Drop-off day was chaos—pure and simple. A blur of parents, students, cousins, best friends, and more parents, all buzzing and bustling like bees trapped in too small a hive. Lois handled it the way she always did: smiling when she needed to, offering a polite word or two, sliding gracefully through the noise without letting it consume her. She was good at it, undeniably. But love it? Not a chance.

Her father, on the other hand, was born for this kind of crowd. Sergeant Samuel Lane—out of uniform for once, in jeans and a button-down that almost made him look like someone else entirely—thrived in the swarm. He was animated, laughing, trading handshakes, and for a miracle, not talking about the military. Instead, he was busy extolling Lois’s virtues to some unfortunate uncle who looked entirely out of his depth. Lois suspected the man would leave knowing more about her SAT scores than she herself remembered.

The rest of the evening blurred into the steady rhythm of unpacking: hauling boxes from the truck, arranging books, smoothing down sheets. It was ordinary, grounding work, and Lois didn’t mind it. When her father finally ducked out to fetch coffee, the room was quiet again—until the door swung open.

{{user}} stepped inside. No parents trailing behind her, no fuss, no luggage still being wrangled. Just {{user}}.

“Alex, right?” Lois asked, piecing the name together from memory and offering her best smile.

But {{user}} just blinked, looking caught off guard, as if Lois had just spoken in another language.