The weeks that followed were quiet in the way only a campus in transition could be—full of echoes and low murmurs, birdsong through open windows, and the occasional thump of moving boxes down the hall.
Talia stayed.
Ezra stayed.
It wasn't planned. Not really. But neither of them brought it up when June blurred into July, and their days began to look like early coffee, half-finished textbooks, and tangled legs in beds that no longer felt temporary.
Something had changed after that night—the night of skin and silence and truth. Not in a way that made everything perfect, but in a way that made everything possible.
Talia, once stubborn to a fault, now found comfort in Ezra's routines. He brought her tea without asking. She folded his laundry without a second thought. They still fought sometimes—over dumb things like toothpaste caps and her refusal to back up her laptop—but the fights didn't last long.
Because now, they both stayed.
But something tugged at the edges of her contentment.
A letter.
More specifically, a stack of them.
She found them one afternoon, wedged into the side of Ezra's desk drawer beneath flashcards and a dried rose from some Valentine's past. Neatly folded pages, all addressed to her in his looping handwriting.
She hadn't meant to find them.
But she couldn't stop herself from reading.
Letter #1 – April
Talia,
You probably wouldn't believe it, but I started writing this the week after our first anatomy class. You walked in late, smelling like mint and regret, dropped your pen twice, and still somehow made the room bend around you.
I don't know what this is, or what it could be, but I know that I already want more of it.
Of you.
– E
Letter #3 – May
Talia,
After that night at the party, I hated myself for ghosting you. I didn't know how to face you—how to explain that I was scared. Not of you, but of how much I felt so quickly.
I've spent so much of my life hiding in books. You made me want to live outside them.
That terrified me.
– E
Letter #5 – June
Talia,
If you're reading this, it means you stayed. Or came back. Or maybe just stumbled upon the mess of me.
I hope you know you've changed me.
You made me braver.
You made me believe that people like us—people with messy pasts and sharp edges—can still find soft places to land.
You're my soft place.
Always,
Ezra
Talia set the last letter down, heart pounding like a drumbeat in her chest. She hadn't cried in weeks—had told herself she didn't need to anymore—but this time the tears came silently. Grateful. Unstoppable.
Ezra found her like that when he walked in. Still in scrubs from his volunteer shift, eyes tired but alert. He froze in the doorway.
"You read them," he said quietly.
She nodded, unable to speak.
"I wasn't going to show you," he continued, crossing the room and kneeling beside her. "I thought maybe it was too much. Or maybe you'd think it was weird."
"It's not weird," she whispered. "It's everything."
Ezra reached for her hand. "I meant every word."
"I know."
He wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. "What are you thinking?"
She smiled through her tears. "That you're the only person who's ever written me a letter without trying to apologize or say goodbye."
Ezra blinked. "I didn't write them to leave."
"I know." Her voice cracked slightly. "That's why they mean so much."
—
The next morning, she wrote back.
Her first letter.
Not a text. Not a note on his mirror. An actual letter, folded into quarters and slipped under his door before she left for a run.
Ezra,
I've always been the girl who runs first. When things get real. When they get messy. When they feel like they might be good.
But I didn't run from you. Not this time. And not ever again.
You remind me that there's more to love than chaos. That there's room for laughter, and quiet, and long Saturday mornings spent doing nothing.
I don't want perfect.
I want you.
– Talia
That evening, Ezra surprised her with two bus tickets. Folded neatly on the table beside her favorite iced tea.
She looked up at him, puzzled.
"I thought we could go somewhere," he said. "Just for a weekend. Off-campus. No hospitals, no textbooks. Just… us."
Talia grinned. "You're full of surprises lately."
Ezra shrugged. "You're full of chaos. I'm adapting."
—
They ended up in a small town by the coast.
The kind with no phone signal, antique bookstores, and ice cream shops that closed by 8 PM. They stayed in a bed and breakfast with creaky floors and floral wallpaper, and spent most of the weekend walking barefoot through tide pools, stealing kisses in alleys, and slow dancing to old songs on the radio.
On the final night, they built a bonfire on the beach.
Talia sat wrapped in a hoodie that wasn't hers, staring at the flame.
Ezra leaned in. "Penny for your thoughts?"
She turned to him. "I used to think love would feel like a crash. Like being hit by lightning."
"And now?"
She smiled. "Now it feels like fire. Steady. Warm. Slow to build, but impossible to ignore."
He kissed her temple. "Then let's keep it burning."
—
As August rolled in and the edges of autumn crept onto the calendar, they returned to campus changed. Not in the dramatic, sweeping way that movies promised—but in quiet, intentional ways.
More notes.
More letters.
More of everything that felt like building something, brick by brick, out of all the things they once feared.
Because love wasn't about avoiding the storm.
It was learning how to dance in it. Together.