It started with a whisper.
By the end of the day, it had grown into something louder—snickers in the hallway, glances exchanged behind notebooks, conversations that died the moment she walked by.
At first, she thought she was imagining it. But then a girl in her class—bright lipstick, too much perfume, and always in someone's business—leaned in with a smirk.
"So, you and Zayn, huh?" she said, dragging out the name like it was something sticky.
Her throat went dry. "What about us?"
The girl giggled. "Don't play dumb. Everyone's talking. You two, all cozy lately. Didn't know he broke up with her."
Her.
That word dropped like a weight in her stomach.
"Who?" she asked, even though she wasn't sure she wanted the answer.
"Zayn's girlfriend. From the other campus. Everyone knows about her—well, almost everyone." Another smirk. "Guess you're not that close after all."
The girl walked off before she could respond.
The hallway suddenly felt smaller. Tighter. Like all the air had been sucked out.
Zayn had a girlfriend?
She didn't know whether to be angry at him or at herself. She'd let herself believe this thing between them—whatever it was—meant something. And maybe it did. But maybe it didn't mean enough.
That night, she didn't cry. She didn't text him either.
Instead, she sat in bed replaying every moment they'd shared. Every laugh. Every glance. Every almost.
And for the first time since she met him, the warmth he left her with didn't feel like light.
It felt like a bruise.
She didn't confront him.
Not because she didn't want to—but because she didn't know how. What would she even say?
Were you just playing with me?
Did I mean something—or anything at all?
She had no claim on him. No title. No promises exchanged. Just glances that felt like secrets and moments that felt like more.
So instead of demanding answers, she simply pulled away. Quietly. Carefully. Like someone backing out of a room they weren't sure they were ever invited into.
They still talked sometimes. Small conversations in the hallway. A passing joke. A glance held a second too long. He didn't ask why she'd grown distant—and maybe that hurt most of all. That he noticed, and said nothing.
What they had, whatever it was, slipped into the space between friendship and silence. And she let it.
Because the truth was, she didn't know how to grieve something that never had a name. She only knew it felt like heartbreak. The kind that stung when she saw his name on someone else's screen. The kind that made her wonder if she'd ever been enough to matter.
And maybe that was what hurt the most—not that he loved someone else, but that he had never loved her in the first place. At least not out loud.
So yes.
This was her first heartbreak.
Before her first relationship.
A heartbreak made of moments, not memories.
Of almosts, not endings.
And it would stay with her, quietly shaping how she loved... and how she let herself be loved.
Weeks passed. And with them, so did the ache—slowly, unevenly, like a wound that didn't bleed but still burned.
She threw herself into her studies, her routines, her solitude. It was easier that way—safer. She smiled when she needed to. Laughed when expected. But there was a part of her, tucked deep beneath the surface, that had gone quiet.
Sometimes she'd catch herself looking for him in the crowd. Out of habit. Out of memory. And occasionally, he'd look back. Their eyes would meet, briefly, like a flicker of something that used to be more.
But they never said what they were both too proud—or too scared—to say.
That maybe he did care.
That maybe she still did too.
But that some stories aren't meant to be written.
And some feelings are meant to be left unread.
In the stillness of one late afternoon, sitting beneath a tree behind the library, she finally let herself breathe. The kind of breath that comes after holding in too much for too long.
She pulled out her notebook and wrote two words at the top of a fresh page:
"Begin again."
And for the first time in a while, it didn't feel like she was running from the past.
It felt like she was walking toward herself.