WHAT WE ALMOST WERE

Cora's POV

I know something is wrong before I open my eyes.

Not because of a sound. Because of the silence.

Tyler always snores. Soft, steady, annoying in the way that becomes familiar after eight months. It is the kind of snoring you stop hearing after a while, the way you stop hearing traffic outside your window. You only notice it when it stops.

It has stopped.

I lie still for three seconds, staring at the ceiling. My chest is doing something tight and careful, like it already knows what my brain has not caught up to yet. I press my hand flat against the mattress beside me. Cold. Not just cool, cold. Like nobody has been there for hours.

I get up.

The bedroom door is half open. I push it the rest of the way.

Tyler is on the couch.

He is asleep on his side, shoes still on, one arm hanging off the cushion. And there, balled up under his head like a pillow,

Serena's yellow cardigan.

I know it is hers because I was with her when she bought it. Two months ago, at the little market downtown. She said yellow wasn't her color. I said it was. She bought it laughing.

I stand in the doorway and look at the cardigan and feel something crack open in my chest so quietly that it almost doesn't hurt.

Almost.

"Cora."

I turn. Serena is in the kitchen doorway. She has a mug in both hands, and she is looking at me with an expression I have never seen on her face before. Not guilt. Not exactly. Something worse. Something that looks like she has been waiting for this moment and has not figured out what to do with it now that it is here.

She opens her mouth.

I hold up one hand.

I do not want to hear it. Not the explanation. Not the sorry. Not the it-just-happened-and-I-don't-know-how. I have heard those words in other people's stories, and I always thought I would scream if someone ever said them to me.

Turns out I don't scream.

I just go back into the bedroom, pull my bag from under the bed, and start putting things into it. Toothbrush. Phone charger. The book on my nightstand. The framed photo of my mom and me at my high school graduation, I wrap it in a shirt so the glass doesn't break. My hands are very steady. That surprises me. I thought they would shake.

Behind me, I hear Tyler's voice, rough with sleep. "Cora"

"Don't." My voice comes out quiet. That surprises me, too. "Don't get up. Don't explain. Don't tell me it meant nothing because I genuinely do not care right now what it meant."

Silence.

I zip the bag. I pick it up. I walk to the front door, and here is the thing I think about later, the thing I am still thinking about now, I close it softly behind me. No slam. No dramatic bang. Just a small, clean click, like I am trying not to wake the neighbors.

Like, I am still being considerate.

Like, I am still the same person who makes sure not to be too much trouble.

I hate that about myself, in that moment, more than I hate either of them.

The campus library is cold and too bright, the way it always is at 7 a.m. I find a chair in the back corner, and I sit in it, and I open my laptop, and I stare at the document I am supposed to be working on for Literary Theory.

I read the first sentence four times.

I cannot tell you what it says.

My phone buzzes. Tyler. I turn it face down. It buzzes again. Serena this time. Then Tyler again. Then a number I don't recognize, which I ignore automatically. I turn the phone completely off and sit in the silence of the library with my heart banging against my ribs like it is trying to escape, and I think: eight months.

Eight months of being his person. Eight months of rearranging my schedule around his, of meeting his friends and laughing at his jokes and talking myself out of every small doubt I had because nobody is perfect and relationships take work, and I wanted it to be real. I made it through sheer effort, the way you hold a leaking cup with both hands because you don't want to lose what's inside.

I lost it anyway.

At noon, Demi drops into the seat across from me, takes one look at my face, and says, "When did it happen?"

Not a question.

"This morning." I pause. "I think it's been happening longer than this morning."

She closes my laptop for me. "We're going somewhere they serve drinks before sunset."

I let her take me to a bar on the edge of campus, which I have only been to once before. It smells like old wood and cold air. We get a corner table. Demi orders wine. I drink the first glass before I have told her half the story. By the third glass, I had told her everything.

"I didn't cry," I say. "Is that bad? Shouldn't I be crying?"

"You're not the crying type," Demi says. "You're the everything-is-fine-until-you-suddenly-explode type." She reaches across and squeezes my hand. "Give it a day."

Her phone rings. She looks at it and makes a face. "It's my mom. I'll be back in five." She steps outside.

I sit alone at the table with half a glass of wine and the specific loneliness of someone who just watched their life rearrange itself without permission.

That is when the man sits down.

Not at my table. One seat away at the bar, leaving space as if he is trying not to crowd me. He does not look at me. He sets a book down and signals the bartender, and I see the cover because I cannot help it,

The Great Gatsby.

Broken spine. Heavily read. Real reader, not decoration.

"He didn't actually like her, you know," I say. I do not know why I say it. Maybe the wine. Maybe I just need to hear my own voice say something that isn't about Tyler.

The man looks up.

Dark eyes. Calm the way, deep water is calm. He looks at me like he has time, like whatever I say next, he is in no rush to be anywhere else.

"Daisy?" he says.

"Any of them," I say. "He liked the idea. Never the actual person."

He considers this the way people consider things that matter to them. Then he almost smiles. "That's the saddest reading I've ever heard."

"I know," I say. "Doesn't make it wrong."

He holds out his hand. "Buy you a drink?"

I look at him for one second too long.

I should say no. The responsible, sensible, heartbroken version of me should absolutely say no.

I say yes.

I don't know his name. I don't know anything about him.

What I do know, I learned three days later, standing in the doorway of a classroom, reading two words off a whiteboard, while my entire body goes completely still.

His name is on the board.

He is my professor.