Morning After
1571 Words
POV: Isla
Morning arrived like punishment.
Not gently.
Not kindly.
Like a hammer behind her eyes and sand in her throat and sunlight that had somehow learned cruelty.
Isla groaned and dragged the blanket over her face.
Wrong blanket.
Too heavy.
Too warm.
Too expensive.
Her eyes opened.
Dorm ceiling.
Dorm desk.
Dorm chair covered in clothes.
Her room.
Good.
That should have been comforting.
Instead, confusion slid in first.
She sat up too fast and immediately regretted it.
ISLA: Oh, God.
Her makeup from last night had become abstract art. One heel was on the floor. The other was somehow on her desk. A glass of water sat on the nightstand beside two aspirin and a sticky note in Naomi's jagged handwriting.
YOU LIVED. CALL ME. — N
Isla pressed one hand to her forehead.
Fragments of the night came back in flashes.
The bar.
The road.
Rain.
A black car.
A man in shadow.
And then—
The jacket.
She turned.
It was draped over the desk chair like it belonged there.
Dark wool. Clean lines. Heavy enough to cost more than three months of her groceries.
She stared at it.
Then slowly reached for it.
The fabric still carried that faint scent—cedar, rain, something cold and expensive and impossible to place.
Her fingers brushed the inside pocket.
There, sewn in near the inner seam, was a tiny embroidered symbol.
Not a name.
A crest.
Elegant. Minimal. Familiar in the way luxury was familiar at Blackthorn—always near, never hers.
ISLA: Who are you?
Her phone buzzed before the silence could answer.
NAOMI CALLING
Isla answered with a groan.
NAOMI: Alive?
ISLA: Debatable.
NAOMI: Excellent. I was worried you'd dissolved dramatically in the night.
ISLA: You left me.
NAOMI: Excuse you. I had a family emergency. Also, I sent Theo Park.
Isla went still.
ISLA: Theo Park?
NAOMI: Yes. Student paper Theo. Knows half the campus and all the other half's secrets. He texted me that he got you back safe.
Isla blinked.
ISLA: Theo Park was there?
NAOMI: Apparently with some mystery friend who has the social skills of a haunted fence post.
Memory flickered.
Get in the car, Isla. Because you shouldn't be alone tonight.
Her heartbeat shifted strangely.
ISLA: He knew my name.
NAOMI: Well, yes. You're a local disaster celebrity at the moment.
ISLA: That's deeply comforting.
NAOMI: Do you remember anything else?
She looked at the jacket again.
Not clearly.
Just a voice.
A presence.
A feeling she did not want to examine too closely before coffee.
ISLA: He gave me his jacket.
NAOMI: Hot.
ISLA: Naomi.
NAOMI: What? Mysterious men with unresolved emotional energy are hot. This is sociology.
ISLA: I was crying on a roadside.
NAOMI: And yet somehow, you still managed to collect a plotline.
Isla shut her eyes.
ISLA: Please don't make jokes. My soul is peeling.
NAOMI: Too late. I cope through wit. Also, do not check campus feeds before you eat.
ISLA: Why would you say that unless I absolutely need to?
NAOMI: Because you're incapable of obeying me and I know you'll do it anyway.
She disconnected before Isla could answer.
That was friendship.
Brutal, predictive friendship.
Isla opened her messages.
A mistake.
Thirty-seven unread.
Three from Naomi. Two from classmates. One from an unknown number that just said:
girl are you okay?
As if public humiliation made people kind afterward. As if spectators deserved updates.
She opened the campus gossip page only because she hated herself.
Another mistake.
A new post was trending.
ROADSIDE MELTDOWN?
No video. Thank God.
Just speculation.
Heard Remington's ex got drunk and made a whole scene off-campus. Blackthorn girls need dignity training. Maybe heartbreak is a fitness plan.
Isla dropped the phone onto the bed like it had burned her.
For a second, she could not breathe.
Then rage came in fast and bright enough to restore oxygen.
Someone knew.
Someone had seen or guessed or told.
The campus didn't just enjoy a wound.
It fed it sugar and made dessert.
A knock came at the door.
ISLA: If that's another concerned voyeur, I'm dead.
The door swung open anyway.
Naomi entered with coffee, sunglasses, and the look of a woman prepared to commit felonies.
NAOMI: Good news. I brought caffeine. Bad news. The entire campus deserves fire.
Isla took the coffee like medicine.
NAOMI's gaze slid to the jacket.
NAOMI: Oh.
ISLA: What?
Naomi crossed the room and lifted one sleeve.
NAOMI: This is not student-boy money. This is dynasty-boy money.
ISLA: That is not a real category.
NAOMI: At Blackthorn, it absolutely is.
She turned the jacket, checked the stitching, then the crest.
Her brows rose.
NAOMI: Interesting.
ISLA: What?
NAOMI: Nothing.
ISLA: Naomi.
NAOMI: I said interesting, not identifiable.
Isla narrowed her eyes.
ISLA: You know whose it is.
NAOMI: No. I know the type of person who wears custom embroidery inside a raincoat. Which is somehow more obnoxious.
Isla stood and moved to the mirror.
The woman staring back looked wrecked.
Smudged makeup. Swollen eyes. Hair half wild, half dead.
There was no mystery in her this morning.
No romantic tragedy.
Just damage.
NAOMI: Hey.
Isla met her eyes in the mirror.
NAOMI: Do not let them turn one bad night into your full story.
ISLA: Too late. They're already writing it.
NAOMI: Then we write louder.
Silence sat between them.
Heavy. Honest.
ISLA: Do you ever feel like they can smell it?
NAOMI: Smell what?
ISLA: Who belongs here. Who doesn't.
Naomi's expression softened.
NAOMI: Yes.
ISLA: I keep trying to act like I'm fine. Like I don't notice. But every room feels pre-decided.
NAOMI: That's because it is.
ISLA let out a bitter laugh.
ISLA: Great. Love that.
NAOMI: No, listen to me. The room is pre-decided. That does not mean the decision is right.
Isla looked down at the jacket in her hand.
At the expensive seams. The hidden crest. The warmth some stranger had offered her without asking for anything back.
ISLA: He said I wasn't tragic.
NAOMI: Who?
ISLA: The man from last night.
NAOMI smiled faintly.
NAOMI: Smart man.
ISLA: I probably looked tragic.
NAOMI: You looked hurt. There's a difference.
That should have comforted her.
Instead, it almost made her cry again.
She took a breath and forced it down.
ISLA: I need to give this back.
NAOMI: Sure. After we identify your roadside cryptid.
ISLA: Naomi.
NAOMI: What? He knew your name, didn't kidnap you, and gave you tailoring. That's basically citizenship at Blackthorn.
Isla sat back down on the bed.
Coffee in one hand. Jacket in the other. Phone face-down beside her like an enemy sleeping lightly.
A message came through.
From Blake.
Her pulse changed before she even opened it.
Of course it did.
Humiliation has muscle memory.
BLAKE: Heard you had a rough night.
Take care of yourself.
She stared.
Then laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because if she did not laugh, she might throw the phone through the window.
NAOMI: What?
Isla held up the screen.
Naomi read it and made a face like she had bitten tin.
NAOMI: Oh, he wants to die.
ISLA: "Take care of yourself."
NAOMI: Translation: I would like to appear humane now that the damage is done.
Isla set the phone down slowly.
Too slowly.
That was how Naomi knew the anger had gone deep.
NAOMI: Don't answer.
ISLA: I know.
NAOMI: I'm serious.
ISLA: I know.
But she was already typing.
Then deleting.
Then typing again.
Then deleting harder.
What did one say to a man who set your life on fire and then texted from outside the flames?
Finally she wrote only four words.
ISLA: You should have stayed silent.
She hit send.
Immediately regretted it.
Immediately did not.
The typing bubble appeared.
Vanished.
Appeared again.
Then:
BLAKE: I'm trying to be decent.
ISLA showed Naomi.
Naomi threw herself backward onto the bed in despair.
NAOMI: Men are a failed experiment.
Isla's phone buzzed again.
Another message.
Not from Blake.
From an unknown number.
UNKNOWN: Did you get back safely?
She froze.
Read it once.
Then twice.
NAOMI sat up.
NAOMI: What?
ISLA turned the phone toward her.
Naomi's eyes widened.
NAOMI: Oh.
ISLA: Oh?
NAOMI: Very oh.
ISLA: Who is it?
NAOMI: I don't know.
ISLA: You're lying with your whole face.
NAOMI: I'm not sure enough to lie confidently.
Isla looked back at the message.
Just one line.
Simple. Quiet. No performance in it at all.
Not heard you had a rough night.
Not take care of yourself.
Just:
Did you get back safely?
Her thumbs hovered over the screen.
Then she typed.
ISLA: Yes. Thank you for the jacket.
A pause.
Then the reply came.
UNKNOWN: Keep it for now.
No name.
No explanation.
Just that.
And for reasons she could not begin to explain, that unsettled her far more than if he had flirted.
Because it felt real.
Because it felt like the beginning of something she had not agreed to survive.
Naomi watched her carefully.
NAOMI: You have that look.
ISLA: What look?
NAOMI: Like your life is about to get worse in an interesting way.
Isla clutched the coffee tighter.
She should have laughed.
Instead she looked at the jacket, the hidden crest, the rain-dark memory of a man she still couldn't place—
—and felt the first tremor of a story she had not planned.
- Writer
