Chapter Twenty: Crumbling Foundations
The earthworms, the nephridia, the chemical equations—they were all conquered. One by one, over the course of a grueling week, Amaya faced down her academic dragons and emerged victorious. Each exam felt like a stepping stone laid across the chasm Liam had left, solid and sure. She walked out of the final science paper with a lightness in her chest, a sense of hard-won triumph. The world, for a fleeting, glorious moment, felt full of possibility again. She had done it. For herself, for her family, for the part of her that wanted to prove something to the stern, hazel-eyed judge who lived next door.
All that remained was English Literature. Her safe subject. Her sanctuary. The one exam where she could let her imagination off its leash and run through fields of metaphor and theme. She walked into the hall that morning feeling not nervous, but exhilarated. This was her victory lap.
The first hour flew by. Analysis of Shakespearean sonnets? Effortless. Deconstructing post-colonial themes in a modern novel? A pleasure. She was in the zone, her pen flying across the paper, crafting arguments with a confidence that felt like armor.
Then came the break.
Needing air and a jolt of caffeine to sustain her for the essay section, she ducked out of the college gates and headed to the small, independent coffee shop on the corner—The Grind, a place frequented by students from all the local universities.
She pushed the door open, the bell jingling a cheerful welcome. The rich, bitter scent of espresso wrapped around her. She was halfway to the counter when her eyes, scanning for a free table, snagged on a sight that stopped her dead.
In the corner, by the window flooded with mid-morning light, sat Aris.
He was not alone.
Across from him, leaning forward with animated grace, was a young woman. She was beautiful in a way that seemed effortless and academic all at once—sleek dark hair pulled into a messy but chic bun, intelligent eyes framed by stylish glasses, a comfortable sweater over what looked like hospital scrubs. She was laughing at something Aris had said, her hand touching his forearm briefly.
And Aris… he was smiling. Not the faint, reluctant twitch she'd catalogued so meticulously, but a real, relaxed, engaged smile. He was nodding, saying something back, his posture open, his focus entirely on her. A stack of medical journals and two empty coffee cups sat between them. It looked comfortable. Established. Intimate.
The world tilted. The cheerful clatter of the café, the hiss of the steamer, the low hum of conversation—all of it receded into a dull, roaring static in Amaya's ears. Her breath hitched, sharp and painful in her chest. The triumphant armor she'd worn just moments ago shattered, leaving her feeling exposed, foolish, and devastatingly small.
Who is she? A classmate? A colleague? A… girlfriend?
The questions were arrows, each one finding its mark. The locket around her neck, which had felt like a secret promise, now felt like a child's trinket. The book, the motorcycle ride, the careful attention—had it all just been him being a diligent tutor? A kind neighbor? While this—this easy companionship, this shared smile over medical journals—was his real life?
She must have made a sound, a tiny gasp of punched-out air, because Aris's gaze flickered away from the woman and across the room. It landed on her.
His smile vanished. The open, relaxed expression smoothed into his familiar, neutral mask, but his eyes widened a fraction. There was a flash of something in them—surprise, certainly, but also what looked like… dismay? Or was that just her desperate hope painting the scene?
He gave a short, almost imperceptible nod in her direction, a mere acknowledgment of existence, before his attention was pulled back as the woman said something else, pointing to a page in one of the journals.
That was it. A nod. She had been reduced to a minor interruption.
Blindly, Amaya turned and stumbled back out of the café, the bell jingling a mocking farewell. She didn't get coffee. She barely remembered walking back to the exam hall. The sunny morning had curdled into something grey and sickly.
She took her seat for the final essay section. The question was about resilience in the face of heartbreak in Romantic poetry. Ironic. Her mind, usually so full of words and connections, was a barren wasteland. The image played on a relentless loop: his smile, her hand on his arm, the easy stack of their things.
She tried to write. Words came, stiff and clumsy, bleeding onto the page without grace or insight. She wrote about shattered illusions. She wrote about the distance between fantasy and reality. She wrote, though she didn't mean to, about a love that was observed, studied, and ultimately unrequited. It was the worst paper she had ever written. It was a confession she never intended to make.
When she handed in her booklet, her hands were ice-cold. The invigilator gave her a concerned look. Amaya just shook her head and walked out.
The post-exam euphoria that thrummed through the college corridors felt like a cruel joke. Friends called out to her, celebrating, but their voices sounded underwater. All she could think about was the clean, sunlit corner of a coffee shop, and the feeling of her carefully constructed world—the one where she was slowly, surely, building a bridge to him—crumbling into dust.
She walked home, the weight of her backpack now a physical manifestation of the leaden feeling in her stomach. She had aced every subject that mattered to him—the sciences, the logic. And she had likely failed the one that mattered most to her, because she'd seen the truth he'd never shown her during their lessons.
He had a life. A world of hospitals and journals and intelligent, beautiful colleagues who touched his arm and made him smile. And she was just the girl next door. The child with a crush. The student who needed tutoring.
For the first time since she'd started her Great Aris Rowon Observation Project, the delusion didn't feel beautiful. It felt like a prison. And she had just seen the key, held in the hand of someone else.