Chapter 6 - Some Doors Stay Closed
The email arrived in the middle of the afternoon.
June read it once.
Then again.
Then a third time.
Not because she didn't understand it. The message was perfectly clear. In fact, that was part of the problem. Rejection emails always seemed remarkably efficient. Months of anticipation, preparation, and imagination condensed into a handful of polite sentences written by someone who would never know how many versions of the future had just disappeared.
For several minutes, she remained sitting at her desk, staring at the screen.
The disappointment wasn't dramatic.
At least not at first.
It arrived quietly, settling somewhere beneath her ribs like a weight she couldn't quite identify. What hurt wasn't the rejection itself. Rejection was a possibility she had prepared for. She had rehearsed it countless times in her head.
What hurt was the sudden absence of a future she had already started living in.
She had imagined the city.
The classrooms.
The people she might meet.
The version of herself that existed there.
Now that version was gone.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
Outside her window, the afternoon continued as if nothing had happened. Cars moved through the streets. People entered and exited cafés. Somewhere nearby, music drifted from an open apartment window. The world remained stubbornly ordinary.
June hated that.
Not because she believed her disappointment deserved attention from the universe.
But because she had always found it strange how private heartbreak could be.
Entire futures could collapse inside a person's head while everyone else continued buying groceries.
By evening, she had mostly convinced herself she was fine.
Or, at the very least, functional.
The distinction mattered.
She answered messages.
She spoke normally.
She even laughed once or twice.
If someone had asked, she would have said she was okay.
The lie was surprisingly convincing.
At eight o'clock, Elliot appeared.
As usual.
The consistency of it should not have comforted her as much as it did.
Their study sessions had become such a familiar part of her evenings that June rarely thought about them anymore. They simply existed. Like sunsets. Like weekends. Like certain songs that always seemed to find their way back into playlists no matter how many times they were removed.
They began studying.
Or at least they tried to.
June found herself rereading the same sentence three times without understanding it. Her attention drifted constantly. Questions that would normally take seconds to answer suddenly felt exhausting. Even her replies became shorter.
She hoped Elliot wouldn't notice.
That hope lasted approximately ten minutes.
"You're quiet today."
June glanced at the message.
For a moment, she considered denying it.
Then she did anyway.
"I'm not."
The reply appeared almost immediately.
"A little."
June rolled her eyes.
"I've always been quiet."
"No."
Another message followed.
"Not like this."
The annoying thing about Elliot was that he was often observant in ways that felt entirely unnecessary.
Most people noticed obvious changes.
Elliot noticed tiny ones.
The difference between a genuine laugh and a polite one.
The difference between being distracted and being tired.
The difference between silence and absence.
June hated that he was usually right.
"I'm fine," she typed.
A few seconds passed.
Then:
"Okay."
Nothing else.
No questions.
No pressure.
No attempts to investigate.
The conversation returned to studying.
At least, it pretended to.
A few minutes later, another message appeared.
"Let's stop."
June frowned.
"What?"
"Let's stop studying."
"Why?"
A pause.
Then:
"Because I don't think either of us wants to do this tonight."
Despite herself, June laughed.
It was small.
Brief.
But real.
The first real laugh she had managed all day.
"I do."
"No."
Another pause.
"You're just trying to."
June stared at the screen.
Somehow that annoyed her more than if he had asked what was wrong.
Because he wasn't entirely wrong.
She had spent the entire afternoon trying.
Trying to be productive.
Trying to be positive.
Trying not to think about the email.
Trying not to feel disappointed.
Trying to convince herself she wasn't disappointed at all.
It was exhausting.
Before she could reply, another message appeared.
"I found something."
"What?"
"Just watch."
A link followed.
Then another.
And another.
The videos themselves would become blurry over time. Years later, June would struggle to remember most of them. Some were interviews. Some were speeches. Some were stories about people who had failed before eventually finding another path.
The details disappeared.
The feeling remained.
For hours, they watched videos neither of them had originally planned to watch. Occasionally one of them would comment on something. Occasionally they would laugh. Sometimes there would be several minutes of silence before one of them sent another link.
Neither of them mentioned what was wrong.
Neither of them explained anything.
The strange thing was that it worked anyway.
Near midnight, June realized she felt lighter.
Not happier.
The rejection still existed.
Tomorrow it would still exist.
The school had not changed its mind.
The future had not magically repaired itself.
Yet something about the evening had shifted.
Perhaps disappointment was easier to carry when another person happened to be sitting beside you, even through a screen.
Years later, June would realize that Elliot never knew what had happened that day.
He never knew about the email.
He never knew about the school.
He never knew she had spent the afternoon mourning a future that no longer existed.
Somehow, none of that mattered.
Because while everyone else had seen a perfectly normal version of June, Elliot had noticed the small differences she hadn't managed to hide.
And instead of asking her to explain them, he had simply stayed.
Sometimes that was enough.
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