Chapter 7
1360 Words
Ryan's POV
The room was dim, just the desk lamp casting soft yellow light across Ryan’s scattered notes. His laptop whirred softly beside a half-drunk mug of coffee, the cursor blinking patiently on an unfinished email. Beside him, the festival blueprint was splayed open, annotated and coloured. A spreadsheet tab blinked behind it—half a budget, half a headache.
Eli was sprawled across the bed like a starfish, wireless headphones pushed down around his neck. He absently dribbled a stress ball against the wall with the kind of aggression usually reserved for exes or unpaid bills.
Ryan didn’t look up. He was mid-email to a potential sponsor, fingers dancing over the keys when Eli’s voice broke the silence.
“Hey, do you think we should go with fairy lights or those industrial wire lamps for the booth section?”
Ryan blinked, barely registering the question before responding.
“Fairy lights,” he muttered. “Cheaper. Warmer.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too,” Eli nodded, launching the ball toward the ceiling again. “It’ll match the whole ‘emotional secrets and sad poetry’ vibe Tessa’s aiming for.”
Ryan smirked faintly, eyes still on his screen. “You’re mocking your own theme now?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Eli said, his grin audible in his voice as he rolled onto his stomach and propped his chin up on a pillow. “That’s how I process emotional vulnerability.”
Ryan tried to focus again—really tried—but his fingers hovered uselessly over the keyboard.
Then Eli struck again.
“So… you and Raya.”
Ryan’s hands froze mid-keystroke.
"That’s not a sentence," he said flatly, still not looking up.
“It is when I say it with the right tone,” Eli replied, smug and unbothered.
Ryan sighed, pushing his chair back and rubbing his eyes. “There is no ‘me and Raya.’ We’re just… building a festival.”
“Sure,” Eli nodded dramatically. “And I’m just the muffin guy.”
“You kind of are.”
“Rude.”
A beat of quiet passed—comfortable, but loaded.
Then, in a softer tone, Eli said, “She’s cool though. Smart. Kinda scary. In a hot, bookish rage way.”
Ryan stared at his screen, but his mind had wandered far beyond spreadsheets.
“She’s… intense,” he said after a moment.
Eli raised an eyebrow. “That’s code for ‘she lives in your head, rent-free.’”
Ryan didn’t argue. Couldn’t.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, his voice quieter now.
“It’s just—she sees through people. Like... no patience for masks. It’s refreshing. But exhausting.”
Eli nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. She's all spine. No filters.”
“Exactly.”
He remembered walking into the planning meeting, coffee in hand, with two minutes to spare. Calm. Efficient. Exactly on time.
And, as expected, there she was.
Raya.
Looking like she wanted to throw the whiteboard at him just for existing.
That glare. Her version of a welcome mat.
Honestly? He liked it.
She never just let things slide. If you wanted her respect, you had to earn it—slow, deliberate, brick by brick.
And if you did? She gave it like it meant something.
He’d slid into the seat beside her, familiar now, easy.
She was chewing the tip of her pen like it owed her rent, foot tapping, brow furrowed like she was calculating the room’s collective IQ and finding it disappointing.
Tessa had been at the whiteboard, mid-chaotic-genius spiral—bubbles, arrows, something about “The Untold.” It looked like a conspiracy theory and sounded like a dream.
He’d only been half-listening.
Mostly watching her.
And then Eli had burst in like a sugar-powered tornado—loud, grinning, muffin-slinging chaos in motion.
He’d tossed one at Tessa. Then one at Raya, of course—with flourish.
“Thought you might need a pick-me-up, Sunshine,” he said, like he was doing her a favor and auditioning for a rom-com at the same time.
Raya blinked. Not annoyed. Just... surprised.
Cool as ever.
“Why does everyone keep calling me that?” she mumbled.
And Eli, grinning like he’d cracked the universe:
“Because you glare like the sun. Blinding but beautiful.”
Tessa fake-gagged. The room laughed.
Raya rolled her eyes, but—he’d caught it. The smallest flicker of something at the corner of her lips.
A near-smile.
And him?
He’d sipped his coffee.
Tried not to be annoyed.
Sunshine? No. That wasn’t it. Not even close.
She wasn’t golden and open and warm. Not someone who just lit up a room like a light switch.
She was... different.
Like a firefly.
Quiet light. Small and sharp. The kind of glow you only caught if you were paying attention. She flickered in and out—not to be noticed, not for show. Never performing. Never asking to be seen.
But when she lit up?
It meant something.
Not loud. Not easy.
Real.
You don’t chase fireflies.
You stay still.
You wait.
You listen.
And maybe… maybe he was still enough now.
Maybe that’s why he saw her.
Back in the dorm, Ryan stared at the screen. The spreadsheet hadn’t moved. The email sat unfinished. Eli was now humming some off-key indie tune into his pillow.
Ryan leaned forward and closed his laptop with a soft click.
Because honestly?
He didn’t know what to do with any of this.
So instead…
He just sat there.
Still.
And thinking of fireflies.
Ryan was walking to class with Eli, both half-awake and sipping coffee like it was keeping them alive on a cellular level.
“Okay but hear me out,” Eli said between sips, “we have a secret snack vault under the main booth. Password-protected. Muffins only for emotionally available people.”
“Then you’ll starve,” Ryan muttered.
“Rude.”
They turned the corner—and Tessa waved them down, already mid-sentence before she even reached them.
“Ryan, thank God—do you have a minute?”
Ryan sighed, slowing his steps. “For what? Did someone set the schedule on fire again?”
“No, this time it’s the vendor layout.” She pulled out a folder, waving a wildly scribbled diagram in his face. “Look, I’ve redone the blueprint. Again. We needed more drama between the poetry section and the improv zone.”
“Of course we did,” Ryan deadpanned.
Eli peeked over her shoulder. “Is that a lightning bolt path between booths?”
“It’s symbolic chaos. Stay with me.”
As he opened his mouth to reply, a flicker passed through his head: Would Raya be here too?
The thought dropped in quiet, uninvited.
But she wasn’t.
No foot-tapping. No pen-chewing.
No glare across the hallway like she could laser through drywall.
He forced the thought away and turned back to Tessa.
Then—
“Ryanolds.”
There it was.
That voice. Calm. Commanding. Slightly annoyed.
Only one person called him that.
Ryan didn’t even have to turn. He felt her presence like a shift in air pressure.
When the entire campus called him Ryan—hell, even his professors had warmed up to it—she stuck to the surname like it was carved into stone.
It wasn’
“We still need to finalize the vendor outreach,” she said as she approached, her gaze already scanning a checklist. “You didn’t send the revised email draft.”
“I did,” Ryan said, not even blinking. “Check your spam folder. Or your attitude.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I will. Both.”
Eli leaned toward Tessa, whispering loudly, “We love a workplace romance slow-burn.”
Ryan shot him a glare. “You love making things weird.”
Tessa grinned. “Oh, I ship it.”
Raya: “We’re not a ship. We’re an Excel sheet.”
Ryan: “Cold. Accurate.”
They were mid-banter when a soft voice chimed in behind them.
“Hey, excuse me—sorry to interrupt.”
They all turned.
- Writer
