Page 185 of Saving Forever with the Hockey Captain

Boise, Idaho.

Somehow, they still don't make sense.

I check the recipient name. Mine.

The student number. Mine.

The attachment. Mine.

This isn't a mistake.

Someone asks a question across the room, someone else laughs. The microwave beeps cheerfully beside me. Life keeps moving exactly as it should.

Mine doesn't.

Eight weeks.

Nearly two thousand miles away.

In ten days.

A strange numbness settles over me. Not panic. Not even sadness.

Just...

stillness.

The kind that arrives after hearing news too large to fit inside a single heartbeat.

The microwave beeps again but I don't move.

The lounge door opens behind me and Mrs. Alvarez steps inside carrying her lunch bag.

She stops almost immediately.

"Annette?"

I look up. "I got my final rotation."

She smiles.

"Oh, that's wonderful."

I try to smile back but it won't quite happen.

Her expression changes instantly. "Where?"

I swallow. "Idaho."

The single word hangs between us. She doesn't say anything for several seconds. She doesn't need to. She already understands that my silence isn't about geography. It's about someone waiting in a cabin beside a thawing lake.

Finally, very quietly, she asks, "When do you leave?"

I look back down at the letter. "Ten days." The words barely sound like my own, and for the first time since opening the envelope, I realize exactly how little ten days really is.

My phone is already in my hand before I realize I've dialed. There's only one person I want to talk to right now. Keisha answers on the second ring.

"Hey.”