Rule No 1: No Strings Attached

Summer's POV

The first thing I felt when I woke up was the heaviness.

It was like my body already knew what my half-asleep brain hadn't caught up to yet, a dull, physical weight sitting square in the middle of my chest before I'd even opened my eyes. I stared at the ceiling and for exactly three seconds, I almost didn't remember.

Then it all came back, all at once, like a wave I hadn't braced for.

The ring. The candlelight. Taylor walking towards Brooks, who was on one knee. The sound the crowd made. Me standing at the edge of it all with a folded letter in my hand and nowhere to put it. My whole body ached in a way that had nothing to do with the fall, like grief had a physical weight and I was carrying all of it at once.

I turned onto my side and looked at my phone. There were four missed calls from Brooks. Three from Ali.

I set the phone face down and closed my eyes, wishing, uselessly, that I could just stay in the dark a little longer.

Just before I could go back to sleep, a knock came.

I opened the door and Ali walked straight in, wrapped both arms around me and held on without saying anything first. She just held on, and I stood there with my chin on her shoulder and my eyes pressed shut, and for a moment the tightness in my chest loosened just enough to breathe, just enough that I let myself stop pretending I was fine, even for a second.

"I was so worried about you," she said finally, pulling back to look at me. Her eyes moved over my face, checking for damage. "I kept calling and you weren't picking up and Brooks was blowing up my phone every twenty minutes asking if I'd heard from you ..."

"Brooks was calling you?"

"Non-stop." She steered me gently toward the bed and sat beside me. "He's worried, Summer. He didn't understand why you ran out."

I didn't say anything to that. There wasn't a version of the truth I could hand her without it costing me something I wasn't ready to give up yet.

"She was there, Ali," I whispered, the dam breaking as a sob escaped. I covered my face with my hands, my shoulders shaking, three years of holding it together finally giving out all at once. "They got back together over the phone. He looked so happy."

Ali pulled me into a tight hug, letting me cry against her shoulder. "He's an idiot. A blind, oblivious, total hockey-brained idiot," she muttered, rubbing my back. "And Taylor is a manipulative little viper."

I sniffled, pulling back and wiping my cheeks, my whole face raw and swollen from how long I must have cried before she got there. "The point is, I lost before I even had a chance to fight. I've spent three years waiting for the perfect moment, and last night, I dressed up like a fool just to watch them kiss and Brooks proposing to her. I feel invisible, Ali. I feel completely invisible."

"You are not invisible," Ali said fiercely, grabbing my face. "You are beautiful, and you are brilliant. If Brooks is too stupid to see what's right in front of him, then he doesn't deserve you. We are going to figure out how you're going to survive this semester without losing your mind."

We sat like that for a moment, my head against her shoulder, letting the quiet do what words couldn't. Outside, I could already hear the campus starting up - footsteps in the corridor, voices, someone's music drifting through the wall, the whole world moving on like it hadn't just ended for me.

"I don't want to go in today," I said.

Ali looked at me.

"I mean it. I can't." I reached up and pressed my fingers against my eyes, the thought of walking through campus already making my stomach curl in on itself. "Everyone's going to be talking about it. The proposal, the engagement - it's going to be everywhere and I can't sit in the middle of it and pretend I'm fine. I just can't do that today."

"I know," she said. "And I get it. I do." She paused. "But if you stay here, you're just going to lie in this bed and replay everything and feel worse. You know that's what's going to happen."

She wasn't wrong and I hated that she wasn't wrong.

"You don't have to talk to anyone," she continued. "You just have to show up. That's it. Show up, get through your classes, come home." She bumped my shoulder lightly with hers. "I'll be with you the whole time."

It took her another ten minutes and the promise of coffee to get me out of the apartment, but she got me there, my eyes still puffy under the concealer she'd insisted on layering over them.

Campus was exactly as bad as I'd known it would be.

It was everywhere. The moment we walked through the main entrance I heard whispers talking about the diner, the flowers, the ring, and every syllable of it landed somewhere sore.

I kept my head down and walked, counting the seconds between one breath and the next just to have something to hold onto.

Ali had to break off to handle something with a professor - she squeezed my hand before she left and said she'd find me in an hour - and then I was alone, which was somehow worse.

*Brooks proposed. Did you see? They're engaged. It was so beautiful. Have you seen the ring?*

Every corner. Every conversation I drifted past. The same words turning over and over, each one another small cut I had to walk through smiling.

I told myself that I needed to accept it. Brooks was not mine, had never been mine, was never going to be mine. The sooner I let that settle, the sooner I could stop feeling like this. It wasn't even grief - you couldn't grieve something you never had. It was the quiet death of a hope I should have released a long time ago, and I was surprised by how much a thing that was never mine could still hurt this much to lose.

Accept it. Just accept it and move on.

I turned the corner near the main courtyard and walked straight into them.

Brooks saw me first. His face shifted immediately to the one that used to make my heart do something I'd trained it to ignore.

"Summer." He was already stepping toward me. "Where did you go last night? I called you so many times ...."

"I know, I'm sorry." I made myself look at him normally, forcing my voice into something steady even as everything in me wanted to fold. "I wasn't feeling well. I should have texted you instead of running out like that."

"Are you okay? You looked...." He searched my face. "You don't look like you slept."

"I'm fine. I'm a bit tired." I smiled, and it only cost me everything. "Congratulations, by the way. I mean it. I'm happy for you."

Something moved behind his eyes but he didn't name it. Instead he reached out and ruffled my hair, his hand messing up everything Ali had done that morning with a comb. "Don't go getting sick on me," he said. "I need you to be functional."

There it was. The little sister's voice. The same one he'd always used.

*I need you to be functional.*

Something in me went very quiet at that. Not the friend he loved. Not the girl he chose. The functional one. The one who kept the pieces together for everyone else and was never allowed to fall apart in front of him, not even now.

Taylor came out at his elbow like she'd been standing there the whole time, which she probably had. She lifted her left hand, and turned it so the ring caught the morning sun. The diamond threw a small flash of light across the space between us, and I made myself watch it without flinching.

"Isn't it something?" she said, looking at it rather than me. "The way it catches the light. I keep getting distracted by it. Brooks has excellent taste."

"It's beautiful," I said, because what else was there?

She smiled at that, satisfied, and slipped her hand back into his.

I excused myself before anyone could say anything else, before my face could do something I wouldn't be able to take back.

I found my way to the corridor outside Dr. Harrison's lecture room and stopped to breathe, back against the wall, my whole body finally allowed to sag for a second now that no one was watching.

Ali appeared at my side, slightly out of breath. "Sorry, what did I miss?"

"Nothing. Come on."

We pushed through toward the board. Dr. Harrison's project partner list took up the full page. I scanned down for my name.

Someone stepped back from the board as we approached and nearly walked into me. I moved aside and looked up.

Ace Hunters looked back.

He was already walking away, unhurried as always, hands in his pockets, but he slowed for just a second when his eyes landed on me. Something shifted in his expression.

"Nice," he said, simply. "This should be fun."

Then he kept walking. I stared after him for a second, then turned to the board.

Harrison, Dr. E. - Project Partners, Semester Two.

I found my name halfway down.

Quinn Summer - Hunters A.

I stood there and read it twice, something between dread and disbelief settling low in my stomach.

"Oh my God." Ali was already next to me, reading over my shoulder. I could hear the grin forming in her voice before she spoke. "Summer. Every girl on this campus would actually combust to be in your position right now. Ace Hunters, your project partner? Do you understand what...."

"I slapped him," I said.

There was silence. I turned to look at her. The grin was gone.

"You what?"

"Last night, in the parking lot." I turned back to the board, to my name sitting next to his. "He read my letter without asking, and he said it was embarrassing, so I..." I made a flat gesture with my hand.

Ali stared at me.

"Summer." Her voice had dropped to the careful one she used when something was genuinely bad. "Ace Hunters. You slapped Ace Hunters."

"Yes."

She looked at the board. She looked at me. She pressed her lips together and said nothing for a long moment.

"You're probably doomed."