Open and Easier

I plowed through a whole German exercise book, which felt like progress. Then came French history—the Revolution, exams closing in. Ana became my study partner, the kind of person who actually loves this stuff, and she started helping me with maths and Spanish without being asked. With Becca things had shifted. We both knew what we’d been building wasn’t going to work, but instead of letting it get messy we just opened up a little, decided to be real with each other instead.

I went to Irina’s one night—she walked me around Turkheim for an hour in the cold and dark, which sounds pointless until you realize she’s just showing you around because she wants to. She made spaghetti with sausages and we watched something dumb on their enormous plasma TV. Around ten o’clock Ana walked me halfway to the train station, and I remember the platform at that hour being full of strange people, the kind you only encounter when you’re the only one awake.