Yours

God, it's cold.

Not just winter cold, not the kind you shrug off with a thicker coat and the stubborn belief that you'll adapt. This cold felt personal. Like it knew my name and wanted to carve it into my bones.

I exhaled, watching my breath bloom white in the air, and pulled my scarf tighter until it pressed against my mouth. The wind slipped under my sleeves anyway, greedy and smug. The sky above campus was washed-out gray, like even daylight didn't have the energy to be bright here.

I should've gone somewhere warmer.

But warmth had never been the same thing as safety.

Great school? Yes. A degree that might actually take me somewhere. Also, yes. Four years of debt that would cling to me like a second shadow. Definitely.

Worth it, I told myself. Worth it because it wasn't home.

Home was a house where silence ruled like a religion. Where discipline was love, and love was earned the way you earned grades, by performing perfectly and never asking for too much.

I swallowed the thought before it could sour my mood.

The problem wasn't the cold. Not really.

The problem was that I had finally got what I wanted, distance, freedom, a new city, a blank slate, and now that I was here, I had no idea what to do with the rest of my life.

Go to school and become something useful.

My mother's voice slid into my mind, sharp as a blade. It always found me at the most inconvenient moments. Like she had a key to the inside of my skull.

You can't save everyone, Eden. I raised you alone—broke and exhausted—so you could get here. And this is how you repay me? Don't waste your money on anyone. Don't trust anyone. Take care of yourself... and remember who you owe."

Not advice. A curse she'd repeated until it felt like scripture.

She wasn't always cruel in obvious ways. Sometimes she was worse, quiet, efficient, and certain. She believed emotions should be folded up tight, like linens and tucked away in drawers. Neat. Hidden. Controlled. All except for her own.

If you unfolded them, you'd see the wrinkles.

If you showed them, you'd fail.

Maybe my dad had it right. He left when I was eight.

I used to hate him in that childish, righteous way,like if I hated him enough, it would keep the hole from hurting. But now I am older. I remember things differently.

My mom's smile never reached her eyes. The way her anger filled a room until you couldn't breathe. The way she could make you feel guilty for needing anything at all.

She called him weak. Useless.

Said she could never stay with a man like that.

Now he was remarried. Three kids. A whole life I only saw in fragments, holiday photos posted by his wife, captions full of cheer I didn't recognize.

The worst part wasn't that he left.

It was that he stayed gone.

The last time I saw both my parents in the same place, my mother was yelling at my father in a grocery store parking lot about tuition. She raved on about how paying for my education was the least he could do, considering he hadn't been around.

He agreed to cover half, so she'd stop shrieking.

It should've made me feel victorious.

It didn't.

It made me feel like an object being negotiated over.

I forced my steps to keep moving across campus, boots crunching over frost. The buildings rose around me, brick and glass and old stone, like history had frozen into architecture. Students passed in clusters, faces pink from the cold, laughter spilling from them easily.

I tried to imagine what that felt like.

To be light.

To be unafraid of taking up space.

I was so deep in thought I didn't notice it until something whipped past my face. Fast. Close.

I flinched hard enough that my bag strap slid off my shoulder.

A black drone, blinking and wobbling as if it had lost its mind, dove toward the ground and crash-landed a few feet away. The propellers kept spinning wildly, angrily, and disoriented.

"Oh my god, did it hit you?"

A girl hurried toward me, breath steaming, eyes wide with panic. She was a little taller than me, slightly tanned even in winter, like she refused to fade with the season. Her blonde high ponytail didn't so much as shift, untouched by the cold gusts.

But it was her eyes that held me.

Glacial blue. Bright. The kind of blue that didn't just look at you seemed to take inventory.

"I am so, so sorry," she blurted. "I was aiming for the tree. I swear I'm not out here trying to take out random pedestrians on my first week.

My heartbeat settled, slow, and reluctant.

"It missed me," I managed. "Barely."

Relief softened her face, and then she smiled confidently, easy, like the world was a place that welcomed her.

She was dressed like she'd stepped out of a music video: black combat boots, plaid pants, a puffy black coat that made her look like a burnt marshmallow in the most iconic way possible.

She scooped up the drone with practiced hands.

"Mandy," she said. "Hi. Sorry again. Twice. Or three times. I'm honestly losing count."

"Eden."

The name came out softer than I expected. Like a confession.

Mandy tilted her head and studied me as if she could see through layers.

"You have the face of someone who reads romance novels and cries in bookstores," she said.

Heat crawled up my neck. "Is that... bad?"

"It's adorable." Her grin widened.

"What are you doing with a drone? Besides almost killing me."

She laughed, and the sound cut through the cold like sunlight through cloud cover.

"I'm a film major," she said. "I was trying to get B-roll above campus for a horror project."

"Horror?"

"You don't like horror?"

"I'm more of a romcom or mystery kind of girl."

"Of course you are." She giggled. "Do you have your schedule yet?"

"Yes."

"Perfect. Show me. I haven't met one person here interesting enough to keep, but you might make the cut."

I should've been skeptical.

Instead, I found myself smiling, fingers already digging my folded schedule out of my pocket.

We had Sociology together.

We had History together.

Mandy pumped a fist in the air like she'd just won something.

"Oh, Eden," she said, beaming. "We are absolutely surviving this place together."

Together.

The word landed somewhere tender inside me, like a fingertip pressing a bruise.