Two People Who Should Never Connect.
664 Words
Zara’s POV
The apartment was quiet when I got home.
Not peaceful quiet.
The other kind — the kind that sits in corners and waits.
I dropped my bag by the door and didn’t bother turning on the lights. The city bled orange through the blinds, enough to move around without thinking too hard. No one had texted.
No one had called.
That was normal.
That was fine.
At some point, I had stopped treating silence like evidence that something was missing.
I made tea I already knew I wouldn’t finish, then sat on the floor with my back against the couch and waited for the only part of the day that ever really felt like mine.
Night.
Because when night came, I became someone else.
Not prettier.
Not louder.
Just honest in ways daylight never allowed.
LunaInk had 4,200 followers and not a single photo of my face.
No real name.
No location.
No details that could turn me into someone touchable.
Just words — posted too late at night, written in lowercase, always a little too truthful for comfort.
I opened the drafts folder on my phone.
Seventeen unfinished thoughts stared back at me.
Things I’d written in class, on the train, in grocery store lines, in those strange thirty-second moments after someone says something that hits you too hard and you need to pin the feeling down before it disappears.
I scrolled through them slowly, like choosing which bruise to press.
Then I found the one from last week.
The subway.
The man who gave up his seat for a stranger and then cried quietly into the train window for four stops afterward like kindness had cost him something.
I reread the draft.
Changed three words.
Changed them back.
Then posted it before I could lose the nerve.
“some people look strong because no one has ever stayed long enough to see them break.”
I turned my phone face-down immediately.
That was the rule.
Post it, then walk away.
Don’t refresh the notifications like they’re votes deciding whether you deserve to be heard.
I closed my eyes and let the apartment settle around me.
But even in the quiet, my mind drifted backward.
To the classroom.
To Ethan Cole.
I hated that it stayed with me.
It shouldn’t have mattered. People like him existed in a completely different ecosystem than people like me. He was the kind of person who walked into rooms and became the center of them without trying.
I was the kind people forgot mid-conversation.
And yet, all evening, part of me kept replaying the exact way he’d looked at me before he spoke.
Not cruel.
That would’ve been easier.
Just certain.
Certain I was already a disappointment before knowing anything about me.
I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes until the memory blurred.
Across the city, Ethan Cole probably wasn’t thinking about me at all.
The thought should’ve made me feel relieved.
Instead, it left something hollow behind.
I exhaled slowly and reached for my tea again.
Cold already.
Typical.
My phone buzzed once against the floor beside me.
I almost ignored it.
Then curiosity won.
I flipped the screen over lazily—
And froze.
New follower: e.cole
My heartbeat stumbled strangely.
I stared at the username.
No.
There were probably hundreds of Ethan Coles in the world.
Thousands.
Still, my chest tightened anyway.
I clicked the profile before I could stop myself.
Private account.
Minimal posts.
No profile picture.
Nothing that confirmed anything.
But something about the username sat wrong in my chest.
e.cole.
I swallowed.
Maybe it wasn’t him.
Maybe it was.
Either way, he didn’t know LunaInk belonged to me. That should’ve made me feel safe.
Instead, unease unfolded slowly beneath my ribs.
Because earlier today, Ethan Cole had looked directly at me and decided he wanted nothing to do with me.
And now, somehow—
The version of me no one was supposed to find had his attention.
- Writer
