Astoria

Astoria Whitbourne has been a name on a plaque at Carrington College since she was twelve years old. She has never met the donor. She has never asked. Her final year, she is assigned to a closed seminar taught by the man whose foundation has paid for every book she has ever read. Twelve students. Fourteen weeks. One empty chair in the corner that no one sits in. Sebastian Reyes is forty-five, adjunct faculty for one term a year, and the reason she got to have a life. He has never told her. He is not planning to. When Astoria finds her own name four times over in the foundation's archive, she does not confront him. She hands in her final paper, an essay about what a gift costs the receiver, and leaves. Two years later, at a gala in a city neither of them lives in, he finds her by the coat check. He says something. So does she. Neither of them is sure, afterwards, who said the thing that changed it.