Chapter 3 3

The Rewrite

Monday mornings were never Lena's favorite, but this one felt heavier than usual. The high from Friday night's open mic still lingered somewhere in her chest, like a small flame that refused to go out. But it came with a new weight too- expectation. Vulnerability. The feeling that she had cracked open something she couldn't quite close.

In class, Professor Ellison droned on about narrative pacing, but Lena was only half-listening. She could feel Adonis two rows behind her, like gravity. She hadn't turned to look. She didn't have to. His presence hummed, silent but undeniable.

Her laptop was open. Her notes were minimal. Her fingers, instead, kept drifting toward the top corner of the desk, where she'd absentmindedly traced his name in invisible ink with her fingertip.

Adonis Biglia.

She hated how easily the name lived in her head now. After class, as the rest of the students filtered out, she lingered near the door, pretending to scroll through her phone. She knew he'd walk by. She wanted it to feel casual, even though the anticipation coiled tight in her stomach.

"Hey," he said, finally.

"Hey." She looked up, tried to sound normal.

"You free this afternoon?"

"Depends. What's on the agenda-literary debate or spontaneous poetry challenge?"

He smirked. "Neither. Something else."

That gave her pause. "Something else like...?"

"There's a bookstore downtown I think you'll like. Used books. First editions. Floor-to-ceiling chaos. Basically your aesthetic."

She smiled despite herself. "And this is a date?"

His brow rose slightly. "Do you want it to be?"

She faltered. "I don't know."

"I'll take that as a maybe."

The shop was called Crooked Spines.

It was the kind of place Lena could spend days in-narrow aisles, mismatched shelves, the smell of ink and paper and time. A black cat snoozed near the register, completely unbothered by the world.

Adonis held the door open for her, then disappeared toward the poetry section while she drifted among the fiction shelves. Her fingers brushed familiar titles, old friends. She picked up a worn copy of The Bell Jar, opened it, and found a handwritten note tucked between the pages.

"You don't need saving. You just need space to bloom. -J."

She tucked the note back carefully. She liked that someone had left a little piece of themselves behind. That maybe someone else had needed that sentence once, just like she did.

After a while, Adonis found her.

He held up a book. Letters to a Young Poet.

"You've read this?" he asked.

"Twice. Maybe three times. You?"

He nodded. "My mom gave it to me when I was fifteen. Said it would teach me how to feel without apologizing."

"That's heavy," she said softly.

"Yeah. She was like that."

Lena paused. "Was?"

Adonis hesitated.

"She passed. Two years ago."

Lena's breath caught. "I'm sorry."

He shrugged like he'd practiced it, like it still didn't sit right on his shoulders.

"She was the reason I started writing. She always said if I couldn't say it out loud, I should bleed it on paper."

Lena didn't respond right away. There didn't seem to be words big enough for that.

Instead, she reached out and took the book from his hand.

"I think she would've liked that you came here with me today," she said quietly.

Something in his face softened. "Yeah. I think so too."

Later that night, Lena's dorm room

She sat curled up in her chair, laptop open, but she wasn't writing. Not really. Her fingers had typed out fragments-lines and half-thoughts and messy, emotional stumbles. Her mind kept returning to the way Adonis looked in that bookstore. That moment of honesty. That hint of grief.

It scared her a little, how much she wanted to know him now.

Not just the surface things. But the deep stuff. The late-night thoughts. The ghosts.

A knock on her door made her jump.

When she opened it, Adonis stood there, holding two cups of coffee and a beat-up copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese under his arm.

"I brought caffeine and obscure poetry," he said. "Bribe enough to stay?"

She stepped aside to let him in.

"You really know how to woo a girl, don't you?"

He grinned. "You make it easy."

They settled on the floor, coffee between them, the book open to page thirty-nine. He read a few lines out loud, his voice quiet but rich with meaning.

"I love thee to the level of every day's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight."

Lena looked at him. "How is it that words from two centuries ago still feel this real?"

"Because love doesn't change," he said. "Just the way we pretend it doesn't hurt."

Silence stretched between them again-comfortable, this time.

She wanted to ask if he'd ever been in love. If he'd had his heart broken. If there was someone he still wrote poems for in the dark.

But what she said instead was, "What do you write when you can't write?"

He looked at her, thoughtful. "Music, sometimes. Or I go somewhere quiet and sit with the silence until it talks back."

She nodded slowly. "You're strange."

He laughed. "Takes one to know one."

They stayed there until the coffee went cold and the words stopped being poems and started becoming possibilities.

And somewhere between Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the soft rhythm of rain on the windows, Lena realized she was falling for him.

Not in the dramatic, storybook way. But in the quiet moments. The stolen glances. The way he looked at her like she wasn't invisible. Like maybe, just maybe, this wasn't fiction.

Lena woke the next morning to a message from Adonis.

"Your favorite metaphors still owe me coffee. Meet me at BrewLab?"

A grin tugged at her lips before she'd even fully opened her eyes. She rolled onto her side and typed back:

"Only if you let me read you something I wrote last night."

"Deal. I'll be in the back booth. Bring words and sugar."

She got dressed in a rush, barely bothering with makeup. There was something about being around him that made her forget about appearances. He never looked at her like she had to be polished or perfect- just real.

When she got to BrewLab, the smell of roasted beans and vanilla hit her first. She spotted him instantly- hood up, laptop open, notebook beside it, coffee already half-drunk. He looked up as she slid into the booth across from him.

"You're five minutes late," he teased.

"You're always early," she shot back.

He smirked. "You brought the words?"

She reached into her tote and pulled out her journal. The pages were worn, the ink slightly smudged from being clutched too tightly last night. She didn't hand it over yet. "It's not... polished."

"Good," he said. "I like the messy stuff better anyway."

She opened to the page and began to read aloud:

I don't know when the ache stopped feeling like a stranger,

Or when my ribs made space for something that wasn't fear. But there's this boy- no, a storm-

And he doesn't fix things, but he makes the silence softer.

I don't know how to tell him that his voice feels like a room

I've never wanted to leave.

Her voice shook a little on the last line. Not because she was nervous.

But because every word was true.

Adonis didn't say anything right away. He just looked at her- really looked at her. His eyes were calm, but there was something beneath them. Something that held her gaze and didn't let go.

"That's about me," he said quietly.

It wasn't a question.

She nodded, cheeks pink. "Is that weird?"

"No," he said. "It's... terrifying. But no. Not weird."

Lena laughed, breathless. "Good. Because I have like three more about you and one that compares your smile to a dawn I wasn't ready for."

He chuckled, ducking his head. "You make me sound like a damn sunrise."

"You kind of are."

Silence again- but not empty. She closed the notebook slowly. "What about you? Are you writing anything... right now?"

He glanced at the notebook beside his laptop, then handed it to her without hesitation.

Inside were lines she hadn't seen before. New verses. Different than what he'd read at the open mic. Less performance. More vulnerability.

She read them silently.

She laughs like she's afraid it'll be taken from her,

Like the sound only belongs to the brave.

I want to hold her in the quiet-

Not to fix her, but to prove someone could stay.

Her heart did something wild in her chest. Something she wasn't quite ready for.

"Adonis..."

He shrugged. "I wrote it after the bookstore."

She looked up. "So we're writing about each other now?"

"I think we've been writing toward each other for a while."

That shut her up.

For once, Lena had no clever comeback. Just heat in her cheeks and a heart that wouldn't stop pounding.

He reached across the table, brushing her fingers lightly. "We don't have to call it anything yet. No labels. No pressure. Just... let's see where this goes."

She curled her hand around his, the contact grounding. Safe. "Yeah. Let's."

They sat like that for a while-no rush, no noise. Just two writers, ink-stained and unsure, finally putting their stories in motion.