Title: “What We Don’t Say”
Alex was known for saying nothing and feeling even less. At least, that’s what people thought.
Adeline never bought it.
“Do you just absorb heat from the room?” she asked on their first day as seat partners.
No response. Not even a blink.
“So... that’s a yes.”
She kept talking to fill the silence. He kept ignoring her—until one day, he didn’t.
“I don’t do small talk,” he said flatly.
“Then do large talk,” she replied. “I’m very flexible.”
He almost smiled. She caught it. He knew she did, and after that, something shifted. Subtly.
In group projects, he let her lead. In labs, he corrected her measurements but never her ideas. One day, she saw him sketching in the margins of his notebook—dark, messy lines like something trying to claw its way out.
“Is that a monster or your reflection?”
He capped his pen. “It’s not finished.”
“Neither are you,” she said without thinking.
His jaw tensed. She wished she hadn’t said it.
Days later, he found her crying behind the theater stage. She wiped her face quickly. “Get lost.”
He didn’t move. Just handed her a folded piece of paper. No words. She opened it after he left.
It was a sketch. Her, sitting under a sky filled with crooked stars.
On the back: Still not finished. But trying.
She found him the next day, alone on the roof.
“You still don’t talk much,” she said, sitting beside him.
He didn’t look at her. “You don’t listen.”
She turned. “Try me.”
He didn’t speak for a while. Then: “When people leave, I don’t chase them. You shouldn’t expect me to.”
“I wasn’t planning to leave,” she said.
Silence. Wind. Distance.
And then—barely, like the start of something—he leaned just close enough that their shoulders touched.
No confessions. No kiss. Just that.
It was enough.
For now.
