The door clicked shut.

Julian pressed me against the wall and bit my lip — punishing.

"What do you mean, they make a good match?"

I caught my breath and blinked up at him, eyes still damp.

"I mean it. Didn't you and Lydia get dubbed the Impossible Ship of Hartwell's CS department last year?"

I vaguely remembered the thread on r/Hartwell.

Professor Pemberton's star protégé and Professor Pemberton's beloved daughter.

Joint-authored a paper as undergrads. Accepted at a premier conference — unheard of for their level.

Equally matched. A power couple in the making.

Not long after, someone dug up a photo from the two of them at a national CS olympiad in high school. The image was grainy, but their looks were undeniable. The comment section erupted for days. People were shipping them hard.

I had gone through and downvoted every single comment.

Then I'd all but forced Julian to reply to the thread under his real name, clarifying that he was taken. After that, the power couple was officially the ship that never sailed.

When I came back to myself, Julian still hadn't kissed me again.

He was looking at me with something like surprise.

"Vera," he said. "You used to refuse to even say her name."

"What's gotten into you today?"

Honestly, nothing had gotten into me.

I just didn't care anymore. Simple as that.

Julian and I had grown up together in Millhaven. Childhood sweethearts in the most literal sense — same street, same summers. The August after graduation, both our families went to a lakeside resort. Our parents stayed inside playing cards while Julian and I splashed around in the private hot spring.

Somewhere in the middle of a water fight, he leaned over and kissed me.

It was the third year I'd been quietly in love with him. Just like that, something shifted between us.

After he pulled back, he was still a little breathless.

"Let's wait until things are more stable before we tell our parents, okay? That way, if things don't work out — it won't be weird between the families."

So we started dating in secret.

Julian's grades had always been exceptional. He got into Hartwell University, one of the most competitive programs in the country. I scraped into a small local college and stayed in Millhaven.

Long distance. Three years.

The Valentine's Day of our third year apart, I bought a bus ticket to Boston on impulse. I'd made a batch of chocolates at home and decided to surprise him.

It was the first time I met Lydia Pemberton.

She stopped me outside the lab door, looking down at me.

"He's busy right now. I can pass along your gift if you'd like. He doesn't really like sweet things anyway."

Fortunately, Julian spotted me from inside before I could respond.

"Vera? You're here?"

Lydia looked me over — unhurried, assessing — and then broke into a smile.

"Oh, she's your girlfriend. My bad. Didn't realize."

She added me on Instagram without missing a beat, already venting about the workload of deflecting Julian's admirers: I told myself I'd stop doing this for him, honestly, it's such a hassle —

"Wait, you're not from Hartwell, right?" she asked. "Belmont College?"

I shook my head.

I told her where I actually went. I clocked the flicker of disdain before she smoothed it away.

We all went to lunch together, and I didn't give Julian a warm look for the rest of the meal.

I'd heard about Lydia before. Julian had mentioned her plenty of times since freshman year — someone he'd met at a high school CS olympiad in Boston. And over three years, he'd brought her up constantly. Lydia said this. Lydia did that. Never anything he seemed aware was a problem.

"Why didn't you ever tell me Lydia was a girl?"

He laughed. "You never asked."

He reached over and picked the fish off my plate, deboning it without looking up. "Are you jealous right now?"

I said it plainly. "I don't like her. She was rude to me."

"She's just like that. Blunt. Once you get to know her, you'll see — there's no real malice."

He was smiling when he said it.

From that day on, Lydia's name became the fish bone I couldn't find. Lodged at the back of my throat. Too stubborn to swallow, impossible to dig out.