Kat is waitingon the steps, perched like a bird, legs crossed at the ankle. She’s tapping her phone, but looks up as I approach.
“How’d it go?” she asks.
“Not as weird as I expected,” I say. “I think he liked me.”
She giggles, then slides her arm through mine. “Professor Avery told me once that writers are the only people on earth who can simultaneously love and hate themselves. He’d probably take you as a project.”
I squeeze her hand. “You jealous?”
She grins, all teeth. “Not even. I’d win any custody battle.”
We walk across campus, the wind blowing the last leaves into little whirlpools at our feet. There’s a sense of thaw in the air, like the world’s about to wake up. I want to say something meaningful, but I can’t find the words.
So I settle for the simple stuff. “You hungry?”
She shrugs, but her eyes are soft. “Always.”
We wind up in a coffee shop near the library, the kind with battered armchairs and a bathroom graffiti wall that’s become a running campus joke. Kat orders a chai, I get the darkest roast on the menu, and we squeeze into a two-top by the window. It’s warm and loud and alive, and for the first time in months I don’t feel like a ghost in my own life.
She pulls out her notebook, flips to a page scrawled with doodles and lists. “I’ve been thinking,” she says, almost shy. “About the cabin. About going back.”
I try not to let my hope show. “You want to?”
She nods, tracing circles on the paper. “Yes, but on my terms. No secrets. No weird power games. Just us.”
I reach across the table, cover her hand with mine. “I’d like that.”
She smiles, but there’s still something holding her back.
“What is it?” I ask.
She looks away, out the window, where a girl in a pink hoodie is feeding bread to a flock of pigeons. “Simone thinks I’m crazy,” she begins. “She thinks I’m setting myself up to get hurt again.”
I nod, letting the silence speak for itself.
She turns back, and there’s a fierceness in her gaze. “But I think we both need a do-over. Not just to rewrite the story, but to live it for real.”
I squeeze her hand. “Deal.”
She holds it, then adds, “If you mess up again, I’ll let Simone run you over with her car.”
“Fair.”
We sit like that, hands tangled, the world roaring around us. For a second, I imagine the future: holidays in the woods, inside jokes, the two of us against the universe. I’ve never wanted anything more.
Later, as we leave, Kat pulls me close, her voice a whisper in my ear.
“You know,” she says, “I never told you the real reason I answered your ad.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Why?”
She smiles, a little shy, a little wicked. “I wanted to see if a man could actually live up to my fantasies. Imagine: a hulking, brawny woodsman who was also a wizard when it comes to the written word.”
I laugh, holding her tight. “Did I?”
She shrugs, pressing her face into my neck. “Ask me after the sequel.”
We walk home together, the campus lights flickering on, the air crisp and bright. For the first time, I feel like I’m exactly where I belong.
