Noah
I sat in my apartment that night staring at my phone long after Sophia's last text faded into silence, the words *Ethan says hi, by the way* looping through my head in a way that irritated me more than I wanted to admit.
It wasn't jealousy. I told myself that firmly, repeatedly, like repetition alone could make it true. Sophia was allowed to have dinner with an old friend. She was allowed to laugh at his jokes and appreciate his help fixing her ceiling and enjoy an evening that had nothing to do with me at all. None of that gave me any right to feel the tight, uncomfortable knot that had settled in my chest the second she mentioned his name.
Except it wasn't really about Ethan, if I was being honest with myself. It was about everything else. The deadline my father had given me. The
