It was a clean start for both of you. The gun cracked the air, sharp and final, and you were off—legs burning almost immediately, lungs already protesting—but Henry was just ahead. Enough that you noticed. Enough that it mattered. You pushed harder. Your calves screamed, your breath came ragged and thin, your chest fluttered like it might simply refuse to go on. You’d trained. You’d prepared. And still, you weren’t even sure you were wearing half of what he was—half the ease, half the certainty, half the invisible advantages that never showed themselves until moments like this. That’s what life does, you realized. Not in a tragic, pleading way. Not the kind that asks for pity. No—life is cruel in the way that slaps you hard across the face and keeps walking. It lets your eyes burn, your lungs shudder, your breath tear itself apart in your throat, and it doesn’t stop to explain. There’s no villain. No one to blame. Just the fact of it. Just life. And the absence of choice. You never chose the life you were born into. You never chose your family, your resources, your starting point. Some people began several steps ahead and called it talent. Others crawled through the dirt just to reach the same peak—and you were allowed to resent that, even if you weren’t allowed to say it aloud. Someone had to be at fault, didn’t they?

But there wasn’t. You lost.

You lost the internship to another colleague. Another country. Another city. To Henry.

Not because he cheated. Not because he undermined you. Not because he did anything wrong. He was simply brilliant.

You’d known that from the beginning—from the first time you watched him swing an axe into a tree, precise and effortless, like he’d been born already knowing where to strike. Greedy of you, really, to want to prove yourself standing beside a giant when you weren’t one.

So Henry got it.

Next semester, he would spend five months in the city you’d dreamed about—the college you’d clawed your way toward. It sounded so simple when spoken aloud. Just a placement. Just an opportunity. But the road you’d taken just to apply—the responsibility, the sacrifices, the stacking of choices upon choices—it had been hell. You’d built yourself piece by piece to reach it.

And still, it wasn’t enough.

You’d known that too, somewhere deep down. But knowing it privately was different from seeing it quantified. Reduced to numbers. To rankings. To a letter. That morning, you held the rejection in your hands. And Henry held his acceptance. You asked him, rushed and breathless, before you could stop yourself.

“Did you pass?”

“Yes.”

That was it. Silence followed—heavy, deliberate. His eyes flicked from the paper in your hand to your face, and something unreadable passed through them.

He knew. That night there was a party. Of course there was. Bunny insisted you come. You went—not because you wanted distraction, but because grief felt worse when carried alone. Better to drown it in noise and bodies and people who hadn’t lost anything that day. The off-campus house was cheap and overcrowded. Overflowing ashtrays. Loud music. Bare bulbs and Christmas lights and flickering neon beer signs cast everything in sickly color. The windows fogged from heat and smoke. Everything screamed overstimulation. And you, radiant little liar, smiled through it all. Going great, isn’t it?

Until you slipped into the hallway.

That narrow space where people went to smoke, to whisper, to press each other into corners and call it intimacy. Your hair lost its perfume, replaced by the bitter scent of cigarettes. The air wet and cold from the winter seeping in every time the door opened. People shifted, bodies making space.

Henry stepped out. Hands in his coat pockets. Already angled like he might leave. He walked past you—then stopped. He looked at you quietly. Then at the cup in your hand. “You should slow down,” he said mildly, nodding toward the drink. Just observation like commenting on the weather.

You forced a smile. “I’m fine.”

“I’m sure,” he replied. A pause. Then, almost as an afterthought: “It’s not personal.”