sharing scene 1 of every second counts because i can and i want so... little sneak peek? 🤍🪽
Ellie's phone had been vibrating against the desk for the last twenty minutes.
She was mid-sentence, explaining binary star systems to a classroom of students who looked like they'd rather be literally anywhere else, when it started.
It was Monday, which meant half of them were still nursing hangovers and the other half were just trying to stay awake. Ellie didn't blame them. Being in class at 10 AM was nobody's first choice, but she tried to make it at least somewhat engaging.
The first buzz was easy to ignore, just a quick vibration that made the phone shift against her desk. But then there was another. And another. And another. So Ellie had to turn her phone face down so the screen wouldn't keep lighting up and distract her.
She knew who it was. There was only one person in her contact list who texted like every thought had to be immediately shared or it would evaporate.
"So," Ellie continued, her voice steady even as her phone buzzed again, gesturing to the diagram she'd pulled up on the projector—two stars circling a common point, bound together by invisible forces. "They orbit a common center of mass, and they affect each other's evolution in ways that—yes, in the back?”
A kid in a red hoodie had his hand raised, looking more awake than he had all semester. "Do they ever, like, crash into each other?”
"Yeah," Ellie said, grateful for the engagement. "Sometimes. When they get close enough and the orbital decay reaches a critical point, they can merge.”
Her phone lit up again, and Ellie could see it in her peripheral vision, a glow like distant starlight that she couldn't quite ignore.
One of the students in the front row glanced at Ellie's desk, then back up at her, suppressing a smile that made Ellie want to sink through the floor.
Ellie felt heat creep up the back of her neck slowly.
"Anyway," she said, louder than necessary, clicking to the next slide, "the important thing to understand about here is that once two stars are gravitationally bound, they can't exist independently anymore.”
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
"They're trapped in orbit," she continued, "circling each other and getting closer over time as they lose energy to gravitational radiation. Eventually, something has to give. Either they collide, or one dies and takes the other with it, or—in rare cases—one gets ejected from the system entirely."
Her phone was still buzzing, a desperate morse code she could read without looking: help me, need you, where are you, why aren't you answering, are you okay?
This was fine. She was fine. You could wait forty-five minutes until the seminar was over.
Except her phone was still going off, and now a few more students were glancing at her desk, and Ellie could now feel the heat crawling on her face.
She should've put it on Do Not Disturb. She always put it on Do Not Disturb before class, but this morning she'd been running late, overslept after staying up too late grading papers, and she'd forgotten.
"Uh..." A girl spoke with a glinting of amusement in her voice. "Do you need to get that?"
"No," Ellie said quickly. "It's fine. Just… someone's being impatient, they can wait."
She knew you probably couldn't wait, but Ellie had twenty students staring at her, expecting her to teach them something about the universe when she could barely understand her own small corner of it, and she couldn't just stop class to deal with another wedding-related crisis.
A few students laughed, and Ellie tried to smile and make her face do something that looked like amusement, like this was all very funny and not at all excruciating. "Sorry about that. Where was I?"
"Right." Ellie said, staring at the projection of two stars spiraling toward each other, "Uh, it happens when one star goes supernova and the explosion is violent enough to break the gravitational bond. The surviving star gets thrown out of the system at high velocity. It becomes what we call a runaway star.”
Another buz.
Ellie's hand gripped the desk harder than she should. She could see the screen lighting up even face down, and it was taking every ounce of her willpower not to look at it.
If she looked, she'd see your contact name and she'd see whatever spiral you were currently in, and she'd want to respond, fix it, anything to make you feel better.
But she was teaching. She had a job to do. She was a professional, goddammit.
She powered through the rest of the class on autopilot, barely aware of what she was saying. The students took notes or pretended to do so, and Ellie kept talking and gesturing at the projector, pretending her hands weren’t itching to take her phone and answer whatever you were stressing about.
By the time she dismissed the class, her shoulders were so tense they ached.
"Okay, that's it for today," she said, clicking off the projector even though there were still ten minutes left in the class. "See you next monday.”
The students started packing up immediately, clearly happy to leave early, and the room filled with the sounds of zippers and shuffling papers and relieved conversations. Ellie turned away, finally picking up her phone from the desk.
The messages loaded all at once, a cascade of your thoughts spilling across her screen.
Thirty-one messages was a lot, even for you. Her thumb hovered over the screen, and she could feel her pulse picking, already knowing she knew she was about to step into whatever storm you were currently weathering. A wedding storm. Always a wedding storm lately, dark and turbulent and threatening to pull her under.
Ellie's eyes tracked over them quickly.
most beautiful lady in town 🪽, 31 new messages.
You'd changed your contact name yourself last time you'd stolen her phone, insisting that if you were going to be her best friend, the contact info had to reflect that. Ellie had rolled her eyes, but she never changed it back. She couldn't bring herself to do it.
most beautiful lady in town 🪽 10:30 A.M
ellie are u busy
i know you’re probably teaching rn
sprry ignore me
actually don't ignore me
i just need like two second of your gigantic brain
light blue for the dresses and your suit yes or no
like you'll be my something blue... isn't that so cute
do you think it's an ugly color like be honest
bc my mom says it washes people out but i feel like she just hates everything i pick
but i think you'll look sooo cute!! like imagine our pictures 😪
idgaf about the others they can wear potato sacks
but also i know you dont like blue That Much
wait WHAT ABOUT BLACK.... you'll look so cool
most beautiful lady in town 🪽 10:32 A.M
the wedding planner is pissing me off. i need her gone now. what is wrong with the bridesmaids wearing BLACK
like why is she acting like she knows whats better for MY WEDDING than me. THE BRIDE
???
omg
am i being a bridezilla
BE HONEST
most beautiful lady in town 🪽 10:36 A.M
did you know light blue in spanish is CELESTE 🩵 the more you know...
most beautiful lady in town 🪽 10:48 A.M
do you think i should do boxes with gifts for the bridesmaid proposal thing
like is that too much...
dina told me everyone does them but what if it's too much
what if they think it's cringe or something
wait do YOU think it's cringe.
most beautiful lady in town 🪽 11:01 A.M
omg i'm losing my mind i already ordered the boxes
when are you coming back
like actually
don’t say i don’t know
i need to shop with you ELLIE WILLIAMS 🩵
i can’t do this alone and camille has terrible taste
see what happens when i do things alone???
She scrolled through them quickly, her eyes skimming over the words faster than she could really process them.
You were spiraling, clearly. Classic you, second-guessing every decision and needing constant reassurance that you weren't completely fucking everything up, working yourself into a state because you cared too much about making everyone happy.
And classic Ellie, she was going to give you that reassurance, even though talking to you about your wedding made her want to put her fist through a wall.
She hit the call button before she could think better of it and brought the phone to her ear, already walking towards the door. "Hey.”
"Finally!" Your voice came through loud and indignant, and Ellie could hear traffic in the background. "What were you doing? I thought you were dead."
"Teaching," Ellie said, even though the word felt inadequate for what she'd actually been doing, and pushed through the classroom door into the hallway. "You know, the thing I do for money?"
The hallway was blessedly quiet compared to the noise bleeding through your end of the call, just the ambient hum of the building and the muffled sounds of other classes in session. The academic machinery continued its work, regardless of personal catastrophe.
In her ear, Ellie could hear the city through her phone. Car horns, people talking loudly. Just the noise of Boston chaos, a soundscape she used to know as intimately as breathing.
It made a bittersweet ache bloom through her. That used to be her city, too. Used to be both of your city, before she'd moved three thousand miles away and convinced herself that distance would help.
In her head, physical separation could somehow translate into emotional separation. As if the heart operated on the same principles as gravity.
"I thought your class finished at eleven."
"Yeah, I just finished." Ellie started down the hallway toward her office, phone pressed to her ear, her messenger bag slung over one shoulder. "What's going on?"
Ellie's free hand moved to her temple, rubbing slow circles. She could already feel the tension building behind her eyes, the one that always came when she had to smile through conversations about centerpieces and color schemes and your future with someone else.
"Okay so, I need your help—" There was a sudden burst of noise, someone shouting about something, and you raised your voice slightly. "No, I'm good, thanks!—sorry, Els, some guy was trying to sell me a churro."
"Are you outside?" Ellie could hear you walking now, your footsteps quick on pavement, the rhythmic sound of your heels hitting concrete.
"Yeah, I'm on my lunch break. Anyway, I'm losing my mind over these bridesmaid boxes. I can't tell if they're cute or if they're trying too hard, what if—"
"Jeez, calm down," Ellie said, and she could hear the fond exasperation in her own voice. "People love free shit. Put some nice stuff in it, tie a ribbon, they'll be thrilled. I don't think you can mess that up."
"You don't understand," you sounded genuinely distressed, your voice climbing half an octave the way it always did when anxiety was winning the war against reason. "Everyone does these like, elaborate gifts with custom wine glasses and bath bombs and robes and—I don't know, I ordered some stuff but I don't even know if they're good, and I haven't even started putting them together yet—"
"Okay, okay," Ellie turned the corner toward the faculty offices, her footsteps echoing in the quiet hallway. "When do you need them done by?"
"Well, the tea party is in a month, so before that.”
“Uh. I thought it happened in like, 1773.”
There was a beat of silence, the pause before the punchline landed, and then you snorted.
The sound cut through the phone line like light through clouds, sudden and bright and wholly unexpected, and it made Ellie's mouth twitch into a smile.
She heard you nearly trip, a little stumble in your footsteps, and then you were laughing loudly, a full-body laugh that Ellie heard a million times before.
"Stop," you said between giggles. "I'm drinking my coffee right now. You can't make me laugh during a serious moment."
"Oh, this is serious?"
"Yeah, very serious. Are you not worried about your little box of gifts?"
Ellie smiled despite herself. "Uh, Terrified. I don't know how I'll survive without monogrammed bath bombs."
You snorted again, louder this time. "Oh my god, stop? I'm trying to have a crisis here."
"Okay, okay," Ellie said, still smiling like an idiot even though you couldn't see her. "C'mon. You have like, three weeks. That's plenty of time."
"Not if I don't know what I'm doing—"
"Ellie?"
Ellie stopped walking.
The voice came from behind her, and when she turned, there was a girl half-jogging to catch up with her.
Samantha. Or Sammy, as she'd insisted Ellie call her.
She had been in one of Ellie's seminars last year. She'd been one of the more engaged students, asked good questions, stayed after class sometimes to talk about grad school applications with Ellie and she seemed genuinely interested in astrophysics, something that Ellie deeply appreciated.
For the last few months, though, she'd been hovering. More than hovering, actually. And it was no one's but Ellie's fault.
Ellie had made the mistake during a lab session last year. It was April, maybe early May, the air outside finally warming but the lab still kept cold for the equipment.
They were calibrating telescope mounts, and Sammy had been struggling with the altitude adjustment, her hands fumbling with the mechanism. Ellie had come over to help her, and got a little too close while helping her calibrate the telescope mount, close enough that their shoulders had brushed and close enough that her lips were close to Sammy's ear when she spoke.
Sammy had looked up at her with this expression on her face, and Ellie had realized, too late, that she'd completely fucked up.
Ellie had stepped back quickly, putting distance between them, cleared her throat and said something awkward about "there you go" and moved on to help another student, but the damage was done.
And then, because Ellie was apparently an idiot who had the self-preservation instincts of a moth flying toward a flame, she'd made it worse when towards the end of the semester Sammy told her she wanted to go into astrophysics research.
Ellie, in a moment of well-intentioned stupidity, had given Sammy her email. Because she was apparently, too tender-hearted for her own good, or maybe just too much of a coward to set a clear boundary when it mattered.
"Look, applying to PhD programs is rough," Ellie had said, even though a voice in her head was screaming don't give her another way to contact you. "I've been there. If you ever have questions about applications or need advice or whatever, just email me."
She'd meant it professionally. Paying it forward. The support a grad student was supposed to give to a promising undergrad, just feeding the cycle of academic support that kept the whole system running.
Sammy had taken it exactly how Ellie had feared she would.
The emails had started normal enough—questions about GRE scores, which programs to apply to, how to reach out to potential advisors. Ellie had answered them all, happy to help.
But then she had started showing up. To Ellie's office hours, even though she wasn't in any of Ellie's current classes. To the department coffee hour. To the physics building lobby at times that seemed oddly convenient. Always with a question, always with a reason, always lingering just a little too long like overstaying a welcome she'd never quite been given.
She even sent her a follow request on Instagram two weeks ago, which Ellie declined because accepting felt like encouraging something Ellie had no intention of encouraging.
Sammy had sent the request again the next day. Ellie declined it again.
Apparently, Sammy didn't get the memo, because she kept getting closer, literally and physically closer during the few interactions they had, standing just a little too near, always finding excuses to touch Ellie's arm or shoulder in ways that could be dismissed as accidental but never quite felt that way.
It would be flattering if Ellie wasn't completely hung up on her best friend who was getting married in six months.
"Hold on," Ellie said into the phone, without pulling it away from her ear. "Hey, Sammy. What's up?"
"Sorry to interrupt,” Sammy shifted her weight from foot to foot, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ""I know you're busy, but I had a quick question about my thesis? The section I sent you?”
"El? You still there?" Your voice in her ear, impatient.
"Did you run it by your advisor?" Ellie said to Sammy, pressing her free hand to her temple. "He will give better feedback than me."
"I did, but he's not really an expert in that specific area and you are, so I thought—" Sammy took a step closer, and Ellie resisted the urge to step back. "Maybe we could go over it? Like, if you're free now…”
She was doing the thing with her hair again, tucking it behind her ear even though it didn't need tucking. Her eyes were wide and hopeful and it made Ellie feel a twist of guilt in her stomach.
She was beautiful, Ellie could acknowledge that. She had that kind of conventionally attractive features that probably made her popular, made her used to getting what she wanted.
Ellie really wasn't in the kind of headspace to appreciate it, though.
"Who are you talking to?" Your voice again, curious now.
"I already finished it," Sammy continued, apparently not reading Ellie's discomfort or choosing to ignore it, "and I just really want to make sure I got this part right before I submit the final draft.”
Ellie was very aware of the woman speaking in her ear now. “Hello? ... Sammy? Who’s that?"
"Uh," Ellie looked between Sammy and the phone pressed to her ear, her brain trying to process two conversations at once, trying to be professional and patient and not obviously uncomfortable. "I'm kind of in the middle of something right now, sorry.”
"Is that a student?"
"Yeah, yeah," Ellie said and took a few steps back, putting distance between herself and Sammy. She forced what she hoped was an apologetic smile. "Email me the section again, okay? I'll take a look when I can and send you notes.”
Sammy nodded, but she looked disappointed, and Ellie felt a twinge of guilt that she immediately shoved down. She didn't have the energy to deal with whatever was happening there. Not right now.
Ellie turned away, already walking faster down the hallway like she was being chased. For a blissful moment, you were quiet on the other end of the line, probably focused on crossing a street or something.
She let out a long breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, her shoulders finally dropping from where they'd crept up near her ears.
"Who's Sammy?"
Ellie's shoulders shot right back up.
"No one," Ellie said quickly, maybe too quickly, the words tumbling out too fast to sound casual. "Just a student."
"Oh. Okay. She sounded really eager to talk to you.”
She shifted the phone against her ear, pressing it closer like that would help her hear what you weren't saying. Your tone made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.
Eager. That was one word for it.
"She's just—she was in my seminar. She asks a lot of questions.”
Ellie's brain was trying to parse your tone, trying to figure out what that edge meant. It might've been jealousy if Ellie let herself think about it, which she absolutely did not.
"Uh-huh," You didn't sound convinced, and there it was again, that thing in your voice that Ellie couldn't quite name. "That's cute... is she cute?”
Ellie nearly tripped over her own feet.
Her grip on the phone was so tight that she could feel the edge of her spiderman case digging into her palm, but she didn't loosen it. "What?”
"I'm just asking," You laughed, but it sounded just slightly off from your usual teasing.
Ellie told herself she was imagining it.
She reached her office door and fumbled with her keys, nearly dropping them, her hands suddenly clumsy. She missed the lock on the first try. "I don't think—she's my student. Former student. That would be weird.”
"Former student," you corrected, "So technically not weird. Is she cute or not?”
Yes, Ellie wanted to say. But she's not you. Nobody's you.
"I'm hanging up."
“Wait, no! I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” you said quickly, too quickly. “Don’t get weird about it, jesus."
Ellie got her door open and stepped into her office. It was small, barely more than a closet with a window, but it was hers.
The bookshelves were crammed with textbooks and research journals organized by topic in a system that made sense only to her, her desk was covered in papers, problem sets waiting to be graded, notes for her thesis, printed articles she kept meaning to read but never quite got around to. And there, in the corner of her desk in a simple black frame, was a photo of you two.
Both of you in your BU graduation gowns, your arm around her shoulders, both of you grinning like you'd just conquered the world. You held a Belle that was wearing a tiny graduation cap that you'd made yourself with felt and hot glue while Ellie held Snoopy in a little graduation gown, looking slightly embarrassed but endeared.
You had given her so much shit that day for getting Belle and not Fifi. Had even gone on a rant while getting ready about how fucked up it was that companies sold plushies of Belle and Snoopy as if they were a couple when they were actually siblings.
She made sure to close and lock the door. Her office was three doors down from her advisor’s, which meant there was a non-zero chance she’d get pulled into another impromptu conversation about her research if the door was open.
Ellie wasn't in the mood to talk about her research today.
"Whatever," The words were out before Ellie could stop them, and before this conversation could go any further down a road Ellie didn't want to travel. "We'll figure the boxes thing out. Don't worry."
"It's just..."
She dropped her bag onto the desk and sank into her chair, the old leather creaking under her weight. “Hey. They're boxes. With gifts in them. For people who love you and are going to be thrilled to be in your wedding no matter what's inside them.”
There was a pause, and Ellie could hear you taking a breath. When you spoke again, your voice had gone smaller, more uncertain.
"I know I'm overthinking it, I just… I want everything to be perfect, you know? And I can't do this without you, and you're all the way in Seattle, and—" you took another shaky breath. "When are you coming back? Because I need you here. I need to show you the boxes when they arrive, and we need to go shopping, and I need your opinion on like seventeen different things—”
Shouldn't your fiancé be doing this with you? Ellie wanted to scream. Isn't that what partners do?
"I have a flight booked for the 15th," Ellie interrupted you, settling into her chair, her free hand rubbing her temples.
"Like the color of the— Wait, really?" your voice brightened immediately.
"Yeah," Ellie said quietly. "Need to do some paperwork anyway."
"Oh my God, you're a lifesaver." You were walking again now, definitely crossing a street. Ellie could hear your footsteps and the sound of car engines in the background. "Like, actually. I was starting to panic. I know I'm being ridiculous but—"
"You're not being ridiculous."
"I am, though. I know I am. But thank you for saying it anyway."
You were walking again now, definitely crossing a street but the sounds coming from your end.
She could imagine you so clearly; the way you'd be holding your phone, probably tucked between your ear and shoulder while you fumbled with the strap of your bag that was always sliding off your shoulder, especially in winter when you wore bulky coats. How you were probably struggling to keep your wired earphones from tangling with your scarf.
“I'll pick you up from the airport. We can go straight to a store and get everything. I already made a list. Well, I made like three lists, but—"
"Hey," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Don't stress. We'll figure it out.”
"You're the best, seriously. I don't know what I'd do without you."
The words made Ellie close her eyes, and Ellie's hand pressed hard against her chest, right where that familiar ache was starting to build, once again.
You said things like that so easily, so casually. Just affectionate and thoughtless little phrases, probably not even aware of how much they were killing her. Like you didn't know that "I need you" was the closest you'd ever come to saying what Ellie actually wanted to hear.
"It's just shopping. I'm not exactly saving your life."
"Still," your voice softened, went warm and gentle as honey. "Thank you. Really.”
There was a comfortable silence for a few seconds, and Ellie could hear you breathing on the other end of the line—in and out, steady and alive, the sound of you just existing in the world.
It was pathetic how much comfort she took from that.
"Okay, I should let you go," you said finally, reluctantly. "You probably have important scientific things to do."
"Not really. Just grading some stuff."
"Ugh, grading again?" you laughed, and the sound made Ellie's grin, too.
Yes, again. She’d been up until almost two in the morning yesterday, toggling between grading sets and rewriting a section of her research that her advisor had sent back covered in comments.
“Unclear methodology" and “Needs stronger justification” and about fifteen other variations of this isn't good enough, try again.
You’d been on FaceTime with her last night too, your face lit up by your own screen as you watched her scroll in silence. When she read that part out loud there’d been a beat of silence before you’d gone, completely serious, “Okay, so you take the nearest pen—no, actually anything sharp—and you just stab him.”
Ellie, In the end, had done what she always did—ignored your extremely illegal advice and fixed it, line by line, word by word.
"Okay, Professor Williams," you said, and Ellie could hear the affection in your voice. "I need to go. And I need to call the wedding planner and tell her she's fired.”
"Please, don't fire Melissa."
"Melina. And I'm going to fire her. She's useless! She keeps suggesting things that she knows I hate. Yesterday she tried to tell me that we should have a cake instead of Tiramisu and I was like, 'did I ask for your opinion?' I'm paying her to execute my vision, not to have opinions about my vision."
"Don't fire her," Ellie repeated, leaning back in her chair until it creaked in protest. "Just tell her what you actually want. Use your words. You're good at that.”
"I'm literally not good at that. I'm terrible at confrontation, you know this. I'll rather die."
"I mean… you're literally confronting her by firing her."
You were laughing now, and Ellie could picture your face as clearly as if you were standing in front of her—the way your nose scrunched up when you were amused, the way your eyes crinkled at the corners. "Okay, okay, fine. I won't fire her. But I'm sending you the message I'm going to send her, and you have to tell me if it's too mean.”
"It won't be too mean. You're incapable of being mean."
"That's not true, I can be mean."
"Name one time you've been mean."
You huffed. "Okay, fine, maybe I'm not mean. But I could be… If I wanted to be!"
Ellie smiled despite herself. "Sure, you're very intimidating. I'm shaking."
"Shut up," you were still laughing. "Okay, I really need to go now, my lunchtime is over. But thank you for talking me down. You always know how to make me feel better. I'll text you later about next weekend."
"Sounds good."
"’Kay. Love you!"
It came out bright and easy, the way it always did. You said that to her every time you ended every phone call. You'd been saying it since sophomore year, so it was a reflex at this point.
The line went dead before Ellie could respond.
She sat there with the phone still pressed to her ear, listening to the sudden silence. Love you too, she thought, but there was no one on the other end to hear it.
In front of her, her laptop was still open on her desk, the screen full of lines and graphs that didn’t make sense yet.
Ellie stared at it for a second, and she quickly shut it close.
She didn’t have the energy for the universe today. Life on earth was complicated enough.
Her phone buzzed in her hand, once again, almost immediately.
most beautiful lady in town 🪽 11:12 AM
btw i chose black for the bridesmaids
FUCK melina
you'll look SO good
like seriously
i'm mad
i'm gonna need you to tone it down
can't have you outshining the bride
Ellie typed out a response, that'll be impossible, her thumb hovering over send.
It was true. You could wear a burlap sack and still be the most beautiful person in any room. You could show up in sweats and bedhead and you'd still outshine everyone. It wasn't about the dress or the makeup or any of the surface things you were so worried about.
It was just you. It had always been you.
She stared at it for a long moment before deleting it and typing something else.
ellie 🪐 11:13 A.M
nonsense
black is fine
just don't make me wear a bow
Last night, I finally stopped weepily procrastinating one of the most dire things on my list of even-a-dog-could-do-it tasks, and then this morning, my actual dog got me out of bed before 6:30am because he wanted to go and nap in a different room of the house, so basically this means I get a treat.
You'd expect the Dabuchi (Double Cheeseburger) Sausage McMuffin would be pretty salty, but it is saltier than you could ever imagine. I think it has to be the saltiest food I have ever finished. It is pretty tasty when you can construct a bite with a good amount of cheeseburger toppings, but if it slips and the ratio is off even a little, oh my GOD. I think this would be improved by, like, a huge round piece of unseasoned grilled potato. Or a third slice of English muffin inside. It was a lot!
man literally what even is romantic attraction . is it just you see someone and you're like I want to kiss and hold hands w them . is that all it is ???? I'm pretty sure it's not but like . genuinely what is it . because I have no idea man .
