Chapter 2: Collisions and Coffee
792 Words
The next morning, I was already regretting my decision to say yes.
Sleep hadn’t come easy the night before. I kept replaying the conversation in the study room—Celine’s wild idea about immersive memory spaces, the way her voice lilted when she said “haunted,” the sudden flash of recognition I felt in my chest that scared me more than I cared to admit.
I didn’t like unpredictable things.
And Celine Navarro was chaos incarnate.
Still, I showed up. Noon sharp. Back in study room B7, sketchpad in hand.
She was late this time, naturally. I was halfway through a perspective drawing of the first “memory room” when the door burst open.
“Sorry!” she sang, sliding into the room with a paper bag and two coffees. “The barista wouldn’t stop flirting with me. Tragic, really.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you flirt back with everyone who makes your drink?”
“Only the cute ones.”
She handed me a coffee. Black, no sugar. I stared at it.
“I asked what you drank last time,” she said, plopping into her seat. “I remember things.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t sound so shocked.”
As she unpacked a small container of macarons, the door creaked open again.
A tall guy with round glasses and a mop of dark curls poked his head in. “Celine, you’re ditching our lab again?”
Celine winced. “Jonas, not now.”
He sighed and stepped in anyway. “You promised you’d help with the color grading today.”
She waved him off. “I have a different project now. Bigger stakes. Emotional resonance.”
He turned to me, offering a polite smile. “You must be the architecture partner. I’m Jonas, multimedia arts too. We’ve suffered Celine’s chaos for three years now.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Blink twice if she’s driving you insane.”
I blinked once. Just to be safe.
He laughed. “Good luck. I’ll cover for her today.”
“Tell Amanda I owe her cookies!” Celine called after him as he left.
I sipped my coffee and focused on the sketches. “So. Memory rooms. I was thinking we could start with a transitional space. A threshold. Maybe something narrow. Almost claustrophobic.”
She leaned forward. “Ooh, a sensory reset. I like that. What about ambient whispers? Like voices you can’t quite catch.”
I nodded. “And maybe dim lighting. Cool tones. Blue and gray.”
Celine drummed her fingers on the table. “Like the feeling of forgetting something important.”
We fell into rhythm. Somehow, despite everything, we made a good team. She brought the feeling, the texture, the abstract. I gave it structure, grounding, shape.
Halfway through our planning, another knock on the door broke the momentum.
“Hope I’m not interrupting,” said a voice.
A girl stepped in—slender, stylish, short-cropped curls dyed a vivid cherry red. She wore a film club hoodie and carried a sketchbook under one arm.
“Oh no,” Celine muttered.
The girl gave her a flat look. “You bailed on the storyboarding meeting, again.”
“I got pulled into this cross-department thing,” Celine said. “Remember? Emotional resonance?”
“Right. That’s Iris, huh?” She turned to me, sharp eyes assessing. “I’m Harper. I direct most of the student films Celine stars in. And I’ve heard more about you in the past week than I have about her own mother.”
Celine groaned. “Harper.”
“What? She’s cute. Stoic. Very ‘I hate people but I’ll tolerate you’ energy. It works.”
I blinked. “This is a study room.”
“And I’m leaving.” Harper winked. “Nice to meet you, Iris.”
As soon as the door shut behind her, I said, “You have very loud friends.”
“You’re welcome,” Celine replied with a grin.
—
We spent the next few hours mapping out the first two rooms: the threshold and the memory of “a first goodbye.” I didn’t ask why she picked that theme. She didn’t explain.
But when she hummed under her breath while scrolling through her playlist, I recognized the tone.
It sounded like something already broken.
When we finally packed up, she lingered at the door.
“You’re not as cold as you pretend to be,” she said casually.
“I don’t pretend.”
“You do. But it’s okay. It makes things interesting.”
And before I could reply, she was gone again—leaving nothing but a fading echo of her perfume and that maddening smile.
- Writer
