A Love More Than Lovely
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 3
Holding his hand felt like something she still hadn’t gotten used to doing in public, three days into whatever this was — not quite official, not quite not, the label caught somewhere between friends and something bigger that neither of them had said out loud yet. His fingers were warm, a little rougher than she expected for a premed student who spent most of his time with a pencil instead of anything more calloused. She kept catching herself glancing down at their joined hands like she needed visual confirmation this was actually happening and not something she’d built out of wishful thinking, the way she used to build entire relationships in her head in high school with boys who never once looked her way.
They cut across the quad the long way, past the fountain nobody ever turned on, past the bulletin board with three semesters of flyers stapled over each other. Brad talked about nothing much — a professor he liked, a joke his roommate had made that wasn’t actually funny but he’d laughed anyway because the delivery was good — and she found herself relaxing into it the way she hadn’t relaxed into a conversation in longer than she wanted to think about. No bracing. No mapping the exits. Just walking.
“You’re doing the thing again,” Brad said, glancing over.
“What thing?”
“Looking at our hands like you’re waiting for the footage to prove it’s fake.” He didn’t say it unkindly, just matter-of-fact, the way he’d started saying most things about her defenses lately. “It’s real. I checked. Twice.”
“I’m allowed to be careful.”
“You’re allowed. Doesn’t mean I won’t call it out when I catch you at it.” He squeezed her hand once, easy. “One of these days you’ll just believe it without needing proof.”
She didn’t have an answer for that, so she let the silence sit, comfortable rather than anxious, which was its own small miracle she wasn’t ready to examine too closely.
The noon crowd was thick by the time they reached the main path, and that was when a guy on a scooter cut close enough to draw both their eyes — helmet pushed back, grinning like he’d already decided this was going to be funny before he even opened his mouth.
“Hey, McIntyre!” He didn’t slow down, just called it over his shoulder as he coasted past, loud enough for half the quad to hear. “You into he/shes now?”
The words landed and kept moving, same as he did, gone almost before Soo Yi’s stomach finished dropping. She felt her hand tense in Brad’s, some old instinct telling her to pull away, put distance between them before this became a bigger scene than one shouted line on a scooter. She’d done this dance before — the automatic flinch, the reflex to make herself smaller so whatever was coming next would have less to land on. Brad didn’t let her pull away. His grip just tightened, easy and certain, an anchor instead of a leash.
He didn’t even raise his voice, just turned enough to be heard, the same tone he’d used on the girls in the library — calm, unhurried, absolutely without doubt. “You worried about my girl,” he called back, “or just about your own empty life? She’s with me. That’s all you need to know.”
The guy didn’t have a comeback for that. He just kept scootering, and within a few seconds he was another face in the crowd, already forgotten by everyone but Soo Yi, who was still standing there with her heart doing something complicated.
My girl. He’d said it like it was just a fact, nothing to defend, nothing worth raising his voice over. Not an argument he was winning. Just true, the way the sky was blue, the way water ran downhill.
They kept walking. He didn’t bring it up again, didn’t check to see if she was okay in some hovering, careful way that would have made it worse — he just kept his hand around hers, steady, like the interruption hadn’t happened at all. That, more than the line itself, was what got to her. He wasn’t performing anything for her benefit. He’d meant it exactly as much when nobody was around to hear it, and there was something in that consistency she’d never once gotten from anyone else — teachers who were kind in private and silent in public, classmates who were friendly one-on-one and strangers in a crowd. Brad didn’t have two versions of himself depending on who was watching.
By the time they got their trays and found a table, most of her skepticism had gone quiet — not gone, she didn’t think it would ever be fully gone, three years of high school had made sure of that — but quiet enough that she could hear something else underneath it. She picked at her food for a minute, working up to something, turning the question over so many times in her head it had started to feel worn smooth, like a stone she’d been carrying in her pocket for weeks. Brad let her take her time, the way he always seemed to, not filling the silence with something to smooth it over.
“Can I ask you something,” she said finally. “And I need you to actually answer it. Not just say something nice to make me feel better.”
“Okay.”
She set her fork down. This part mattered too much to do one-handed. “I don’t want to offend you, and I really don’t want to hurt your feelings. But I need you to tell me honestly — why do you like me? Why do you protect me the way you do?” Her voice caught slightly on the next part, the part that cost her the most to say out loud, the part she’d rehearsed and unrehearsed a dozen times walking here. “I want to feel things for you, Brad. I do. But I’m terrified of getting hurt, and I need to know this is real before I let myself.”
He didn’t answer right away, and she appreciated that more than an immediate answer would have earned — like he was actually thinking about it, weighing it, not reaching for the fastest reassuring thing to say and calling it done.
“Because I see you, Soo Yi,” he said finally. “You. Not your bra size. Not whether you’ve got a nice figure by somebody else’s standard. You. I see you and I accept you exactly as you are — your body doesn’t even enter into it for me. I think you’re the cutest, prettiest woman I’ve ever met, and it genuinely grinds on me to watch people treat you like you’re broken or wrong for looking the way you look.”
She was very still, listening, her fork forgotten on the tray.
“My mom’s small-chested. So’s my sister — not much bigger than you, honestly. My sister’s husband loves her exactly the way she is. My dad’s the same way about my mom, twenty-some years in. I didn’t grow up thinking there was one right shape a woman was supposed to be, because the women I love most don’t fit whatever shape people like that guy on the scooter think matters. So your bra size, or the lack of one — it means nothing to me. It never did, not for one second.”
He reached across the table, not touching her, just leaving his hand open there in case she wanted it.
“I want you. The you that’s sharper than half the room and doesn’t even know it. Funny, when you let yourself be. You’ve got a smile that could melt an iceberg when you actually mean it, and you don’t hand it out easy, which makes it worth more when I get one. You’ve got me wrapped up tighter than a mummy, Soo Yi, and I mean that. Being around you makes something in my chest want to dance. That’s the honest answer. That’s all of it, and I’m not going to have a different answer next week or next year.”
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