Ride or Die, Baby!

The List

Morning brought no sign of the car.

I checked twice from the window before I left. Empty street. Wet pavement. Nothing waiting at the end of the block. I told myself that meant the previous night was over. Closed. Finished.

I packed my bag with more force than necessary and headed to campus determined to treat it exactly that way.

The halls were already busy. I kept my head down and moved straight to my locker. Ordinary morning. Ordinary routine. I would get through the day the same way I always did—classes, scholarship notes, no looking over my shoulder.

I spun the combination and pulled the door open.

A folded piece of paper sat on top of my books.

No envelope. No name on the outside. Just a single sheet creased neatly in half.

My fingers hesitated before I picked it up. I unfolded it.

Handwritten times. One after another. Library closing times for the past three weeks. Accurate to the minute.

Monday — 9:47

Tuesday — 10:12

Wednesday — 9:03

Thursday — 10:41

And on. And on. Every late night I had stayed. Every time the building had emptied and I had walked out alone.

No signature.

No message.

Only the times.

I recognized the handwriting instantly. The same sharp, controlled slant I had seen once on a form Jose Ravell filled out in the student center months ago. I had watched his hand move across the paper without meaning to. I remembered the way he held the pen.

The knowledge settled in my chest like a second heartbeat—heavy, steady, impossible to ignore.

He had been recording the exact hours I was alone.

I stood there with the paper in my hand, locker door still open, people moving past me in the hall. My skin felt too tight. Heat crawled up my throat and down between my legs at the same time, unwanted and sharp. The same body that had pressed against his back in the rain last night now reacted to the proof that he had studied every solitary minute I thought belonged only to me.

I folded the list again, slower this time, and slipped it into my bag like it might burn through the fabric.

“Elara?”

I turned. A girl from my morning seminar stood a few lockers down, brows drawn together.

“You okay? You look like someone just delivered bad news.”

“I’m fine,” I said. The words came out flat.

“You sure? You’ve been staring into that locker for a full minute.”

“Just thinking.” I shut the door harder than I needed to. “I’ll see you in class.”

She watched me a second longer, then shrugged and walked off.

I made it through the first two lectures on autopilot. Every time I opened my notebook I felt the folded paper in my bag like it had weight. In the break between classes I stepped into the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and pulled the list out again.

The times stared back at me. Precise. Intimate. He hadn’t just followed me. He had catalogued the hours I thought no one noticed.

My pulse thudded low and hot. I pressed my thighs together without meaning to and hated the way my body answered the violation with something that felt too much like arousal. The memory of his hand covering mine on his stomach last night tangled with the image of him writing these numbers in the same controlled script. Watching. Timing. Waiting.

I folded the paper once more and put it away.

By early afternoon the sky had cleared. I crossed the quad toward the library, bag tight against my side, determined to bury myself in scholarship work and not think about the list for one full hour.

I saw him before I reached the steps.

Jose stood on the far side of the open grass, near the low wall where students sometimes sat between classes. Black jacket. Hands in his pockets. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t talking to anyone.

He was looking straight at me.

Our eyes met.

He didn’t glance away. He didn’t pretend he hadn’t seen me. He simply held the contact across the entire distance of the quad, steady and unblinking, like he had been waiting for this exact moment.

My breath shortened. Heat flooded my face and settled heavy between my legs. The list in my bag felt suddenly louder. He knew I had found it. Or he wanted me to know he knew. Either way, the look he gave me was not casual. It was deliberate. Claiming. The same quiet intensity from the rain, from the hallway, from every time the black bike had appeared when I least wanted it and most needed it.

I should have looked away first. I didn’t.

I stood there on the path with students passing on either side of me and let him see that I knew. That I had the proof of how carefully he had mapped my solitude. That the girl who had climbed on his bike last night was the same girl now staring back with the list burning a hole in her bag.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

I didn’t look down right away. I kept my eyes on Jose. He still hadn’t moved.

When I finally pulled the phone out, the screen showed a new message from a number I didn’t know.

Now you know. What are you going to do about it?