Mistletoe Mishap

Chapter 32: Unwrapped

The campus feels thinner the morning after.

Not quieter exactly—just stretched. Like everyone is moving through the same space with an extra layer of caution, aware that something delicate has been introduced and no one wants to be the one who tears it.

I notice it in the pauses.

In the way conversations stall when I enter a room, then restart a second too late. In the glances that flick toward me and away again, not curious so much as careful. As if people are unsure whether looking too directly might turn into something they can’t take back.

By midmorning, I’m certain of it.

They know.

Not everything. But enough.

Jasper’s story isn’t being passed around the way gossip usually is. No exaggerated retellings. No gleeful whispers. It’s quieter than that—shared links, closed tabs, unread messages left deliberately unopened. The kind of attention that doesn’t want to be seen paying attention.

Which somehow makes it worse.

Sam meets me outside the lecture hall, already talking. He does that when he’s worried—fills the air so I don’t have to.

“Okay, hear me out,” he says. “If we’re pretending this week is still academically serious, then explain why my professor just played a slideshow of snow-covered libraries and called it ‘seasonal motivation.’”

I huff a laugh despite myself.

“That’s not motivation,” I say. “That’s surrender.”

“Exactly.”

He keeps pace with me without drifting closer. It’s deliberate. Sam is very good at proximity—how to offer it without trapping someone inside it.

Jasper is waiting near the stairs.

He looks the same as always. Which is to say: composed, contained, alert. But I can tell he hasn’t slept well. There’s a tightness around his eyes that wasn’t there yesterday, like he’s already processed the worst outcomes and is now just living alongside them.

He looks at me, searching.

I give him a small nod.

Not reassurance. Not absolution.

Acknowledgment.

We walk together without touching.

In class, I can feel the shift more sharply. Someone two rows ahead keeps glancing back at me, then pretending to check their phone. Another student offers me a smile that’s too earnest, too quick, like she’s trying to communicate something she doesn’t know how to phrase.

Understanding, maybe.

Or gratitude.

Or the discomfort of recognizing yourself in someone else’s story and not knowing whether to thank the author—or the subject.

When the lecture ends, no one rushes out.

That’s new.

People linger. Pack bags slowly. Wait for something to happen.

Nothing does.

Outside, the air is brittle with cold. Holiday lights are strung along the quad now—soft white, understated. The kind of decoration meant to comfort rather than impress.

Jasper walks beside me in silence for a full minute before he speaks.

“I can take it down,” he says quietly.

The words land carefully between us.

I stop walking.

He stops too, immediately, like he’s been braced for that exact moment.

“Is that what you want?” he asks. No defensiveness. No pride. Just the question, offered cleanly.

I think about the looks. The pauses. The way people are holding something they don’t quite know how to name.

“No,” I say finally. “But I need you to understand something.”

He nods once.

“It’s not the exposure that scares me,” I continue. “It’s the interpretation. People filling in blanks they were never invited into.”

“I know,” he says. “I tried to leave space.”

“You did,” I say. “But space is where people put their assumptions.”

A faint, rueful breath leaves him. “That’s on me.”

“No,” I say gently. “That’s on reading culture.”

Sam clears his throat behind us, deliberately loud. “For what it’s worth, most of what I’m hearing isn’t speculation. It’s recognition.”

I glance at him.

“Yeah,” he says. “The quiet kind.”

We stand there a moment longer, the three of us framed by winter light and the low hum of end-of-term exhaustion.

Something has shifted.

Not broken. Not resolved.

Just… repositioned.

Later, alone in my room, my phone buzzes again.

Not questions.

Not demands.

Just a single message from a number I don’t have saved.

I didn’t know how to name that feeling until yesterday. Thank you.

I sit on the edge of my bed, staring at the screen.

Outside, somewhere down the hall, someone is playing music softly—something slow, something meant for evenings when the year is winding down.

I don’t reply.

Not because I don’t care.

But because for once, the story doesn’t require me to explain myself further.

And that feels like its own kind of ending.