Chapter 4 Room 314

Avery

The drive to UCLA takes three hours, and I sing along to every breakup song on the radio even though I'm not breaking up with anyone. Windows down the whole way, wind tearing my hair into knots I'll deal with later. He has a surprise planned. Everything is perfect. That's what I keep telling myself, over and over, like a chant, like if I say it enough times, it stays true.

God, I sound pathetic. Singing breakup songs when I'm supposedly in love. But the radio doesn't know that, does it? The radio just knows what sells.

Because it has to stay true. Six months of long distance, six months of late night calls and countdown apps and telling myself the ache in my chest was normal, was just what love felt like when you went to school four hundred miles apart. I've missed birthdays and movie nights and the small, stupid moments that used to make up a relationship, and I've told myself every single time that the missing was temporary, a toll we paid for something worth having. It has to be worth something.

Six months. Six months of good morning texts and late night phone calls. Six months of pretending I don't notice when his read receipts take hours. Six months of convincing myself that love is supposed to hurt a little.

I check my makeup at every red light. Reapply my lip gloss twice before I even hit the freeway. My stomach won't stop doing this slow, syrupy flip, half excitement, half something I don't have a name for yet. I catch myself grinning at nothing, at the steering wheel, at the road stretching out ahead of me, and I think about how long it's been since I felt this specific kind of nervous, the good kind, or at least the kind I've decided to call good.

If I look perfect, maybe I'll feel perfect. Maybe if I get the gloss just right, he won't notice that I'm terrified. That I've been terrified for weeks.

The parking structure at UCLA is dim and smells like motor oil after hours of sun. I text him. here!

Nothing back.

Of course nothing back. Why would he text back when he's planning some big surprise? Except... what if he's not? What if he's just busy? Or worse, what if he forgot I was coming? No. Don't go there, Avery. Don't you dare go there.

Fine. He's probably setting something up. Maybe there really are flowers involved. I let myself picture it: his dorm door swinging open, his face breaking into that grin that used to be only mine. I hold onto that image the way you hold onto the last few minutes of a good dream, careful not to look at it too closely in case it dissolves.

I check his location, which he shared with me weeks ago, back when that still felt romantic instead of something out of a true crime podcast. It shows his dorm building. Hasn't moved in an hour.

Okay. He's inside. That's something.

Location sharing. So romantic. Or so creepy, depending on how you look at it. Right now, I'm voting creepy. But useful.

Campus is beautiful, all brick and green lawns and students who look busy and important in a way I want to feel by September. The late sun slants gold across everything, straight out of a brochure, the kind of golden hour that makes even strangers look like main characters. I take a picture for my story. UCLA vibes.

I almost caption it something about visiting my boyfriend, but I stop myself. Don't jinx it, I think. Don't say the word boyfriend like it's a guarantee. I've learned, somewhere in these six months, that saying things out loud sometimes makes them fragile, like naming a good thing invites the universe to take it away.

UCLA vibes. So generic. So safe. So unlike how I actually feel right now, which is one part excited, one part nauseous, and three parts completely out of my depth.

His dorm sits on the third floor. Room 314. The hallway smells like stale pizza and somebody's air freshener losing a slow war, music leaking from under different doors up and down the corridor. My sneakers squeak against the linoleum, too loud in my own ears, and I find myself counting the doors as I pass them, anything to keep my mind from racing too far ahead.

The door's closed. I lift my hand to knock, already picturing his face when he opens it. Flowers, maybe. Or just him, standing there, which honestly would be enough. I imagine the hug first, the way he always smells a little like laundry detergent and something warmer underneath, and I let that thought carry me the last few steps down the hall.

That's when I hear the laugh.

High, bright, and familiar in a way that stops my hand in the air.

No. No way. I'm imagining things. Stress hallucinations. That's a thing, right?

No. Absolutely not. My brain scrambles for an explanation that isn't the obvious one. Lots of people laugh like that. It's a common laugh. Totally forgettable. I try to convince myself of this with the same stubbornness I've used all summer to convince myself the distance didn't matter, that love could survive on phone calls and good intentions alone.

Except it isn't. I'd know that laugh anywhere. I grew up next to that laugh, fell asleep to it through thin bedroom walls, memorized its rhythm before I even understood what memorizing meant.

Oh god. It's her laugh. It's Madison's laugh. What is Madison's laugh doing coming from Liam's dorm room?

I don't move. Don't breathe. The fluorescent light overhead buzzes, too loud all of a sudden, too white, like the whole hallway is holding its breath along with me. Somewhere down the corridor a door slams, and I flinch, my heart lurching sideways with it.

It's not her. It can't be her. UCLA is huge, thousands of people, the odds are basically nothing. She goes to school in San Diego. She has a whole life that doesn't overlap with mine, not like this, not here. I repeat this to myself the way I repeated everything is perfect on the drive down, except this time the words refuse to stick.

San Diego. She's supposed to be in San Diego. Three hundred miles away. Not here. Not in his dorm room. Not laughing like she just told the world's funniest joke.

"Liam, stop." Madison's voice comes right through the door, giggling, breathless. "You're gonna make me spill my drink."

The hallway tilts sideways.

No. No no no no no. This isn't happening. This is a nightmare. I'm going to wake up in my bed and this will all be a terrible stress dream about my college visit.

My own sister. My own boyfriend. The two names sitting together in one sentence like they belong there, like this is a normal thing that normal people say. I think of every family dinner, every holiday, every time Madison sat across from me at the table while I gushed about him, and something in my chest curdles at the thought of what those moments might have actually meant.

All those times she asked about him. All those times she said he seemed "too good to be true." She wasn't being skeptical. She was gloating. Oh my god. She was gloating.

I should turn around right now. Walk back to my car, drive three hours home, and pretend this never happened. Pretend I never drove down here at all, never heard that laugh, never let myself hope for flowers or a perfect surprise. Some small, self-protective part of me begs for exactly that, for the mercy of not knowing.

Run, Avery. Run and don't look back. Preserve whatever dignity you have left. Go home and cry into your pillow and never speak to either of them again.

My hand moves anyway.

I turn the handle.

Because where's the story in running away? Where's the content in being the bigger person? If I'm going to be destroyed, at least let it be spectacular.

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