this."

Naomi looked at him. His face was calm, certain, unshakeable.

"I know," she said again.

She believed it. Not because it was easy. Because it was the only choice she had.

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That night, she updated her spiral notebook.

She added the new semester's tuition. She added the new semester's loans. She added the interest that would accrue while she slept, while she studied, while she worked.

The numbers were terrifying. But she had stopped being terrified. Terror was a luxury she could not afford.

She closed the notebook and put it back under her mattress.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Liana: "I'm sending you seventy-five on Friday. Don't argue."

She didn't argue.

Another text, from Caleb: "I hope you had a good break. I'm not going to push. I just wanted you to know I'm thinking about you."

She didn't reply.

A third text, from an unknown number: "Naomi. It's Damon. I heard about your situation. I'm not trying to interfere. I just wanted to say I'm praying for you. Not in a weird religious way. In a 'I hope you're okay' way."

She stared at the screen. Damon. The man who had wanted her to bear his kids. The man she had rejected for Darian. He was engaged now. He was moving on. And he was still thinking about her.

She typed: "Thank you. I'm okay. Congratulations on your engagement."

She turned off her phone and lay down on her bed.

The ceiling cracks were still there. She did not count them.

She was still cold. Still alone. Still in debt.

But she was still here.

And that was enough.

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End of Chapter 12

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