Almost

Hotchner Hall had never been this quiet.

During the semester it hummed—doors slamming, someone’s speaker leaking bass through drywall, laughter ricocheting down the stairwell. But three days into Winter Break, after the snowstorm shut down half of Connecticut and sent the rest of Hartford University fleeing home ahead of schedule, the dorm felt like the abandoned set of a movie about the end of the world.

Jason Adler stood in the lounge doorway and listened to the radiator knock like a hesitant knuckle against a coffin lid.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself. “Not creepy at all.”

He adjusted his glasses and stepped inside anyway.

The lounge lights were dimmed to half power to conserve energy. Outside the tall windows, snow drifted in thick, hypnotic spirals, erasing the campus in soft white layers. The quad was gone. The paths were gone. Even the statue of the university’s founder was nothing more than a rounded mound with a suggestion of a hat.

Hotchner Hall felt like a snow globe someone had shaken and forgotten.

Jason dropped his backpack onto the long wooden table and pulled out his music theory textbook, a spiral notebook, and a highlighter. Winter break was his chance to get ahead. Organic Chemistry next semester would be brutal, and Chorale auditions for solo parts were in January. If he wanted the tenor solo in the spring concert, he needed to be sharper than everyone else.

He uncapped his highlighter.

The door clicked open behind him.

He didn’t have to turn around.

He knew that soft, measured way someone stepped into a room when they were assessing it first—taking it in before committing to it.

“Did you just claim the apocalypse lounge?” Wendy Morales asked.

Jason turned, trying to look composed instead of startled. “I mean. I think I called it first.”

Wendy stood framed by the doorway, bundled in a cream sweater and dark jeans, her curls gathered into a loose bun that was already escaping in soft tendrils. She carried a mug the size of a small cauldron.

“You can’t call a lounge,” she said. “It’s a public space.”

“Counterpoint,” he replied, pushing his glasses up. “There are currently… what, five of us left in the building?”

“Six,” she corrected. “I saw Lucas from third floor in the laundry room. He looked feral.”

“Six. Fine. I hereby call dibs on this side of the apocalypse.”

Wendy smiled despite herself and crossed the room. “I’m not sure dibs is legally binding in a snowed-in situation.”

He watched her sit across from him at the table.

They’d done this dance all semester.

Shared classes—Music History, Intro to Linguistics. Shared Chorale rehearsals. Shared glances over sheet music. Shared almost-conversations that hovered in the air like unresolved chords.

Everyone in Chorale knew.

Or thought they did.

“You staying here all break?” she asked, blowing across her mug.

“Yeah,” Jason said. “Cheaper. And I want to get ahead.”

“Of course you do.”

He pretended to take offense. “You say that like it’s a personality flaw.”

“It’s just very you.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means,” she said carefully, “you treat every semester like a chess match.”

He leaned back. “And you don’t?”

She hesitated.

There it was—the thing beneath the banter.

“I just… needed the quiet,” she said.

Jason nodded slowly. He knew enough not to push. Everyone had noticed she hadn’t gone home for Thanksgiving either. There had been hushed phone calls in the hallway. A night she didn’t come to rehearsal.

He’d wanted to ask. He hadn’t.

“Quiet I can provide,” he said instead, tapping his textbook. “Unless you start singing.”

“Wow. Rude.”

“You’re loud.”

“I am not.”

“You project.”

“That’s literally the point of Chorale.”

He laughed.

It felt easier with fewer people around. No audience. No shared glances from altos nudging each other when Jason and Wendy stood too close in the tenor-alto arc.

Outside, the snow thickened.

Inside, the radiator kept knocking.

The storm worsened overnight.

By morning, the campus email pinged with a warning: nonessential staff were advised to stay home. Dining services would operate on limited hours. Students remaining on campus should avoid unnecessary travel between buildings.

Jason read it on his phone while brushing his teeth.

He stepped into the hallway and nearly collided with Wendy.

“Oh—sorry!” they both said at once.

They laughed.

She wore fuzzy socks and an oversized Hartford University hoodie. He had never seen her without the composed, ready-for-class version of herself. The hoodie made her look softer. Realer.

“Dining hall’s still open,” she said. “For now.”

“Apocalypse rations,” he replied.

“Exactly. Want to brave it?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”

The wind cut sharp across their faces as they trudged through knee-deep snow. The campus was unrecognizable—silent and buried, like time had paused.

They were halfway across the quad when Wendy slipped.

Jason caught her arm before she hit the ground.

For a moment they were frozen—not from the cold.

His hand was warm through her sleeve. Her fingers gripped his coat instinctively.

They were close. Too close.

Her breath came out in soft clouds between them.

“Thanks,” she said, quieter now.

“Yeah.”

He didn’t let go immediately.

She didn’t pull away.

A gust of wind broke the moment, whipping snow against their legs. She steadied herself and stepped back.

“Let’s not die before breakfast,” she said.

“Agreed.”

But something had shifted.

By the third day, the storm had effectively sealed them inside Hotchner Hall.

The lounge became their headquarters.

They studied at opposite ends of the table, occasionally drifting into conversation. They raided vending machines. They played cards. They sang—quietly at first, then louder, harmonizing instinctively in the empty room.

Their voices filled the hollow building.

On the fourth evening, the power flickered.

The overhead lights dimmed, then returned.

Wendy looked up from her notebook. “If the lights go out, I’m blaming you.”

“For what?”

“For calling dibs on the apocalypse.”

He grinned. “Fair.”

The wind howled against the windows.

She stood and walked to the glass, peering out at the whiteout. “It’s beautiful.”

He joined her.

The campus was nothing but swirling white and the faint glow of lampposts.

“It’s like we’re the only two people left,” she said softly.

He swallowed. “That’s… not ominous at all.”

She smiled faintly. But there was something fragile in her expression.

“My mom called,” she said after a moment.

He waited.

“She and my dad had another fight. I guess it escalated.”

Jason felt the air change.

“They’ve been… like this for years,” she continued. “I used to think if I just stayed home more, maybe I could… buffer it. You know? Make it lighter.”

He didn’t say the obvious—that it wasn’t her job.

Instead he said, “That sounds exhausting.”

Her eyes glistened, but she blinked it away. “It is.”

The lights flickered again.

He turned to face her fully. “You don’t have to buffer anything here.”

She looked at him.

“In here?” she asked.

“In here,” he echoed, tapping the window lightly. “In this snow globe.”

She laughed weakly. “Snow globe.”

“Yeah. We’re just… suspended. No expectations. No family drama. No auditions. Just… this.”

She studied his face as if memorizing it.

“Jason,” she said, almost cautiously, “why didn’t you go home?”

He hesitated.

“My dad thinks music is a hobby,” he said finally. “Not… a future. Every break turns into this negotiation about practicality. I just didn’t have the energy for it.”

She exhaled. “So we’re both hiding.”

“Strategically retreating,” he corrected.

She nudged his shoulder. “Chess match.”

“Exactly.”

They stood there, shoulder to shoulder, watching the storm.

The power went out.

Total darkness swallowed the room.

Wendy gasped and instinctively grabbed his hand.

The emergency lights flickered on seconds later, casting the lounge in a dim red glow.

But she hadn’t let go.

Neither had he.

Their hands fit.

It was stupid and simple and devastating.

“Sorry,” she whispered, though she didn’t move.

“It’s okay.”

The red light softened the angles of her face. Her curls glowed like embers. He could hear his own heartbeat, absurdly loud in the silence.

“Jason,” she said again, as if testing the weight of his name.

“Yeah?”

“I’m tired of almost.”

The words hung between them.

He felt the same thing all semester—the almost touches, the almost confessions, the almost lingering after rehearsal.

“I know,” he said.

She searched his face, giving him every chance to retreat.

He didn’t.

Slowly—so slowly it felt like stepping into freezing water—he lifted his free hand and brushed a curl from her cheek.

She inhaled sharply.

“Are we—” he began.

“Yes,” she breathed.

That was all the permission he needed.

He closed the space between them.

Their first kiss was soft.

Tentative.

Like they were both afraid the moment would shatter if they pressed too hard.

Her lips were warm despite the cold room. His hand cupped her jaw gently, thumb brushing her cheek. She leaned into him, one hand still tangled in his coat, the other sliding up to rest against his chest.

Time didn’t stop.

But it thinned.

The wind howled outside. The radiator knocked uselessly. The red emergency lights hummed.

And in the middle of an empty dorm lounge, in a snowed-in building that felt like the last refuge on earth, Jason and Wendy kissed like they had finally reached the downbeat after an entire semester of suspended notes.

When they pulled back, their foreheads rested together.

“Okay,” he said softly, breathless. “That was… not almost.”

She laughed—a real one this time, bright and relieved. “No. Definitely not almost.”

He brushed his nose against hers.

“You know this means Chorale is going to be unbearable when everyone gets back,” he said.

She groaned. “They’re going to pretend they didn’t see it coming.”

“They absolutely saw it coming.”

“Lucas is going to make a betting joke.”

“Lucas absolutely had a betting pool.”

She shook her head, smiling.

Outside, the storm began to quiet.

Inside, something settled.

Not the end of tension.

But the beginning of something steadier.

She slipped her hand into his again—this time on purpose.

“Stay?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

They sank onto the couch beneath the emergency lights, hands intertwined, snow drifting quietly beyond the glass.

Hotchner Hall was still nearly empty.

The world was still buried in white.

But the apocalypse lounge didn’t feel eerie anymore.

It felt like the first chapter.