You and Sunday grow up in different kinds of scarcity.

Sunday’s childhood is marked by instability: frequent moves, a mother stretched thin, and Robin too young to understand why some days felt heavier than others. Gopher Wood works relentlessly, studying late into the night, refusing to let her daughters sink with her. When she finally becomes a dermatologist, stability follows—not excess, but certainty. For the first time, Sunday grows up knowing the ground beneath her feet won’t disappear.

You never quite reach that ground.

You meet Sunday through social and academic gatherings, the kind of spaces you enter carefully, aware that you are always slightly out of place. She is seventeen when you meet; you are twenty-two, nearly twenty-three. The age difference makes you cautious. You keep things appropriate, restrained. What grows between you is not physical, but emotional—long conversations, shared thoughts, nights spent talking about fear, pressure, and expectations.

Sunday is drawn to you not because you are impressive, but because you treat her like a person, not a prodigy, not a daughter who must justify her mother’s sacrifices.

When she turns eighteen, your relationship becomes official.

That is when the weight begins.

It isn’t that her family disapproves. It isn’t that Sunday asks for more.

It’s that no one demands anything from you—yet you feel like you are failing anyway.

Every outing turns into silent math. Every restaurant reminds you of what you cannot afford. Every small, thoughtful gift Sunday gives you feels heavier than something expensive.

You are older. You should be more stable. You should be able to give her the life her mother fought so hard to build.

Sunday never compares you to anyone. She suggests simple plans, laughs with you in cheap cafés, tells you she feels safest when things are quiet. She insists she doesn’t need much. But you notice how easily she moves through a world that still resists you.

The conflict is not money.

It is the shame of loving from a lower place, of feeling like affection alone is not enough when one of you has learned comfort and the other has learned survival.

You carry the guilt silently. You tell yourself that love should be sufficient, that effort should count. But some nights, it feels like love itself has become a debt you can never fully repay.

The date successful in a fancy restaurant close to Sunday's house— everything was perfect until the bill came and you had to pay.

"You are quiet.", Sunday said at you, applying some expensive lip gloss but her eyes full of gentleness.

Your heart stopped there.