Grace
It came up on my lock screen Monday morning, the official first day of classes, the way inconvenient things always did—when I wasn't ready for it and had nowhere to put it.
A campus sports news roundup popped up, and there it was again: Mason's name next to a headline I'd already read when Olivia had shown it to me weeks ago, a story I'd been quietly carrying around ever since like a stone in my shoe. The algorithm didn't care that it was old news; it just knew it was trending again because the hockey season was starting.
My fingers tightened around the phone. The warm, lingering weight of our conversation from Saturday night evaporated in a split second, replaced by that familiar, defensive prickle. I didn't want to carry the stone anymore.
Which was not something I did—confront
