A light breeze slipped in through the open window, lifting the sheer curtain and setting it gently adrift. The movement stirred the open book on the desk, its pages shifting against one another until a loose sheet worked itself free from between them and floated down, landing soundlessly near Evelyn's feet.
She noticed it only when it touched the floor.
Evelyn rose and crouched to pick it up. The paper was clean and smooth beneath her fingers, uncreased, the graphite lines still sharp. It was a simple sketch, nothing ornate or embellished, yet the hand behind it was confident. Whoever had drawn it understood restraint, understood when to stop.
The subject was unmistakable.
A boy lay curled slightly on his side, fast asleep, his posture loose and unguarded. His lashes were shaded with care, his expression calm in a way that only appeared when he wasn't trying to hold himself together.
Noah.
For a moment, Evelyn didn't move. Her fingers hovered just above the paper before lowering, brushing the surface as if the boundary between image and reality were thinner than it should be. The sensation made it feel as though she were tracing his actual face, following the familiar, handsome lines of his features, the softness he never noticed in himself.
The memory rose unbidden. The night before. His steady breathing. The weight of him nearby, trusting, defenseless in sleep.
Her lips curved slowly, the smile gentle at first glance, sweet even, though something darker coiled beneath it. Satisfaction and longing tangled together until she could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.
She straightened, opened the desk drawer, and pulled out a loose-leaf notebook. Sliding the sketch back inside, she closed it carefully, as though sealing something away.
The notebook was already thick.
Page after page held variations of the same subject. Noah as a child, his cheeks still round, his limbs tucked close as if the world might be too large for him. Noah as a teenager, all sharp lines and awkward length, his sleep still unguarded, his face softer than he ever allowed it to be when awake.
She closed the drawer with a soft click.
—
When Noah returned to his dorm, the room was already in motion. Morning light spilled in through the narrow windows, illuminating the cramped space as his roommates rushed through their routines. Water ran in the sink, drawers slammed shut, deodorant hissed into the air. Their first class of the day was with their advisor, and no one wanted to test how strict attendance might be this early in the semester.
The door had barely closed behind Noah when someone noticed him.
"Well, look who finally made it back," Caleb said, spinning his chair around. "You disappear all night and expect us not to be curious?"
Another voice laughed. "So? How was it? Professor Evelyn's place comfortable?"
"And Lila looked ready to kill someone yesterday," someone else added. "What did you do?"
Noah dropped his bag by his desk and took a long drink from his water bottle before answering. "How do you all know about that already?"
Caleb leaned back, holding up his phone. "You didn't answer any messages. We figured something was up. I checked in with Lila to see if you were with her. She said she didn't know where you were, told me not to ask again, and then blocked me."
He tilted the screen so Noah could see. "After that, I messaged your sister. She said you were with her."
Caleb was in the student council, same as Lila, which made it easy to reach out privately. Evelyn, as a calculus lecturer, was also in their class group.
"I got back late," Noah said evenly. "The dorm doors were locked."
That explanation only made their expressions brighten. An angry girlfriend and a night spent elsewhere was exactly the kind of thing they wanted to speculate about.
Noah didn't bother dodging it. "Lila and I broke up," he said. "I drank a bit. My sister picked me up, and I stayed at her place."
The room went quiet for a beat.
"Wait. You're serious?" someone asked. "You two actually broke up?"
A few of them leaned in, ready to press for details, but when they saw Noah's face, they stopped. Whatever had happened, he wasn't interested in reliving it.
"It's not dramatic," Noah said, pulling his jacket on. "We were tired. That's it. Class is starting."
They exchanged glances but didn't argue. One by one, they grabbed their things and filed out with him.
—
After more than ten years together, "we were tired" wasn't an explanation many people would believe. Still, none of them pushed. Even among themselves, they'd always thought Lila could be demanding, used to being indulged without realizing how much she asked for in return.
If there was anything to regret, it wasn't the breakup itself, but the years Noah had poured into it. The patience. The quiet compromises. The way he'd learned to put himself last without noticing.
If Lila hadn't responded at all, if she hadn't given him just enough affection to keep him trying, he would have ended up like Miles from down the hall, forever chasing someone who never looked back, earning nothing but jokes and pity for it.
The campus was crowded with students rushing toward early classes, many of them eating breakfast on the move. Noah walked with his roommates when a familiar voice cut through the noise.
He turned without thinking.
Lila stood a short distance away, surrounded by other girls. The moment their eyes met, her expression hardened. She shot him a sharp glare, anger radiating off her so strongly that the girls beside her noticed and followed her gaze.
Noah looked away.
He didn't want this to spiral. He didn't want their families' long-standing relationship to fracture over something that would eventually need to be handled calmly. Just not yet. If Lila needed time to be angry, he was willing to give it to her.
There were still months before any break forced them to face their parents. Plenty of time, assuming she didn't say anything first.
—
The morning passed in lectures and note-taking. Everyone paid attention during their advisor's class, but once they switched rooms for a required civics course, restraint wore thin.
Noah's roommates sat together, huddled behind textbooks, whispering while keeping half an eye on the instructor. Ideas bounced between them as they debated how to help Noah "move on."
"Bar or karaoke?" someone murmured. "I can call a few girls. Maybe not Lila-level, but still worth looking at."
"Noah can't drink," Caleb countered. "Let's get burgers instead. There's a place off campus that's decent."
"We could hit the spa after," another voice suggested with a grin. "I've got a membership."
"Tomorrow," Noah said quietly, cutting in. "I've got something tonight. Tomorrow's the weekend anyway."
He was the one who'd ended it. He wasn't heartbroken so much as worn thin. More than sadness, what he felt was a dull pressure from thinking about everything that still needed to be handled.
Part of him liked the idea of letting loose with his roommates, reclaiming some of the ease he'd denied himself for years. He wanted to try living in a way that felt lighter, even if only briefly.
"That works," Caleb said. "So are you coming back tonight, or crashing at Professor Evelyn's again?" He smirked. "Her bed must be comfortable."
That caught everyone's attention.
"She only has one bed, right?" someone added. "You sure nothing—"
"What are you thinking?" Noah shot them a look. "She's my sister. She's known me since I was a kid."
"She's adopted," someone muttered. "And she's—never mind."
The chatter died down. Noah turned away, ending the conversation.
Evelyn's place really did have only one bed. When he was younger, he'd clung to her constantly and slept beside her without a second thought. Now that they were both adults, they were careful, keeping distance where it mattered. On the rare occasions he stayed over, they slept at opposite ends, an unspoken line drawn between them.
In Noah's memory, nearly everyone spoke well of Evelyn. She was gentle, rational, sharp in both intellect and perception. Anyone with eyes could see how much she cared for him.
The nickname she used for him wasn't his name. It never had been.
"Nate," she'd called him since he was small, the sound soft and familiar, a private thing that felt like shelter. His roommates had picked it up from her without realizing what it meant, and somehow it had stuck.
With his handsome, well-behaved appearance and easygoing nature, the name suited him more than he liked to admit.
As for the strange conclusions his roommates liked to draw, Noah had no interest in entertaining them. Evelyn was his sister. She always had been. That was how he understood it, how he chose to see it.
Using his textbook as cover, he unlocked his phone and sent her a message.
"Sis, are you free tonight? Want to go for a walk?"
The reply came almost immediately.
"Of course. Asking your sister out for a walk all of a sudden… do you need something?"
He thought for a moment, then typed back a simple yes.
"What is it?" she asked. "Tell me first so I can be prepared."
"It's nothing serious," he replied. "I just want to talk."
"Alright," Evelyn wrote. "Meet me at the campus gate at seven thirty. Don't be late."
"I'll be there," he sent back.
He slipped the phone away, unaware that while he saw the evening as a quiet conversation, the women on either side of his life were already thinking of him in very different ways.