The Loans We take For Love 💕

chapter 13

The Loans We Take for Love

Chapter 13: The Spring I Stopped Flinching at His Name and Started Living for My Own

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February arrived with a cold that seemed to have no end.

Naomi had stopped checking the weather. It didn't matter. She walked to class in the dark and walked back in the dark, her hood pulled tight against the wind, her hands buried in the pockets of a coat that had lost its warmth years ago. The days blurred together. Lectures. Problem sets. Café shifts. Bakery shifts. Tutoring. Sleep. Repeat.

But something was different.

She noticed it first in the hallway. A group of students was gathered outside the structural analysis classroom, and someone said Darian's name—just a passing mention, something about a group project—and Naomi felt nothing. No lurch in her stomach. No tightening in her chest. No need to look away or pretend she hadn't heard.

She just kept walking.

She thought about that moment later, sitting in the library with Eli, her coffee growing cold between her hands.

"His name doesn't hurt anymore," she said.

Eli looked up from his textbook. "Whose name?"

"Darian's."

He didn't say anything for a moment. Just studied her face, looking for the lie. He didn't find one.

"When did that happen?" he asked.

"I don't know. Sometime between the fall and now. I just… stopped caring."

"That's not nothing."

"It feels like nothing." She paused. "But maybe nothing is exactly what I needed."

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The academic victory came in March.

Naomi had been working on a structural analysis project for weeks—a bridge design that required calculations she had never done before. She had stayed up late, skipped meals, rerun the numbers a dozen times. The night before it was due, she realized her initial approach had been wrong. The entire design needed to be reworked.

She almost cried. Almost. But crying took energy, and energy was something she hoarded like a miser.

She started over.

At 2:00 AM, she finished. She printed the report in the computer lab, stapled it together, and slid it under the professor's door. Then she walked back to her dorm in the cold, climbed into bed, and slept for four hours.

A week later, the professor posted grades.

Naomi opened the portal with her eyes half-closed, preparing for the worst. She had done the work. She had done it twice. But she had also worked three shifts at the café that week, and her brain had been foggy with exhaustion, and she had probably made mistakes.

The grade was posted: A-minus.

She stared at the screen. A-minus. Not perfect, but close. Close enough to raise her GPA. Close enough to keep her scholarship. Close enough to prove that she belonged here.

Her hands were shaking.

She texted Eli: "A-minus on the bridge project."

His reply came immediately: "Told you. You're a genius."

"I'm not a genius. I'm just too stubborn to quit."

"Same thing."

She almost smiled. Almost.

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The loans remained. They always remained.

Naomi sat in her dorm room on a rainy March evening, the spiral notebook open on her desk. She had made her payments on time—barely—but the balance seemed to grow no matter what she did. Interest accrued like a second heartbeat. The mountain was still there, still tall, still watching.

She added a new loan to the notebook. Three thousand dollars for next semester's tuition. She had stopped feeling the weight of each new signature. The debt was a fact, like gravity, like winter, like her mother's locked door.

Total debt: $43,200, she wrote.

She stared at the number. Then she closed the notebook and put it back under her mattress.

She had a plan. Graduate. Get a job. Live cheaply. Pay off the loans in ten years, maybe fifteen. It was not a dream. It was a math problem. And math problems, no matter how brutal, could be solved.

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She saw Darian at a campus event in late March.

It was an engineering department mixer—mandatory attendance for credit. Naomi had worn her usual uniform: jeans, a black sweater, the hoodie she had owned since high school. She stood near the window, a cup of punch in her hand, watching the crowd.

Darian was across the room, talking to Marcus. He looked the same. Handsome. Confident. The kind of smile that had once made her heart race.

Now it made her feel nothing.

He glanced up. Their eyes met.

Naomi did not look away. She did not smile. She did not frown. She just looked at him like he was a stranger—because he was. The person she had loved had never really existed. The person standing across the room was a projection, a fantasy, a boy who had used her and discarded her and bragged about not getting caught.

He looked away first.

Naomi turned back to the window. The rain was falling, soft and steady, washing the campus clean.

---

Eli appeared beside her. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"He was staring at you."

"I know."

"Does it bother you?"

She thought about the question. Did it bother her? A year ago, she would have been paralyzed. A year ago, she would have analyzed every glance, every smile, every possible meaning. Now, she just felt tired.

"No," she said. "He's not my problem anymore."

Eli nodded. "Good."

They stood in silence, watching the rain.

---

Caleb texted her less frequently now.

She had been clear with him. She had set a boundary. He was respecting it—mostly. Every few weeks, he sent a message: "Hope you're doing okay." or "Thinking of you." She replied with one-word answers, polite but distant. She did not encourage him. She did not push him away entirely.

She was learning, slowly, that boundaries were not walls. They were doors. Doors that she could open or close as she chose.

Caleb was not on the other side of any door she wanted to open.

Not now. Maybe not ever.

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Liana called on a Sunday night.

"I have news," she said. Her voice was strange—not sad, not happy, something in between.

"What kind of news?"

"I'm moving. To a different city. Got a job offer. Better pay. Better hours. Better everything."

Naomi felt a twist in her chest. Liana was the only family member who still reached out. The only one who sent money. The only one who called.

"That's great," she said, and meant it.

"It's far, though. Like, really far. I won't be able to send you money as often. Shipping costs, you know."

"I know."

"I'm sorry, Naomi."

"Don't be. You have to live your life. I'll figure it out."

They were quiet for a moment.

"You're going to be okay," Liana said. "You're the strongest person I know."

"Look who's talking."

"I'm serious. You've been through more than anyone should have to go through, and you're still standing. That's not nothing."

Naomi closed her eyes. "Thanks, Liana."

"Love you, little sister."

"Love you too."

They hung up. Naomi sat in the silence, the phone warm in her hand. She was happy for Liana. Truly. But she was also afraid. The money from Liana had been a lifeline. Without it, the loans would press even closer. The mountain would grow even taller.

She would figure it out. She always did.

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April arrived, and with it, the first hint of warmth.

Naomi walked across campus without her coat for the first time in months. The sun was pale but present, the trees beginning to bud, the grass showing green beneath the dead brown. Students sat on the lawn, studying, laughing, living.

She sat on a bench near the engineering building, a textbook open on her lap. She was not studying. She was watching. Watching the world wake up.

Eli found her there.

"You're not studying," he said, sitting down beside her.

"I'm taking a break."

"You never take breaks."

"Maybe I'm learning."

He looked at her. The sun caught his glasses, made them flash. "Maybe you are."

They sat in silence. The campus buzzed around them—conversations, laughter, the distant thud of a soccer ball. Naomi closed her textbook.

"I'm going to graduate," she said.

"I know."

"I'm going to pay off my loans."

"I know that too."

"I'm going to be an engineer. A good one. The kind who builds bridges that don't fall down."

Eli smiled. "That's the goal."

"And I'm going to do it without him. Without any of them."

"You already are."

Naomi leaned back on the bench, tilted her face toward the sun. The warmth was thin, barely there, but it was warmth. It was enough.

---

That night, she updated her spiral notebook.

She added Liana's move. She subtracted the money she would no longer receive. She recalculated her budget, her loans, her future.

The numbers were worse. But she did not cry. She did not panic. She just closed the notebook and put it back under her mattress.

Body count: one. Still one. It will stay one.

Mother: door still locked. I have stopped caring.

Darian: a stranger. A ghost. Nothing.

Eli: still here. Still coffee. Still silence.

Me: still standing.

She turned off the light and lay down in the dark.

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

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

But the spring was coming. The cold was ending.

And Naomi Cruz was still standing.

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End of Chapter 13