Chapter 2 — Assigned
761 Words
I didn’t sleep much after that day.
Not because anything had happened — but because something almost had.
Morning light leaked through the thin curtains of my room, pale and unforgiving. I lay on my back counting the cracks in the ceiling, replaying his voice in my head the way my mind replayed mistakes. You don’t have to disappear around me. It wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t even advice. It was simply an observation — and somehow that made it worse. Observations can’t be argued with.
I arrived on campus early, the way I always did when I wanted to avoid people. The benches were still damp with dew, and the air carried that half-awake hush that makes everything feel unreal. I liked this version of the world best — before expectations arrived.
The notification buzzed in my pocket just as I was settling into my seat.
Jonah:
Hey. Group meeting today, remember? Library. 4pm.
I stared at the screen longer than necessary. My instinct was to respond with something non-committal. A delay. An excuse. Silence, my old ally, hovered close.
Instead, my fingers typed before I could talk myself out of it.
Me:
Okay.
One word. Safe. Contained. Enough.
At four o’clock sharp, the library smelled like paper and rain. Jonah was already there, sitting at the same table we’d claimed before, notebook open, sleeves pushed up to his forearms. He looked up when I approached, not startled, not relieved — just present. Like he’d expected me to come.
“Hey,” he said again, like the word was something he was practicing.
“Hi.”
My voice surprised me with how steady it sounded.
The others trickled in late, noisy and impatient, carrying snacks and complaints. They talked over one another, debated who would do what again, and somehow still managed to circle back to the same confusion. Jonah listened, pen moving occasionally, his jaw tightening just enough to suggest restraint.
When the group finally dispersed — one person to a phone call, another to “grab something real quick” — it was just the two of us left at the table.
The silence stretched.
Not the suffocating kind.
The waiting kind.
“I can take the slides,” he said eventually. “You’re good with sources.”
I nodded. Then, because the room felt too quiet and my courage hadn’t fully retreated yet, I added, “I… like working alone.”
He smiled, faintly. “I figured.”
That was it. No judgment. No follow-up question. The relief was immediate and embarrassing.
We worked like that for a while — him typing, me reading, the quiet punctuated only by the soft tap of keys and the occasional page turn. Every so often, he’d glance up, not at my face but at my hands, as if checking that they were still there. It made me hyperaware of them — the way my fingers curled inward when I was nervous, the way I pressed my thumb into my palm to ground myself.
At some point, I reached for a book at the same time he did.
Our fingers brushed.
It was nothing. Barely a second. But my body reacted as if something important had been said. I pulled back immediately, heart pounding, heat rising up my neck.
“Sorry,” he said quickly.
“It’s fine.”
Too quick. Too sharp.
He paused, studying me in that careful way again. “I didn’t mean to—”
“I know.”
I swallowed. “I just… don’t like surprises.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not pity. Recognition.
“Me neither,” he said quietly.
That admission settled between us like a fragile thing neither of us wanted to break. He didn’t ask why. I didn’t explain. It felt… respectful. Rare.
When we packed up, the sky outside had darkened, rain streaking the windows in uneven lines. Jonah walked beside me toward the exit, not too close, not too far.
“You did well today,” he said as we reached the doors.
“With the project?”
“With staying,” he replied.
The word echoed longer than it should have.
I didn’t trust myself to respond, so I didn’t. He didn’t seem to mind. As we parted ways, I felt something unfamiliar settle in my chest — not relief, not fear, but a cautious curiosity.
That night, alone in my room, I realized something that unsettled me more than the silence ever had.
For the first time in a long while, disappearing had felt harder than staying.
- Writer
