Lila Has Crossed the Sound

Chapter 4 The Signature

The reply from financial aid came three days later. My request had been approved, pending a meeting with the housing office and a signed statement of intent. I made the appointment for the following Monday and spent the week in a state of quiet preparation, gathering documents, doing the math, sketching out a budget on the back of an envelope.

I didn't tell anyone. Not my mother, not my friends, not even the barista at the coffee shop where I worked, who asked me why I looked so serious and I told her I was just tired. It felt like a secret, but not the bad kind. The kind you keep because it belongs to you.

The studio apartment was on the third floor of an old building on the edge of campus, above a bookstore that sold textbooks and used paperbacks and had a cat that slept in the window. The landlord was a retired professor who lived on the ground floor and interviewed me for forty-five minutes before agreeing to rent me the place. He asked about my major, my family, my plans after graduation. He asked if I liked cats. I said yes. He said the cat's name was Homer.

The apartment itself was small, smaller than my dorm room, but it had a window that faced east, toward the mountains, and a kitchenette with a two-burner stove and a refrigerator that hummed. The rent was $750 a month, which was less than the dorm, which meant that if I worked twenty hours a week at the coffee shop and took a second job on the weekends, I could make it work.

I signed the lease on a Tuesday afternoon, in the professor's living room, while Homer the cat slept on the windowsill beside me. It was the first thing I had ever signed for myself.

The group chat with Evan and Marisol had been quiet since the trip. Marisol sent a few photos from the island, and Evan sent a meme about ferry food, and I responded with emojis and short replies and told myself it was fine. It was fine. I was fine.

But I noticed the way they started including me differently. Marisol asked if I wanted to come furniture shopping with them, and I said I was busy. Evan asked if I wanted to get lunch, and I said I had work. They noticed, of course. They weren't stupid. Evan texted me three times in one day, and I answered each time with something brief and distracted, and after the third time he called me.

"Lila," he said, when I picked up. "What's going on?"

"I'm busy."

"You're avoiding us."

"I'm not avoiding you. I'm just busy. I'm trying to figure out my housing situation."

There was a pause. "Your housing situation?"

"I'm moving off campus."

Another pause, longer this time. "You are?"

"I signed a lease yesterday."

He was quiet for a moment. I could hear Marisol in the background, asking who he was talking to. He said my name, and then he said it again, and then he said, "You signed a lease?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"I'm telling you now."

"That's not the same thing." His voice was tight, the way it got when he was upset and trying not to show it. "Lila, we could have helped you. We could have gone with you to look at places. We could have—"

"I didn't want help."

"Why not?"

"Because it's mine," I said, and the words came out sharper than I intended. "Because I wanted to do it myself."

He was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "Are you mad at me?"

"No."

"Are you mad at Marisol?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

I was standing in the kitchen of my dorm room, looking out the window at the quad, where students were walking to class in the afternoon light. I could see the chapel in the distance, the steeple against the blue sky, and I thought about the chapel bells that rang every hour, that I had heard every hour for three years, that I would not hear anymore.

"It's not about being mad," I said. "It's about being tired."

"Tired of what?"

"Tired of always being the third person." The words came out before I could stop them, and once they were out, I couldn't take them back. "Tired of sitting in the middle seat. Tired of being the one who has to figure things out alone while you two plan your life together."

"Lila—"

"I'm not blaming you," I said. "I'm not. You and Marisol are a couple. That's real. That's important. But I've been tagging along for three years, and I'm done. I need to figure out what my life looks like when I'm not following behind you."

He didn't say anything for a long time. I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line, and I could hear Marisol asking questions in the background, and I could feel the distance between us opening up, widening, the way it had been widening for years, only now I was the one making it happen.

"I'm sorry," he said finally. "I didn't know."

"I know you didn't know. That's the problem."

The last two weeks of the semester passed quickly. Finals came and went, and I packed my dorm room into boxes and suitcases, and I moved into the studio apartment on the third floor with the east-facing window. It smelled like old books and coffee, and the first night I slept there, I couldn't get used to the quiet. No roommates, no neighbors arguing through the walls, no sound of footsteps in the hallway. Just me and Homer the cat, who wandered up the stairs and sat outside my door until I let him in.

I started working more hours at the coffee shop, and I picked up a second job on weekends at a used bookstore on the other side of campus, shelving and organizing and doing inventory. The two jobs together gave me enough to cover rent and groceries and the occasional treat, and I learned to be careful, to count every dollar, to cook rice and beans and eggs instead of going out.

It was hard. It was harder than I'd expected. But it was mine.

I didn't see Evan or Marisol for two weeks. They texted, and I answered, brief and polite, and they asked if I wanted to hang out, and I said I was working, and they didn't push. I could feel them giving me space, the way you give space to someone who's grieving, and I didn't know whether to be grateful or angry.

Maybe both. Maybe that was allowed.

The semester ended on a Friday. I worked that evening at the bookstore, closed up at nine, walked home under a sky full of stars. The air was cool and the street was quiet, and when I got to my apartment, Homer was waiting at the top of the stairs, and there was a note taped to my door.

I unfolded it. It was in Evan's handwriting. I'd know it anywhere.

I'm not going to pretend I understand what's going on. But I want to. I want to be better. I want to be the kind of friend you deserve. I don't know what that looks like yet. But I'm willing to figure it out.

I stood there for a long time, holding the note. The hallway was dark, and Homer was purring against my leg, and I could hear the hum of the refrigerator through the door, the sound of my own apartment, my own life, my own space.

I didn't know what to do with the note. I still didn't know what to do with Evan. But I folded it carefully and put it in the pocket of my coat, and I unlocked the door and went inside.