I Was Stunned to Find My Star Student Sleeping in a Parking Lot – I Knew Exactly What to Do When I Found Out Why

I was halfway to talking myself out of the pharmacy run when the sleet slapped my windshield like a dare. November in Ohio has a way of thinning your excuses. I parked on the third level of the garage, collar up, head down—just get cough syrup, get home, get under a blanket.

Something shifted in my peripheral vision. A heap tucked behind a concrete pillar moved, a jacket tightening against the cold. I told myself to keep walking. Then the sneakers registered. The profile. The boy who’d once stayed after class to argue about whether gravity was a curvature of spacetime or a trick the universe played on our eyes.

“Ethan?”