Still Breathing

Chapter 1

Rose stirred awake as the first pale fingers of dawn crept through her dorm room blinds. She yawned and stretched, taking a moment to orient herself. Another day, another chance to chase her dreams...or at least figure out what those dreams might be.

Stumbling to the tiny en suite bathroom, she began her daily rituals. Toothpaste on brush, minty foam frothing as she scrubbed, a brief contemplation of her reflection, still puffy with sleep. Rose had never been a morning person, but college had a way of forcing you to adapt.

Ablutions complete, she shuffled back into the room, yanking a brush through her riotous curls and shimmying into her favorite jeans. Cute top, cozy cardigan, scuffed boots. Armor donned for another day of lectures, overstimulation, and existential uncertainty.

As she slung her backpack over one shoulder and headed out, Rose reflected on how much her life had changed these past few months. College had been her mother's dream, more than her own. "I want more for you," she'd always said, eyes distant, mouth tight. "More than I had. More than this."

And so Rose had dutifully packed her bags, hugged her tearful mom, and set off to chase a foggy future that everyone else seemed to understand but her. It wasn't that she was ungrateful or even unhappy. She liked her classes well enough, and had been pleasantly surprised to fall into a quirky group of friends. It's just that she couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing, some keystone that would snap the rest of her life into focus.

Lost in thought, she meandered through the quad, crisp autumn air nipping at her cheeks. A shout drew her attention and she looked up to see Chris, resident himbo with a heart of gold, tossing a football with some other beefcakes. He caught her eye and waved, all twinkling eyes and megawatt grin. Rose couldn't help but smile back. Silly boy.

Under a copper-leafed oak, she spied Nina, nose buried in a book as usual, a smudge of charcoal on one cheek. The aspiring artist had blown Rose's mind when they first met, casually discussing Caravaggio's use of chiaroscuro and the homo-erotic subtext of Victorian literature. Nina made everything seem deep and faintly magical.

As she passed the dining hall, a lanky arm slung itself around her shoulders and she looked up into dancing blue eyes and an impish grin. Max. Her ride-or-die since freshman orientation when they bonded over a shared terror of adulting and secret love of trashy vampire novels. His dirty blond hair flopped into his face as he gesticulated wildly, probably describing his latest scheme for getting out of Econ homework.

"Catch you later?" He called, peeling off towards the science center with a jaunty wave.

Rose shook her head fondly. Her friends were nothing if not colorful. Rounding the corner of Beaumont Tower, she nearly collided with a willowy figure in ripped black jeans and immaculate eyeliner. "Easy, Rosebud," lilted Margot, steadying her with a playful hip check.

Margot was an enigma wrapped in a designer label, one of those effortlessly cool girls who seemed to float above mere mortal concerns. Bitingly witty and sharp as a tack, she liked to play the jaded cynic - but Rose had seen her tearing up over cat videos when she thought no one was looking.



The library doors loomed and Rose picked up her pace. She had told herself to get there early, grab her favorite carrel, maybe finally start that Dostoevsky she'd been pretending to read for weeks. But her feet had other ideas, carrying her instead to the humanities building, to the second floor lecture hall. To him.

Professor Sebastian Castillo. Doctor Dreamy himself. Rose's stomach fluttered as she slid into her usual seat near the back, pulse picking up as it always did in his presence. She couldn't explain her fascination with the young, roguishly handsome lit professor. From the first day of class when he strolled in, all cheekbones and rolled sleeves and passionate oration on romantic poetry, she'd been captivated.

It wasn't a crush, exactly. Rose might be sheltered but she wasn't silly enough to fall for a teacher. There was just something about him, some undeniable pull she felt in her bones when drowsy brown eyes met smoldering black. A sense of connection, of seeing and being seen. He had a way of talking about books that lit a fire in her belly, that made her feel understood in a way she never had before.

Rationally, Rose knew it was ridiculous. He was brilliant and worldly, with multiple degrees and a life of sophisticated adult things. She was just a silly girl prone to doodling in margins and daydreaming out windows. And yet... when he spoke of Austen's wit or Dickinson's quiet rebellion, she could swear he was speaking directly to her, promising her the world beyond these provincial walls if only she were bold enough to reach for it.

The bang of his leather messenger hitting the podium jolted her back to reality. Flushing, Rose busied herself with yanking out her dog-eared copy of Keats, praying he hadn't noticed her gawping like a lovestruck fool. Just once, she wished she could play it cool in his presence.

"Good morning, my intrepid literati," his voice rolled out, dark chocolate on gravel, doing unholy things to her nerve-endings. "Today we continue our exploration of the Romantic poets and their elevation of the individual experience..."

As he spoke, Rose found herself once again hypnotized by the elegant motion of his hands, the way the muscles of his forearms flexed as he gestured. The intensity of his gaze as he asked, "And what of Keats' idea that 'beauty is truth, truth beauty'? How does this Greco-centric aesthetic inform his concept of the sublime?"

She wanted to raise her hand, to dazzle him with some keen insight on art and the human condition. But her tongue felt stuck to the roof of her mouth, coherent thought scattered like leaves in a gale.

Then those piercing eyes were on her, pinning her like a butterfly on velvet, and she heard as if from underwater, "Rose? What do you make of Keats' reckoning of the pastoral and mythological with base sensuality?"

Rose shot to her feet, chair clattering, a blotchy flush climbing up her neck. A few of her classmates tittered but she barely heard them over the roaring in her ears. This was her chance, her moment to show him that there was more to her than a pretty face and a propensity for swooning.

"Well," she started, voice wavering only slightly, "Keats seems to be striving for a synthesis of classical idealism and romantic emotionality, an attempt to reconcile the lofty with the earthy. He is attuned to both the noble purity of the Grecian urn and the ripe sensuality of the natural world. In this way, he almost prefigures the decadents in his unabashed reveling in sheer aesthetic rapture."

The words poured out of her in a rush, half-remembered snippets from a dozen late night Wikipedia binges. She chanced a glance at the professor, heart in her throat. Was that a glimmer of approval in his eyes? The ghost of an impressed smile?

He gave a slow nod, something like respect kindling in his gaze. "Astutely put, Rose. We can indeed see Keats as a bridge between the classical past and the hedonistic future, a man poised on the knife's edge of a cultural shift. There is a tension in his work between apollonian restraint and dionysian excess, one he never quite resolves. But then, poets are creatures of contradiction, aren't they?"

Those last words were spoken softly, almost intimately, and Rose felt them like a caress, raising goosebumps on her skin. For a sliver of a second, she could have sworn there was a spark between them, a frisson of something unspoken and thrilling.

But then he was turning to scrawl a passage on the board and the moment was broken. Rose sank back into her seat, knees watery, heart pounding a fierce tattoo against her ribs.

Okay, so maybe she had a tiny, infinitesimal crush. And maybe there was the slightest possibility that it wasn't entirely one-sided. But Professor Castillo was still her teacher, still miles out of her league. Nothing could ever come of these furtive feelings.

Right?

As Rose stared at the strong lines of his back, the affectionate quirk of his mouth as he expounded on Endymion, she wondered. Maybe, just maybe, there was more to her future than dusty tomes and empty daydreams. Maybe this strange longing, this sense of something missing, was pointing her toward her destiny.

Or maybe she was just an imaginative English major with an overactive fantasy life and a thing for brooding older men. Who could say?

The only thing Rose knew for certain was that Sebastian Castillo had gotten under her skin in a way no one else ever had. And try as she might, she couldn't shake the sense that their story was just beginning.