Page 35 of Call It Chemistry

I blink. “You want to go on a date?”

He nods, face suddenly serious. “If you want to. No pressure. I just… I’m interested in seeing what happens next.”

I take a second to process. The room seems brighter, voices softer, the weight in my chest replaced by something lighter and wilder than hope.

“Yeah,” I say, and it comes out steadier than I expect. “I’d like that.”

Aaron’s smile is full-spectrum now, the kind that pulls everything else in its orbit.

We sit there for a while, just talking. No more secrets, no more chemical disguises. He tells me about his plans for school, about growing up in a house where everyone talked over each other, about how sometimes he feels like he’s just faking it, hoping nobody notices.

I tell him about the terror of being seen, and how it’s even scarier when someone looks and keeps looking. I tell him about Sara’s studio, about late-night lab disasters, about how the only thing worse than a failed experiment is not knowing what you did wrong.

We finish our coffees and order two more. The hours slip past, marked only by the slow migration of sunlight across the table. Every time I think about what I’ve done—how the bet turned into a joke, then a disaster, then this—I feel a surge of something too complicated for words. Not quite regret. Not quite pride. Something in between.

Eventually, the barista flicks the lights twice, a subtle signal that we’re pushing the boundaries of student hospitality. Aaron stands, stretches, and offers his hand.

I take it, and he doesn’t let go until we’re out the door.

Dusk settles over us, the quad empty except for a janitor emptying a trash can. We walk in step again, but this time it’s easy. No ghosts, no crowd, just the two of us and the path ahead.

Aaron stops at the edge of the quad, looks at me sideways. “So… see you in class?”

I nod, already thinking about the next reaction, the next possible result.

He grins, then leans in—just for a second—and kisses me, light and quick, like a promise.

I watch him go, hands in his pockets, head down against the cold. He doesn’t look back, but I know he’s smiling.

I head home, the taste of coffee and possibility buzzing on my tongue.

In the hallway outside my room, Hunter is waiting, slouched against the cinderblocks, thumbs flying on his phone.

He looks up, grins, and says, “Well? Did you blow up the universe?”

I laugh, for real this time. “Not yet,” I say. “But we might have started something.”

He gives me a look—half proud, half jealous—and punches my shoulder. “Told you. Legend.”

I shake my head and unlock the door. “Go home, Hunter.”

He leaves, still smirking, and I close the door behind him. I sit on my bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about how sometimes the only way to get out of your own story is to rewrite the ending.

Chapter 10

The lecture hall lets out in a tidal wave of noise, two hundred students evacuating through the double doors like a mass exodus from a failed cult. I hold back, gathering my notes and mechanical pencil with more care than necessary, waiting for the worst of the crush to subside. When I finally step into the hall, Aaron is there, leaning against the wall as if he’s been waiting, which he has.

Yesterday’s confession still echoes in my skull—three syllables, infinite fallout: “It was me.” I half expect him to look right through me now, as if I’ve gone quantum and slipped between states, but instead he gives me a quick, crooked smile. It’s not the full-wattage thing he used to weaponize in class. This one’s smaller, private.

“Hey,” he says, voice low.

“Hey,” I say back. My hands are already sweating.

We move down the corridor, forced into single file by the traffic jam of undergrads shuffling toward their next scheduled obligation. The light in here is barely better than the lecture hall—a dirty sodium haze leaking through half-dead fluorescents. Every scuff of my Converse is amplified by the institutional acoustics, like the floor is determined to rat me out.

Aaron walks beside me, close enough that the heat of his arm radiates through the gap between us. Neither of us says a word for a full thirty seconds, which, in Aaron Thompson time, is a geological era.

He finally cracks. “So. You wanna grab lunch?”