Chapter Text
Briar’s fall never knew how to arrive politely.
One night still clung to the last sticky edge of summer; the next morning, maple leaves had already collected at the bottom of the music building steps, thin and brittle underfoot. Hannah Wells came out of a practice room with her lyric notebook tucked against her chest, her fingertips still carrying the cold of the piano keys. She pulled her scarf under her chin and checked her phone.
Allie had sent three messages.
Where are you?
Do not tell me you slept in a practice room again.
Dean says someone’s birthday is happening at the hockey house tonight, and if you don’t come, he’s going to personally carry you out of the music building. My advice is run.
Hannah stopped in front of the vending machine, stared at the last line for two seconds, and replied with a period.
Allie answered immediately: That period was colder than a death threat.
Hannah slid her phone back into her coat pocket and almost smiled. It appeared only briefly, barely reaching the corner of her mouth before she tucked it away. That was what she did. She was quiet. Steady. The kind of person who could set things aside. Homework could wait until night. Rehearsal could be pushed by ten minutes. Feelings could be locked in a drawer.
Especially feelings.
At the bottom of her dorm-room drawer were three letters.
Not normal letters. Not the kind you stamped, dropped into a campus mailbox, and waited for someone to text, Got it, thanks. They were things she had written at different ages, when she had truly liked the person they were addressed to. Justin’s was the newest, its opening line shaped like a song that had only just cooled enough to touch. Justin sat in the arranging room next to hers, forgot adapters constantly, and the first thing he ever asked her was whether she had a spare cable. Later they stayed in rehearsal rooms too late, one earbud each, listening to the same demo and debating whether the chorus should lift by a half step. Hannah remembered that he hated when drums buried the vocal, that he spun his pen when he was stuck, that he once said he was afraid his songs sounded like they were trying too hard. That letter sounded most like who she was now: a little controlled, a little self-aware, but still warm from something that had just happened. She had spent twenty minutes reassuring Justin and then gone back to her dorm thinking, We talk so well. She did not consider that it might be more than talking. Great. Hannah Wells: alarmingly accurate emotional radar for everyone else, completely offline romantic radar for herself.
Then Justin started dating Karen, and Hannah realized too late what the feeling she had never said out loud had been.
Karen asked her out for one-in-the-morning fries after sleepless nights and sent long voice messages asking if she was being too sensitive; Hannah listened to every one and remembered that Karen hated when people ended conversations with You’re overthinking it. So when Justin and Karen got together, Hannah did not sulk. She did not disappear. She simply swallowed every instinct to move closer, closed her lyric notebook, and changed Do you want to get coffee? into Have fun, you two. Friends ranked high for her. So high, sometimes she forgot she was allowed to put herself on the list.
The letter to Garrett was a different problem altogether.
The letter to Garrett had been written in high school. Hannah did not know him from a season poster, but from much, much earlier—from middle school. Back then, he and Dean and Logan fought over the last bottle of soda by the court, Allie sat on the railing calling them idiots, and Kendall stood nearby fixing her hair like she already knew people were looking. Hannah had been there too. She was always there. Just usually off to the side. During the winter showcase sophomore year, the auditorium sound system died and Hannah stood backstage holding a backup speaker with sweaty palms. Garrett had just come from practice, hockey bag still over his shoulder, but he carried the absurdly heavy equipment onto the stage without making it a thing. After the performance, he handed her honey tea and said, “Your voice started going in the second verse.” Hannah had nodded very calmly. Internally: Wait, he listened to the whole thing? He noticed that? Oh. I’m in trouble. That high-school letter was written that night, with more nerve than she had now, sentences a little bolder, full of the kind of belief you could only have at that age: if someone saw you in a room full of people, maybe it meant something. And then, after that, Garrett got together with Kendall, like in so many stories where the most popular boy and the most popular girl end up together.
At Briar, Garrett’s name ended up on game posters. People shouted it in hallways. Someone always saved him a seat in the dining hall. On game nights he came out of the rink with his jacket slung over one shoulder, hair still damp, surrounded by people laughing too loudly. Hannah and he still spoke sometimes at Allie’s parties, Dean’s last-minute invitations, or in the crowd after games, mostly about safe things. Classes. Practice. Allie threatening Dean again. Then they returned to their separate worlds.
Great. Safe. Responsible. Hannah Wells, externally reliable human being, had written an entire love letter in high school and years later still filed it under normal adolescent fluctuation. Very professional. Someone give her a medal.
The third letter, Logan’s, was older.
His letter was old enough that her handwriting had been rounder. In middle school, Logan was always there in a quiet way. Hannah’s bike chain slipped more than once, and while other people stood around watching, Logan would set his backpack down, crouch beside the wheel, get black grease on his fingers, and work the chain back into place. When he was done, he never made a big deal of it. He only straightened the handlebars and said, “You can ride it now.” For a while, when she got out of school late, he would wait by the gate with his own bike and walk with her to the fork in the road before riding home. In the rain. Under the streetlights. In winter, when his hands turned red from the cold. The letter was young and painfully earnest. It listed tiny moments: him tapping her broken bike bell twice and saying it was only a little quieter; him riding on the side closer to the road when they went to school; her telling him he did not have to wait, and him saying, “It’s on my way,” even though it was a little out of his way. It was not written to her past self. It was written by middle-school Hannah, who had really liked Logan without being able to explain why, only that he was good in a way that made his name feel like a small, bright light when she wrote it down.
She only needed somewhere to put the things she could not say, could not admit, could not let out without making everything strange. Paper was thin. A drawer was deep. It could hold all the inconvenient affection one person did not know what to do with.
Until Friday afternoon, when the drawer was empty.
It happened messily.
Allie burst into the dorm while Hannah was looking for a black pen. Allie was digging through her own bag, saying Dean had been waiting downstairs for ten minutes and that if they did not come down soon, he was going to start performing a one-man hockey chant outside the women’s dorm. Hannah said that sounded like a campus safety incident. Allie said Dean was a campus safety incident.
Then someone knocked. A girl from next door needed tape. Allie took a call. Hannah’s lyric notebook fell to the floor. She crouched to pick it up, and the drawer bumped half-open, the edges of several envelopes showing at the bottom. Allie’s voice paused on the phone for half a beat, so quick it could have been bad reception. Hannah was too busy gathering the notebook to look up. Nothing happened then. At least, nothing seemed to.
They went downstairs, went to rehearsal, ate half of a bad sandwich, and endured six photos Dean sent from the hockey house. When Hannah returned that night, still wearing her coat, the drawer was open.
The bottom was empty.
Hannah stood in front of the desk without moving. Laughter passed outside in the hallway, shoes skidding briefly against the floor. The radiator pipe gave a soft metallic tick. She set her notebook down and touched the bottom of the drawer.
Nothing.
All three letters were gone.
Her first instinct was not to scream. Or cry. She simply pushed the drawer closed, stopped halfway, and stared at it as if the letters might reappear if she performed the motion correctly. Wait. No. Empty. Oh, I’m dead. Hannah stared at the bottom of the drawer while one very practical thought popped up: was it too late to request a transfer?
Her phone buzzed.
Allie: Are you okay? You suddenly stopped answering.
Hannah stared at the screen, typed a few words, and deleted them. Worse, her brain chose that exact moment to get excited and replay lines from the letters word for word. Seriously? Now? You’re reciting now? Hannah wanted to lock her brain in the drawer too.
She had not figured out how to tell Allie that her heart had possibly jumped out of a second-floor window and left no note.
The next morning, Briar acted innocent. Students crossed in front of the library with coffee and earbuds. From the rink came the sharp slice of a whistle through cold air. Hannah was heading toward the music building with her books when she stopped at her locker and saw someone leaning beside it.
Garrett Graham.
Of course.
Of course it was him. If the universe wanted to stage her public humiliation, it would absolutely hire Garrett Graham as the host.
He wore a dark team jacket, broad shoulders filling it out, hair a little messy as if he had just been blown out of practice by the wind. A letter was held between his fingers.
Hannah stopped walking.
Garrett looked up. His mouth held a very Garrett curve. Not mocking. More like he understood this was terrible but intended to make it sound less terrible first.
“So,” he said, flicking the envelope. “Were you ever going to send this?”
Hannah looked at the envelope. She recognized her handwriting. The flattened crease where she had sealed it. The strange ringing in her ears that came from seeing that paper in someone else’s hand. A wildly unhelpful thought arrived: she should have practiced uglier handwriting. Honestly. Why did she have to make the G look that nice? Great. Public execution, now with a personal signature.
She reached for it.
Garrett lifted it out of reach.
“Don’t.” Her voice was quiet but steady. “Give it to me.”
“I will,” he said. “But I think we should talk first.”
“There is nothing to talk about.”
“Wellsy.” He glanced at the envelope, then back at her. “You wrote me a love letter.”
Hannah’s brain stalled. Wellsy. That again. She could not remember when Garrett had first twisted Wells into that nickname only he used. Maybe during roll call in middle school. Maybe by the court when he was too lazy to say her whole last name. Everyone else called her Hannah, or Wells. Only he called her that. Worse, she had somehow allowed it. Wait. Allowed? When had she approved this? This was not reasonable.
Heat touched the tips of her ears. She did not look away. “Technically, I wrote a letter that was never sent.”
“It has been sent.”
“Clearly not by me.”
“I figured. It didn’t start with Dear Garrett, I have decided to ruin my life today.”
Hannah closed her eyes for half a second.
Garrett looked like he nearly laughed, but held it in. He lowered the envelope, not enough to return it, and tapped his knuckles lightly against her locker. “Listen. I didn’t show anyone.”
That loosened something in her shoulders. Barely. Not enough that she wanted to acknowledge it.
“And I didn’t read it out loud,” Garrett added. “Though Dean would probably pay to hear it.”
“If Dean finds out, I’ll kill him.”
“I believe you,” Garrett said. “You look like someone who’d hide a body in a piano.”
Hannah finally snatched the letter back. The envelope landed stiffly in her hand. She looked down to make sure it had not been torn too badly, then slid it inside her lyric notebook.
“Who else got one?” Garrett asked.
Hannah did not answer.
His expression shifted a fraction. “Not just me?”
She looked up at him.
Garrett gave a low whistle. “Wow. Popular girl.”
“Shut up.”
“That was a compliment.”
“That was you coming very close to death.”
He laughed then, brief and bright in the cold air, and somehow it did not make her want to run more. Hannah hugged the notebook tighter and said, “Justin might have gotten one too.”
Garrett’s smile faded.
Not entirely. Just enough. As if someone had turned down the volume.
“Karen’s Justin?”
Hannah looked away. “He’s not Karen’s.”
The second she said it, she winced internally. That was not the point, Hannah. The point was that your friend had just broken up with him, and your letter to her ex might currently be enjoying an independent campus tour. Oh, I’m doomed.
“The Justin who just broke up with Karen.”
She said nothing. She thought of Karen’s late-night voice messages, Justin humming softly in a rehearsal room, and every time she had carefully filed the whole thing under friend. She had thought she was doing great. Apparently the drawer had more initiative than she did.
Garrett nodded, connecting the line. “That’s bad.”
“Thank you for the professional assessment.”
“I mean it.” He pushed himself away from the locker. “Kendall saw it too.”
Hannah blinked. “Saw what?”
“Me holding your letter.”
The rink whistle cut through the air again.
Hannah stared at him and realized this was no longer about one letter. Kendall was Garrett’s ex-girlfriend; she was also the girl who ordered black coffee when everyone else got ice cream, rolled her eyes at Dean’s bad jokes, and somehow never fully left the room. Beautiful, forceful, with a presence like a lamp no one could switch off. Even if she and Hannah were only nodding acquaintances, Hannah knew the stories people told about Garrett and Kendall. The assumption that they would find their way back to each other had never gone fully quiet. She could even hear the tiny tension in Garrett’s voice when he said Kendall’s name. Bad. She was very good at noticing the things people did not say. Worse, once she noticed them, she usually wanted to help.
Garrett shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. “She may now think you and I are...”
“No,” Hannah said at once.
“I know no.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I know.”
“If you need me to make a statement—”
“I don’t need a statement.” Garrett looked at her. “I need you to have lunch with me.”
Hannah blinked again.
“What?”
“Lunch.” He said it as if this were reasonable. “Dining hall. Window seat. Lots of people. Kendall will see. Justin might see.”
Hannah stared at him for three seconds. “You’re insane.”
She said it calmly. Internally, she was already arranging to transfer, change her name, switch majors, and reapply to a music program in Canada. Excellent. Efficient. Hannah Wells, crisis manager of the year, solving life problems exclusively through flight.
“People say that a lot, usually after I score.”
“Garrett.”
“Wellsy.”
She clutched the notebook harder. “You want me to pretend to date you.”
“I like that you get right to the point.”
“I don’t like the point.”
“You’ll like the outcome.” He held her gaze. “Kendall thinks I’ve moved on. Justin thinks you’ve moved on. Karen doesn’t have to think you’re in love with her ex-boyfriend immediately after they broke up.”
Her fingers tightened against the cover of the notebook. The corner had softened from use, paper pressing into her skin. Garrett did not rush her. He simply stood there and, for once, did not keep joking.
After a few seconds, Hannah said, “Lunch.”
Garrett nodded. “Lunch.”
“Just to discuss terms.”
“Of course.”
“No weird athlete stunts.”
“I’m not sure how you define weird.”
“You know.”
“I know.” His mouth curved. “But I still want to hear you say it.”
Hannah turned and walked away.
“Is that a yes?” Garrett called after her.
She did not look back. “That’s you having ten minutes to convince me.”
The window seat in the dining hall was not quiet.
Briar’s dining hall was never quiet. The coffee machine hissed. Chair legs scraped the floor. Someone at a distant table smacked the surface while arguing about a game result. Garrett sat across from Hannah with a tray that looked capable of feeding three people. Hannah had only a coffee and an unopened yogurt.
“You always eat that little?” Garrett asked.
“I am experiencing a personal disaster.”
“Disasters require protein.”
“Thank you, Coach.”
He spread a napkin on the table and pulled a pen from his pocket.
Hannah stared. “You carry a pen?”
“I borrowed it.”
“From whom?”
“A business major moved by my charm.”
“You stole it.”
“He didn’t resist.”
Hannah pulled the napkin slightly toward herself. “I’m writing the rules.”
Garrett handed her the pen, looking innocent. “Please.”
She wrote the first rule: No crossing lines.
Garrett glanced at it. “Define crossing lines.”
Hannah looked up.
“Legally, socially, or by music-major standards?”
“By normal-person standards.”
“That’s vague.”
She wrote the second: No catching feelings.
Garrett’s brows lifted. “Confident in yourself.”
“I’m not confident in you.”
“Fair.”
The third: No getting caught lying in front of friends.
Garrett nodded. “Important. Dean can smell fear.”
“Dean already smells fear.” Hannah checked her phone. Allie had just sent, Why are you sitting with Garrett??? Dean says he’s making bets.
Hannah turned the phone facedown.
For the fourth rule, she pressed harder: no kiss.
Garrett looked at the words and leaned back, as though he had just heard a deeply flawed tactical proposal.
“No kiss?”
“Yes.” Hannah capped the pen. “No kissing.”
“Wellsy.” His tone turned knowledgeable. “Hand-holding doesn’t make men jealous.”
Hannah looked at him. Wait. What did he just say? The hockey captain was now presenting a theory on how men required kissing in order to become jealous. Great. Completely unreasonable. She hoped the course did not count for credit and did not have a final exam.
She slowly looked at him.
Garrett continued with an offensively serious face. “You need kissing for that.”
Hannah yanked the napkin closer. “This is not a hockey strategy board.”
“I’m speaking from an effectiveness standpoint.”
“I am refusing from a personal safety standpoint.”
“Did you just threaten me?”
“I’ve been threatening you.”
Garrett dipped his head, laughing under his breath. Across the dining hall, Kendall walked past with two girls beside her. Her eyes paused briefly on their table, so briefly it could have been accidental. Garrett did not turn around. He only extended his hand across the table, palm up. Hannah noticed that, even though he was smiling, his fingers had gone a little tense. Her first thought was: He’s nervous too. Her second was: Wait, why am I feeling bad for the guy who proposed this ridiculous plan? That is not reasonable.
Hannah looked at it.
His fingers were long, knuckles defined, a pale old scar across the back of one finger. She did not move immediately. He did not hurry her. The dining hall was loud. The coffee machine released a burst of steam. Someone at the next table laughed too hard.
Finally, Hannah placed her hand in his.
Garrett’s thumb pressed lightly against her knuckles.
“See,” she said under her breath. “Hand-holding is enough.”
“For now,” he said.
“Forever.”
“We can reassess at the second meeting.”
“There will be no second meeting.”
“All successful partnerships require review.”
She tried to pull her hand away, but he held it lightly, not tight, just enough for anyone walking by to see. Kendall had already moved on. Hannah did not know whether Justin was in the dining hall. She did not want to know. All she knew was that Garrett was holding her hand, and his palm was warmer and quieter than she expected.
When the terms were done, Garrett picked up the napkin and examined it seriously.
“You have nice handwriting.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m complimenting the contract formatting.”
“Give it to me.”
“We should each keep a copy.”
“You want to photocopy a napkin?”
“I can take a picture.”
He said picture and moved like a steal. Before Hannah processed it, his phone was aimed at her. Click.
She froze.
Garrett looked down and tapped the screen a few times.
“What did you just take a picture of?”
“Evidence.”
“Garrett.”
“Don’t move.”
“You had better not be—”
His phone lit up with an incoming call preview. Hannah saw her own face on the screen: frowning, pen in hand, looking as if she were sentencing a very minor criminal.
“You set me as your call photo?”
Garrett flipped the phone over, innocence weaponized. “My phone, my business.”
“That is not in the agreement.”
“It isn’t forbidden either.”
“I can add it now.”
“Contract is already active.”
“You just said partnerships require review.”
“Reviews are not retroactive.”
Hannah glared at him. Garrett looked back, laughter hiding badly in his eyes.
She opened her yogurt and looked down.
“You’re annoying.”
“I’ve been told that’s part of my charm.”
“Unreliable source.”
“Dean said it.”
“Then very unreliable.”
Garrett laughed and picked up his fork. He did not ask about the third letter again. Maybe he could tell she did not want to talk about it.
The quiet lasted a few seconds. Then Dean’s voice exploded behind them.
“I knew it!”
Hannah closed her eyes. OMG.
Allie’s voice followed. “Dean.”
“I said nothing.”
“You said two words.”
“That’s not a full sentence.”
Dean stood beside their table with a tray, eyes moving between Garrett and Hannah’s joined hands, his expression suggesting he had discovered the biggest trade of the season. Allie stood behind him with I will handle him written across her face, though her eyes held a question too.
Garrett did not let go.
Hannah did not let go immediately either.
She only looked at Allie and said, “I’ll explain later.”
Allie looked at her, then at the napkin, then back at her face. Finally, she nodded once.
Dean stared at her. “That’s it? You’re accepting this?”
Allie grabbed the back of his hoodie. “Walk.”
“I haven’t placed a bet yet.”
“If you place a bet, I’m dropping your phone into soup.”
As they left, Dean was still muttering about whether it was tomato soup or chili because the degree of loss mattered. Hannah finally withdrew her hand, fingers curling slightly as if she had stepped out of a brief patch of light.
Garrett looked at her. “Explain later?”
“I’ll come up with a version.”
“Need me to participate?”
“You speaking less would be participation.”
“That’s difficult for me.”
“I know.”
He folded the napkin and pushed it toward her. “Then I guess we have a deal, partner.”
She slipped the napkin into her lyric notebook.
“If this ruins my life,” she said, “I’m blaming you.”
Garrett stood with his tray. “Fair.”
He took two steps, then turned back.
“But, Wellsy?”
Hannah looked up.
No message from Justin.
That should have been a relief. No message. Good. Also terrifying. Hannah decided to stop breathing for a while and see if that would make the universe pause too.
“This picture is perfect for scaring off competition.”
Hannah threw a crumpled napkin at him.
Garrett dodged it and disappeared into the dining hall crowd, laughing. Someone from the hockey table called his name, and the noise swallowed him quickly. Hannah sat where she was, fingertips touching the edge of her lyric notebook. Inside it were the napkin agreement and the letter she had just shoved back where it belonged.
She checked her phone.
No message from Justin.
None from Logan.
Only a new one from Allie:
You’d better prepare an extremely detailed explanation.
Hannah stared at the line and slowly exhaled. Then she typed:
I may need to make a PowerPoint.
Allie: Minimum twenty slides.
Hannah set the phone facedown and finally let out a low laugh.
Things had clearly gone off the rails.
Still, if her life had to go off the rails, Hannah supposed it was nice to have a written agreement. Even if it was on a napkin. Even if her partner was Garrett Graham. Even if neither of those facts was remotely comforting.
But for now, she had a napkin agreement, an offensively confident fake boyfriend, and one very clear rule.
no kiss.
She hoped Garrett Graham could read.