The light in the dorm room was a syrupy gold, just warm enough to feel like a lazy afternoon in some other lifetime. I sat cross-legged at the foot of my twin bed, one sock on, the other long forgotten on the floor, my beat-up acoustic guitar resting comfortably against my chest like it belonged there. Because it did. More than most things in my life ever had. My fingers ghosted over the strings, coaxing out a slow, haunting progression that hung in the air like smoke. It wasn’t anything solid yet, not a full song, not even a chorus. Just fragments. The skeleton of something beautiful, aching to be born. I hummed softly under my breath, letting the notes swell and shift beneath my hands, shaping itself around the melody stuck somewhere in my head. The lyrics were up there too, swirling behind my eyes like storm clouds. I could almost grab them, almost pin them down. There was something about the way it ached, the way it felt like your heart could burst from wanting too much in too little time. Something about skin, and time, and loss you could taste before it even happened. I smiled faintly, eyes still closed, letting the feeling bloom in my chest. That familiar, fleeting high. Creating something from nothing. For a second, I forgot everything else. Then the dorm door opened. I didn’t need to look. I knew it was you—same way I always did. The sound of the keycard swipe, the subtle shift in air pressure, the scent that followed. I didn’t look up right away. I just grinned and adjusted the tuning peg on my low E string, plucking until it hit the right note. “There he is,” I called out, voice easy, low, too sweet to mean nothing. “Room smells better now. Guess that’s what happens when the hot roommate shows up.” Footsteps. I didn’t turn, but I felt them. Felt you. The way the air shifted, the way the space got a little warmer, more electric. There was a brush of fingers against the small of my back as you passed behind me, just enough pressure to make me glance over my shoulder, smirking. “Tease,” I muttered, fond. I kept strumming, letting the song trail off into silence. The melody wasn’t coming, not with distraction hanging in the room like perfume. I sighed and looked over to the bedside table where my notebook would be. I could grab it, but I wasn't quite ready to get up just yet. “Hey, can you grab my lyric book?” I asked. “The little black in on the nightstand. Got a couple lines trying to claw their way out of my skull, and if I don’t trap ‘em now they’ll vanish.” I tapped a finger against my temple. Footsteps. Movement. The rustle of papers. Then... stillness. I glanced up, fingers still loosely curled around the neck of the guitar. The silence that followed wasn’t the usual kind. It had weight. Shape. The air changed in the room. I felt a pressure behind my ribs, a hush that didn’t feel like peace. I turned my head, eyebrows pulling together, expecting maybe you had found an embarrassing old lyric draft or one of the dumb doodles I sometimes slipped between notebook pages. A smirk was already forming on my lips. Then I saw it. The paper. White. Standard letter-size. A hospital header in the top left. And bolded just beneath it: Bi-Yearly Evaluation – Juvenile Huntington’s Disease. My name typed neatly below, the kind of neat that made my throat close up. My heart stopped. Actually stopped. Just for a beat. Long enough to feel the cold rush in. I dropped the guitar. It slid off my lap and hit the ground with a soft thud, strings whining in protest. My breath caught. My mouth was open, but the words tangled. “Fuck.” It came out flat. Hollow. “That’s not—” I stood up too fast, blood rushing in my ears, steps uneven as I crossed the room. “That wasn’t supposed to be—shit.” My voice broke like cheap glass. Of all the things. Of all the days. It must have been tucked beneath the notebook. I didn’t even remember leaving it there. I was usually more careful. Usually didn’t leave pieces of my slow-motion death scattered like junk mail. But I’d had my check-up last week, and the results had come last evening, and I’d stared at them just long enough to hate what they said before stuffing them out of sight and pretending they didn’t exist. I thought I’d been clever. I thought I’d contained it. I took a step closer, panic and shame twisting into something nauseating. “It’s just a check-up,” I said quickly, voice too sharp, too raw. “Just... a formality. Nothing new.” Lie. I knew the words on that paper by heart. The slow advance of symptoms. The tightened timeline. The updated projections. My fingers twitched, and not from nerves. From the thing. The disease. It was subtle usually, but there. Always there. A tremor waiting to be noticed. I shoved my hands into my pockets. Tried not to shake. “I didn’t want you to...” I exhaled. “I didn’t want anyone to know.” I finally met your eyes. My chest hurt. “I didn't want to ruin this.