Chapter 2 THE MAN WHO READS ALONE
Elias
Elias had perfected the art of being alone in a crowd.
He sat in his usual corner of the campus café, black coffee going cold in front of him, red pen bleeding through another stack of freshman essays. The café was loud today. Too loud. Everyone was talking about Valentine’s Day like it was some kind of holiday that actually mattered, and Elias wanted to tell them all to shut up.
He didn’t, obviously. That would require caring enough to engage, and Elias had given up on that about a year ago.
His glasses were fogging up from the steam rising off someone’s hot chocolate at the next table. He pushed them up his nose and went back to the essay he was grading. The student had misspelled “metaphor” three times. Elias circled it, wrote a note in the margin, and tried not to think about how this was his life now. Twenty-three years old and spending his Friday morning grading papers for Introduction to Creative Writing while everyone around him planned dates and bought roses and pretended like love was something real.
It used to be real for him. Or at least, he’d thought it was.
“Oh my god, did you sign up for the letter program?”
Elias glanced up. Three girls at the table next to him were huddled over a phone, giggling.
“Obviously. I’m hoping Jake finally notices me.”
“Jake from Econ? Girl, he’s been dating someone for like six months.”
“Ugh. Fine. Then maybe someone else will write to me. It’s so romantic, you know? Like old school.”
Elias looked back down at his essays. Romantic. Sure. Nothing said romance like desperately hoping some random person would validate your existence through an anonymous letter.
His phone buzzed. A reminder that he was supposed to submit his grad school applications by the end of the month. He swiped it away without reading the rest. He’d been getting those reminders for weeks and ignoring every single one.
The truth was, he had no idea what he was doing after graduation. Four months left of his senior year and everyone kept asking what his plans were, like he was supposed to have his entire life figured out by now. His advisor wanted him to apply for literature PhD programs. His parents wanted him to get a real job. Elias wanted to disappear into a cabin in the woods and never speak to another human being again.
Okay, maybe that was dramatic. But still.
“Excuse me?”
Elias looked up. A guy was standing next to his table. Tall, athletic build, confident smile. The kind of person who’d never spent a Friday morning alone in a café grading papers about metaphors.
“Yeah?” Elias said.
“You’re Elias Reed, right? TA for Professor Hartley?”
“That’s me.”
The guy’s smile got wider. “Cool. I’m in your Tuesday section. I just wanted to say your feedback on my last essay was really helpful.”
“Oh.” Elias blinked. “Thanks. I’m glad it helped.”
There was a pause. The guy was still standing there, and Elias suddenly realized this wasn’t just about essay feedback.
“So, uh.” The guy shifted his weight. “A bunch of us are going to this Valentine’s party next week. It’s supposed to be pretty fun. I was wondering if maybe you wanted to come? With me?”
Elias’s stomach sank. This happens sometimes. Not often, but enough that he should probably have a better response prepared by now.
“I appreciate the invite,” Elias said carefully, “but I don’t really do parties. Or Valentine’s Day. Or… anything, really.”
The guy laughed like Elias was joking. “Come on, it’ll be fun. You should get out more.”
“I’m good. Thanks though.”
The smile faded a little. “Oh. Okay. Well, if you change your mind…”
“I won’t. But thanks.”
The guy walked away and Elias went back to his essays, trying to ignore the guilt sitting heavy in his chest. He hadn’t even gotten the guy’s name. Hadn’t asked. Because asking would have meant engaging, and engaging would have meant explaining, and Elias was so tired of explaining.
No, he wasn’t interested in dating. No, he wasn’t going to suddenly change his mind because Valentine’s Day was coming up. No, he didn’t believe in love anymore, not after Carter had taken everything Elias had offered and then left anyway, saying Elias was too intense, too much, too exhausting to love.
Elias had learned his lesson. Loving people meant giving them the power to wreck you, and he was done being wrecked.
His coffee was definitely cold now. He drank it anyway, grimacing at the bitter taste.
The café was starting to empty. People heading to class or lunch or wherever people went when they had lives outside of grading papers. Elias should probably leave too. He had office hours for an hour, and after that a lecture he was supposed to attend for his senior seminar.
His phone buzzed again. Another reminder about grad school applications. This time he opened it, stared at the words on the screen until they stopped making sense, then closed it.
Four months until graduation. Four months to figure out what he was supposed to do with his life. Four months of people asking him about his plans while he smiled and said something vague about keeping his options open.
The truth was, Elias didn’t have options. He had a literature degree and a stack of rejection letters from every MFA program he’d applied to last year and a deep, bone-tired exhaustion that made getting out of bed feel like an achievement.
He packed up his stuff and headed out into the cold. The quad was worse than this morning. More decorations. More couples. Someone had set up a booth selling roses for five dollars each, and there was actually a line.
Elias walked past it all, hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket, and tried not to think about how this time last year, he’d been the one buying roses. How he’d believed that loving someone was enough. How stupid he’d been.
His apartment was off campus, a fifteen-minute walk through the cold. It was small, barely big enough for his bed and his bookshelves, and the desk where he spent most of his nights reading until he fell asleep. But it was his. Quiet. Safe. Nobody was asking him questions he didn’t know how to answer.
He dumped his bag by the door and collapsed into his desk chair, staring at the stack of books he was supposed to be reading for his seminar. James Baldwin. Virginia Woolf. All these writers who understood loneliness better than anyone Elias had ever met in real life.
Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he’d spent so much time with fictional people that he’d forgotten how to be around real ones.
His mailbox key was sitting on his desk. He’d need to check his campus mail tomorrow. Probably just department memos and reminders about graduation paperwork. Nothing important.
Elias pulled out his phone and looked at the reminder about grad school one more time. Then he deleted it.
Four months. He had four months to figure out who he was supposed to be after this. Four months to decide if he was going to keep running or finally stop and face whatever came next.
Outside his window, the sky was turning gray. It looked like snow.
Elias turned on his desk lamp and opened the first book in his stack. Baldwin’s words stared back at him, familiar and comforting in a way nothing else was these days.
At least the books didn’t leave. At least books didn’t tell you that you were too much to love.
At least here, alone in his apartment with only his thoughts and his books, Elias didn’t have to pretend that he was okay.