A day I had to survive without rolling my eyes or sighing when Tiffany declared, for the hundredth time, that her boyfriend was ‘sooooo perfect.’

I hadn’t expected flowers. Not from anyone, and definitely not from Blake. We didn’t do things like that.

We weren’t the kind of friends who exchanged gifts wrapped in neat bows or wrote each other heartfelt notes. If we gave each other anything, it came in the form of stolen moments, quiet understandings, a shared glance across a room that said everything words couldn’t.

So, when I found the book sitting on my bed that afternoon, I stared at it for a long time.

It wasn’t wrapped. No note. No explanation. No heart-shaped anything. Just a book, placed carefully in the center of my pillow like it had been waiting for me all day.

I knew it was from him before I even picked it up.

I crossed the room slowly, brushing my fingers over the edges. It was secondhand—the spine cracked from being read too many times. I turned it over, reading the title.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

A laugh slipped out of me. “You’re unbelievable,” I muttered, shaking my head as I flipped open the cover.

Blake had been on a relentless mission to turn me into a reader. For months, he’d been slipping books onto my desk or dropping them in my lap, even as I groaned and rolled my eyes.

“You’ll like this one,” he’d say, in that quiet, steady way of his. “Just read a little.”

I always refused. It wasn’t that I didn’t like reading—I did. Just not the way Blake did. Not in the way that made someone disappear into a story for hours, completely unaware of the world around them. Not in the way that made you forget to eat, forget to sleep, forget that real life even existed outside the pages.

That was his thing.

Me? I liked magazines. Vogue, mostly, with its glossy pages filled with clothes I’d never wear and places I’d never go. Once, I’d even skimmed through a Playboy my dad got in the mail—out of pure curiosity—hidden behind an old Seventeen so no one would catch me flipping through it.

It wasn’t exactly high literature, but it made sense to me: short, bite-sized stories, and…well, pictures.

But this? A whole novel? It felt like a challenge.

One Blake knew I wouldn’t back down from.

I skimmed through the first few pages lazily, flipping ahead when I got bored. Then something caught my attention.

A single word. Underlined in pencil.

And another, a few pages later.

Then another.