I Still Hate You

Go read "

Same Time Tomorrow

" before this. Re-read it if you have to. I'll wait.

Lexi's got a list.

Of course she fucking does.

Color-coded bins. Matching bedding. A framed photo of her and Marisol in senior prom gowns (cropped tight; no room for ghosts). She's perfect. Crisp. Curated. She triple-checks the move-in checklist her mom printed out and laminated because that's the kind of household she comes from. The kind where laminated lists are normal. Expected. Divine law.

Everything has a place. A drawer. A label. A fucking scent profile.

And for the first hour of college, it works. Lexi's side of the room blooms into soft pinks, pale golds, the sparkle of fairy lights she strung with surgeon-level precision. It smells like vanilla, ambition, and denial.

Then Morgan walks in.

Her new roommate. Chaos in a topknot. A film major with one sneaker half-tied, a backpack full of tangled chargers, and a tote bag that says Sappho would hate you personally.

She drops everything on her bed, flops back, and says, "So. You a screamer, or do you suffer in silence?"

Lexi blinks. "Excuse me?"

Morgan throws a bag of gummy worms at her. It hits Lexi's shoulder and falls to the floor. "You seem like the type who internalizes. Represses. Probably cries in single-stall bathrooms then re-applies mascara like a war crime never happened."

Lexi considers pretending she didn't hear her. Then she says, cool and clipped, "I'm Lexi."

Morgan grins like she's won something. "Morgan. She/her. Queer disaster. Nice to meet you, Barbie."

Lexi doesn't respond. Just leans over, picks up the gummy worms, and places them on Morgan's nightstand. Neatly. Like that's the peace offering they are.

Morgan unpacks with the casual violence of a girl who's moved too often to care. Lava lamp. Posters of old movies Lexi's never heard of. A half-broken ukulele. She hums tunelessly as she digs through her stuff.

Lexi finishes organizing her stationary.

Morgan puts on music.

It's a playlist. One of those artsy, genre-less, time-doesn't-exist kind of playlists. A song comes on--low vocals, scratchy lo-fi beat--and Lexi freezes. Just for a breath. Just for the memory.

Sylvia, in her car. Blasting "Red Wine Supernova." Hair out the window. Hand on Lexi's thigh, smirking like she owned the sun. "This one's ours now," she'd said. "No takesies backsies."

Lexi stands too quickly.

"I'm gonna call my mom," she says. She's already at the door.

Morgan raises an eyebrow. "Sure."

Lexi doesn't call her mom.

She sits on the dorm stairwell. Cold concrete under her thighs. Hands tucked into the sleeves of her cardigan even though it's eighty degrees out.

She breathes.

Like the world might collapse again.

Because sometimes it still feels like it will. Like she's still in that car. Still gripping the steering wheel. Still hearing Sylvia's voice mid-sentence, then--

Silence.

That moment lives in her. Behind her ribs. Every breath fights past it.

She rubs her wrists. Then her eyes. Then she stands up, like that'll fix it.

Back in the room, Morgan's lying on her bed, upside down, reading Sylvia Plath.

Of fucking course.

The week passes in a blur of syllabi and icebreakers and Lexi pretending. Pretending to be someone without a grave in her chest. She smiles when she has to. She joins two clubs. She answers every question in Political Theory with just enough authority to remind people she's not new to winning.

Morgan watches her.

Not in a creepy way. Just... notices.

Sometimes she asks questions Lexi doesn't want to answer.

"Do you always overachieve this hard, or is it just a trauma response?"

Lexi doesn't flinch. "Both."

Morgan whistles. "Yikes. Brutal. Want a gummy worm?"

Lexi takes one.

They eat in silence.

One night, Lexi has a dream.

It's not violent. Not loud.

It's just Sylvia. Sitting at the foot of her dorm bed, fingers tracing the blanket like she's memorizing the texture. Her hair is longer. Her eyes are soft.

"I'm glad you made it," dream-Sylvia says.

Lexi wants to touch her. Can't. She's frozen.

"I didn't," Lexi says.

Sylvia smiles. "I know."

When she wakes up, her pillow is wet.

She doesn't tell anyone.

Morgan invites her to a queer student mixer. Lexi says no.

Then yes.

Then changes her mind again and shows up late.

Everyone is so loud. So comfortable. They talk about pronouns and hookups and playlists and favorite drag queens. Lexi stands by the snack table, pretending to be interested in vegan cookies.

A girl smiles at her.

Lexi panics and leaves.

Morgan finds her sitting outside twenty minutes later.

"You lasted longer than I expected," she says, lighting a joint.

Lexi doesn't ask for a hit. Just stares at the sky.

"Was she your first?" Morgan asks.

Lexi turns to her. Eyes cold.

"Was she your last?"

Lexi says nothing.

Morgan exhales smoke. "Yeah. That's what I thought."

They start sleeping in the same bed sometimes.

Not like that. Just--Morgan gets cold. Or Lexi has a nightmare. Or neither of them wants to be alone.

Morgan's skin is warm. Her breath smells like mint and sarcasm.

Lexi doesn't reach for her.

But sometimes, she almost does.

One night, Morgan stirs. Half-asleep, she says, "You can cry, you know. I won't tell anyone."

Lexi stares at the ceiling. Her throat aches.

She doesn't cry.

But she doesn't sleep either.

Lexi barely eats. She barely speaks. She drinks espresso like water and studies like it's an act of violence. Perfection is the only thing she knows how to control.

Then one day, she forgets her flashcards.

It shouldn't be a big deal.

But it is.

She stares at her spotless planner. Blank where her notes should be. Her hand starts shaking.

Morgan finds her twenty minutes later, sitting on the bathroom floor, mascara streaked, holding her breath like it's the only thing she has left.

Morgan doesn't say anything.

Just sits down next to her. Offers a gummy worm.

Lexi takes it.

Bites it in half.

Lets herself breathe again.

That night, Morgan reads her a poem.

Not her own. Some spoken word thing about grief and sex and memory. Lexi listens with her eyes closed.

I want to remember you in pieces--

the way grief teaches: out of order,

backward, sideways,

drunk.

I want to forget you in the same breath

that I taste your name in someone else's mouth.

You left a dent in me.

Not a wound.

A dent.

Something permanent and stupid

and shaped exactly like your fucking smile.

I still sleep on the right side.

Not because I like it.

Because you did.

My thighs remember your hands.

My mouth remembers your sigh.

My mirror remembers who I was

before I let you in and forgot how to lock the door.

They say memory is just electricity.

Then why does it burn?

Why does it still hurt in my wrists,

in my breath,

in the part of me that stayed soft for you?

I don't write about you anymore.

Except when I do.

Which is always.

Which is now.

Morgan finishes and says, "She was lucky, you know. To have you."

Lexi whispers, "She never said that."

Morgan reaches out. Brushes her knuckles along Lexi's arm.

"You still can."

Lexi doesn't move.

But she doesn't pull away either.

She dreams again.

This time, Sylvia is laughing. Spinning in a field. Wearing Lexi's old cheer jacket.

"I told you you'd be fine," she says.

Lexi runs to her.

But never gets there.

She wakes up gasping.

Morgan rolls over, groggy. "You okay?"

Lexi nods. "Bad dream."

Morgan pulls the blanket higher. "Want to talk about it?"

Lexi thinks of lips, and headlights, and the moment before the world ended.

"No," she says.

But when she falls back asleep, her hand finds Morgan's.

And stays there.

Even in the dark.

Lexi does everything right. She goes to class. She aces everything. She joins student government. She keeps her brows waxed and her planner full. Her professors adore her. The girls in her hall ask her to help them organize their notes. She color-codes her schedule with mild religious fervor and writes to-do lists on the backs of receipts when she runs out of paper.

But she's a fucking ghost.

She floats through lectures like a hologram. Laughs at the right times. Smiles on command. Walks with her keys between her fingers, not because she's scared--because it makes her feel real.

She doesn't drink. Not really.

She goes to a party once. One of those sweaty, beer-breathed freshman messes with sticky floors and too-loud music and people who think touching is a love language.

She lets a guy kiss her. He's tall. Broad. Smells like Axe and entitlement. She doesn't even catch his name.

He presses her against a wall. Slides a hand under her shirt. Whispers something into her ear that she doesn't hear because Sylvia's voice is louder--cutting through her memory like glass.

"You taste like trouble, princess."

Lexi shoves the guy off. He stumbles. Laughs like he thinks it's a game.

She stumbles outside. Hunched over in the bushes. Vomiting nothing but nerves and ghosts.

She makes it back to the dorm somehow. Cold sweat and mascara streaks. Wrapped in a towel, she curls up on the dorm bathroom tile, forehead pressed to the wall, arms hugging her knees.

Morgan finds her there.

Barefoot. Holding a half-eaten granola bar and a look that says she's seen worse.

"You okay?" she asks, like it means something.

Lexi doesn't look at her. Doesn't move.

"I'm just tired," she says.

They both lie.

Morgan sits next to her. Doesn't touch. Doesn't press. Just opens a bottle of Gatorade and places it gently within reach.

They stay there until the hallway lights dim.

Lexi never finishes the drink. But she doesn't throw it away either.

She still has Sylvia's old text thread. Doesn't delete it. Doesn't open it. Just leaves it there--pinned to the top, like a bruise that never quite fades. Sometimes she stares at it for whole minutes, thumb hovering. But she can't. Because if she opens it, she'll see the last thing Sylvia ever sent. Something dumb. A meme. A selfie with a caption "ur obsessed with me, admit it." Something stupid and normal and unfinished.

She starts to wear her hair messy. Just a little. Not quite like Sylvia. But not not. She tells herself it's because she's busy. She's tired. She doesn't have time to flat iron every morning. But when she catches her reflection at the end of the day--when a curl falls just right, and her collarbone is bare, and the angle is wrong--it knocks the air out of her. Because for a split second, she looks like them. Like Lexi-and-Sylvia, that composite myth, beautiful and doomed.

She has nightmares. Always the same. Flash of headlights. Music cut off mid-chorus. The crunch of metal folding wrong. Blood on her hands, her jeans, the dashboard. The cold, echoing scream that might be hers or might not be. And worst of all--

That moment.

That breathless, timeless second when she realizes she's the one who lived.

She wakes up choking on it. Her own name. Her own guilt.

She writes poetry now. Badly. Secretly. Fills notebook margins with lines she'd never say out loud. Things like: "I kissed her goodbye without knowing it was the last time." Or "My mouth remembers what my body can't forgive." She never rereads them. She just keeps going.

She can't listen to music with lyrics anymore. It's too much. Too close. Too easy for a phrase to shatter her. So she listens to ambient loops. Piano. Rainstorms. Anything without a voice. Because she has enough voices already--ghosts and memories and her own, telling her you were supposed to die too.

Morgan is gentle.

Flirts a little.

Not aggressively.

Just enough to let Lexi feel seen.

One night, they share a twin bed--not sexually. Just warmth. Lexi's nightmare had been louder than usual. She woke up gasping, hands shaking, the sheets wrapped around her like a noose. Morgan didn't ask questions. Just pulled back the blanket and said, "Come here."

Lexi went.

They lay back to back for a while. Then Lexi turned. Pressed her forehead into Morgan's shoulder like she needed proof that another person was real. Her breath came shallow. Her fists were clenched under her chin.

Morgan said, soft as rain, "You can cry if you want."

Lexi wanted to. God, she wanted to.

But she didn't.

She just whispered, "Do I seem like the kind of girl who cries?"

Morgan didn't miss a beat. "No. You seem like the kind who burns."

And Lexi laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because it was true.

Midterms hit like a slow-motion plane crash.

Lexi doesn't bomb any tests. She doesn't miss a deadline. Her GPA stays pristine, untouched, admired. Professors call her brilliant. Peers call her lucky.

But Lexi feels like she's rotting under glass.

She stops sleeping. Her eyes twitch at odd times, and her hands start trembling when she writes. Her planner fills with tighter and tighter loops of ink, color-coded anxiety pressed into pages like bruises. She forgets to eat. She forgets to lie. She forgets how to smile unless she's in a room full of people and even then, it's muscle memory.

It happens on a Tuesday.

A class presentation. Easy. She's done a dozen of them this semester. She's prepared. Of course she is. She always is.

Except--she's not.

She opens her laptop and the file's not there. Gone. Vanished. Her outline, her slides, her bullet points--disappeared. It shouldn't matter. She knows the content. Could talk in her sleep about post-reconstruction policy shifts and the myth of meritocracy.

But she can't breathe.

Her jaw clenches. Her hands shake. The professor asks if she's ready, and instead of answering, she says, too sharp, "Maybe if you hadn't sprung this on us with no time to prepare."

There's a pause.

Everyone stares.

She's already halfway out the door.

Back at the dorm, she moves like she's drowning in air.

Locks the bathroom door behind her.

Watches her reflection. Hates it. Stares anyway.

Pulls the lipstick from her bag--the same shade Sylvia once kissed into the curve of her neck--and hurls it at the mirror.

It explodes in a jagged, greasy arc. Crimson. Shiny. A smear of warpaint and panic.

She sinks to the floor, back to the wall, shaking.

Morgan knocks five minutes later.

Soft. Patient.

"Lexi?"

Silence.

"I'm not coming in. Just... letting you know I'm here."

Lexi doesn't respond. Her throat is full of static. Her chest is cracked porcelain, holding in too much. Her knuckles are white around her own elbows. She bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes metal.

Later, when she finally opens the door, Morgan is sitting right there.

Legs crossed. Hoodie on. Phone face-down in her lap. Like she knew Lexi would come out eventually and was willing to wait.

She looks up, calm but serious. "You don't have to be okay all the time."

It's the gentleness that does it.

That undoes something.

Lexi slides down beside her. Crouches low, arms on her knees. They're face to face. Close enough to feel breath. Close enough to feel the possibility of something.

Something soft.

Something like safety.

Morgan shifts. Her hand twitches like she wants to reach out. Instead, she leans forward just slightly--just enough.

And Lexi flinches.

Not much. Not dramatically. Just a twitch. Just a recoil in her eyes.

Morgan stops.

Pulls back.

Says nothing. No apology. No pressure.

Lexi whispers, voice shredded, "I had someone."

A beat.

"She's gone."

Another.

"I think I used to be human."

Morgan closes her eyes.

Then opens them again and presses a kiss--light as breath--to Lexi's forehead.

That's it.

Nothing more.

They crawl into bed that night without touching.

Morgan turns the light off.

Lexi lies awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling. Counting her own heartbeats. Feeling the place on her skin where Morgan kissed her like a blessing. Like a goodbye she never got to have.

Outside, the world keeps spinning.

Inside, Lexi isn't okay.

But she's seen.

And for now, that's enough.

It comes in a shoebox.

No note. Just Lexi's name scrawled in Marisol's all-caps block handwriting and a couple hearts that feel more like threats than affection. The box is dented. The tape is haphazard. It smells vaguely like incense and gum and secondhand rebellion.

Lexi opens it on her bed with surgical caution. Like it might explode. Like it already has.

Inside:

A t-shirt. Horrible. Neon pink. Stretched at the collar and peeling in the middle. It reads: "Classy, Sassy & a Little Bad-Assy" in a font that looks like it got drunk and wandered into a strip mall.

Lexi snorts before she can stop herself. A real, honest snort.

Because of course Marisol sent this.

Of course she did.

It's awful. It's perfect. It's them.

She folds it gently. Reverently. Like it's sacred, even though it's the dumbest thing she's ever held.

And then--

Underneath, tucked between a bottle of roll-on glitter and an old gold paint pen that definitely doesn't work anymore:

A polaroid.

Lexi freezes.

It's Sylvia.

In the car. Passenger seat. Tank top slipping off one shoulder. That wild, feral grin. Sunlight turns her hair to fire. One hand on Lexi's bare thigh--brazen, possessive, casual like she owned the world. The other?

Flipping off the camera.

Lexi's breath catches in her throat like it's trying to claw its way out.

She didn't know this photo existed.

Didn't remember it being taken.

Doesn't know who held the camera. Probably Marisol. Maybe fate.

Her fingers tremble as she lifts it. It's glossy. Heavy. Too real.

She spends hours just... looking.

Not crying.

Not screaming.

Just remembering.

How that drive felt.

How Sylvia hummed along to a song with no melody.

How her fingers traced lazy circles just above the hem of Lexi's shorts.

How they argued over which gas station snacks were valid road trip food.

How Lexi had been annoyed at the time.

How she would give anything--anything--to be annoyed like that again.

When the sun sets and the light in the dorm goes golden and melancholy, she finally moves.

She pins the polaroid to the wall.

Not front and center.

Just... there.

Next to her calendar.

Next to her schedule.

Next to the motivational quote she printed out and taped up in a moment of fragile hope.

It lives among the tools of her survival.

Among the weapons she's fashioned out of ambition and precision and refusal to fall apart.

She stares at it.

For a long time.

Morgan's at her desk, headphones on, softly bobbing to something Lexi can't hear. The room smells like peppermint tea and old paperbacks. Safe. Distant.

And Lexi?

Lexi leans forward.

Whispers it under her breath. So low it barely exists.

"I still hate you."

But we know what that means.

It means I love you.

It means I miss you so much I can't breathe when I laugh.

It means you bastard, you brilliant, beautiful bitch, why didn't you wait for me to say it back.

It means please come back.

The photo doesn't answer.

But Lexi sleeps with it watching her.

And that night, she dreams about Sylvia's hand on her thigh.

Still warm. Still there.

Just for a minute.