The next week was frost.
Not the dramatic, screaming kind of fallout - the kind that explodes in public or shatters friendships with noise. No, this was quieter. Colder. The kind of silence that echoes.
No tutoring sessions. No stolen glances across the library. No brushes of hands when exchanging textbooks. Just cold, distant nothing. Like they had never known each other at all.
Jessica buried herself in distractions. She picked up extra tutoring hours, helping a junior struggling with physics and a freshman who barely passed English. She started working longer shifts at the bookstore, stocking shelves until close, her fingers sore from lifting stacks of hardcovers she didn't have the energy to read. One afternoon, she even gave that girl from the party her number - more out of defiance than interest. But the number just sat in her phone like a stranger's name. She never texted. Didn't want to. Not really.
Molly, meanwhile, was unravelling in slow, quiet pieces.
Her math grade slipped again. Not enough to fail - just enough for her teacher to raise an eyebrow. She forgot her lines during cheer practice, zoning out mid-routine. She couldn't sleep, lying awake until the sunrise cracked through her curtains. Food tasted like cardboard. Her phone buzzed constantly, but she left messages unread. Everything felt too loud except the one silence she couldn't escape.
Her friends noticed.
"You've been weird since the party," Amy said one day, her voice careful, not unkind. "You okay?"
Molly stared down at her hands, picking at the edge of her sleeve. Her voice, when it came, was barely there. "No," she whispered. "I'm not."
That night, alone in her room with the string lights dimmed and the hum of the city outside her window, Molly pulled out her phone. Her fingers hovered over the screen like it weighed a thousand pounds.
She typed Jessica's name. Paused.
Her thumbs danced across the keyboard, hesitated. Deleted the message.
Started again. Stared at the blinking cursor like it might tell her what to say.
Finally, just two words:
| I'm sorry.
Her thumb hovered over send, heart pounding. Then - click.
She stared at the screen.
Read.
No reply.
The silence hit harder than a scream.