The sound of my own confession had barely faded when the door swung open again, this time with a definitive thwack. It was Aisha, our best friend and resident chaos coordinator, dressed in what looked like the start of a very expensive night out. She just took one look at me, still huddled on the floor, red eyed and emotionally devastated and her smile dropped.
"Wait, what did that scrub do this time? I will make sure he gets the beating of his life, tell me S."
Kenya, quickly gave her the summary of what had happened. Aisha listened, her expression hardening and when Kenya finished, Aisha just shook her head. "Forget Atlanta, forget isolation and forget those pathetic paperback princes for five hours. You are not ending the semester this way, like a character from a tragic Victorian novel, Simone".
"Aisha! I'm just taking a break from men. I am serious this time around ". I insisted, pushing myself to a sitting position. "I just want to lay on my bed and feel sorry for myself, for being the fool, who accepted and believed the same old lies for three times in two years".
"No, you don't", Aisha said, grabbing my hand and pulling me up with surprising strength.
"You have to remind this entire campus that they are unworthy of you, and that you are an absolute force of nature. And guess what? Tonight is the perfect stage".
"stage for what Aisha?
Aisha's eyes sparkled with mischievous energy. "Julian's party, you know him right? The biggest guy on campus? The Julian Vance, rich family that owns half of downtown? It's his end of semester blowout, the one everyone talks about until graduation. This is the last great party before break and everyone who matters will be there".
Kenya nodded, suddenly on board. "She is right, S. You can mourn tomorrow. Tonight, we celebrate the fact that you are over with that scrub and remind ourselves that we are the main characters here".
"But… guys?" l whined, feeling my resolve weaken under their combined pressure on me.
"We don't care about the guys," Aisha declared, already trifling through my closet. "We care about the exposure, we go, we dance and we shake off the shame, and also we look utterly unforgettable. This is a life decision, Simone you have to go".
Twenty minutes later, I was transformed. With Aisha's makeup skills and Kanya's sheer force of will, the tragedy was polished away. But I still could feel fragile from within me, but the expensive dress and the high heels gave me deceptive armor.
The party was exactly as I had imagined it to be; loud, packed, and pulsating with the energy of students escaping final exams. I immediately grabbed a drink, a lurid blue punch, and quickly chased it with another. The goal was simple, to numb the critical voice, ignore the eligible bachelors and dance until my heartbreak was a distant echo.
The alcohol worked fast, it did its work. Soon I was not just dancing, I was lost in the crowd move with a reckless abandon I had not felt in months now. My smile was real, fuelled by temporary liquid confidence, and my famous, striking beauty seemed to radiate out, doing its work yet again, drawing attention like a gravitational pull. I was aware of the change in the crowd's dynamic before I even got to see him. The cluster around me suddenly thinned, and when I looked up, I realized the space was cleared by Julian Vance himself. Julian was stunning, tall, impeccably dressed, a casual button down, and with eyes that seemed to take in the whole room, was locked onto just one person: me.
He didn't speak, he just held out his hands, a silent challenge across the strobe lit floor. The music was deafening, but his meaning was clear.
I took his hand.
We moved together, a whirlwind in the center of the room. Julian was a fantastic dancer, attentive and smooth, focusing only on me. For that hour, he made me feel like the center of the universe, the English major student in me recognized the trope, but the broken girl in me desperately needed the attention.
When we finally slipped out onto a quiet balcony overlooking the sprawling, wealthy neighborhood; the silence was intense. I leaned against the cold stone railing, taking a deep, shaky breath. The blue punch had numbed everything in me, lowering the precise, critical barrier that usually guarded my heart.
Julian didn't invade the silence. He simply stood beside me, his presence a heavy, comfortable weight. The music from inside was muffled, a distant beat and the honesty I had suppressed for days came pouring out.
"I am so tired ", I whispered, "I'm done. Do you know how hard it is? How painful it is to fall for someone and he doesn't love you back. I always keep falling in love with guys that don't even love me, all the time. Do you know how painful that is?"
My voice broke on the last word, and I covered my face ashamed of crying before the campus king.
Julian stepped closer, his demeanor instantly changing from charming host, to quite Sentinel. "Hey, don't do that".
He gently took my hand away from my face. "it's not your fault for loving fiercely, it's not a crime to feel that way. You can't control who loves you back. But what you have to do is to focus on yourself. You have to forget them and realize that they aren't worth your pain".
Those simple words broke me entirely. I wasn't just crying anymore, I was shaking with the sheer force of relief that someone finally saw the cost of my devotion. Julian immediately pulled me into him, wrapping his arms around me in a tight, protective embrace. It felt like a hug given out of pity for my obvious situation, but as his warmth settled over me my rational mind dissolved. I clung on to him, inhaling the scent of his expensive cologne and the faint trace of his own party chaos.
Still in that position, I felt a deep, physical connection, it was electric, immediate and utterly terrifying. He felt it too, I knew it from the sudden, powerful stiffness in his arms and the quickening of his breath against my hair. For a moment, we were two broken people clinging to each other in the dark.
Then, he suddenly pulled back, his hands resting slightly on my shoulders. His eyes that were usually so confident, were guarded almost wary.
"Go home, Simone, " he said, his voice low and firm, and it got me thinking how does he even know my name but then maybe he asked around before he approached me on the dance floor. "Go home and start focusing on yourself, Simone".
With that he just released me and stepped toward the door, leaving me breathless and on the balcony.