I can’t believe I’m writing this, even anonymously. It feels… just so pathetic in a way. I’m almost sixty and I’m sitting here, staring at my phone at three in the morning, thinking about something that happened when I was twenty, twenty-one maybe? It just keeps coming back to me, especially lately, with all this talk about living your truth and whatever. It feels like I missed out on something, something big, and it’s just eating at me. Like a pebble in your shoe that you never quite shake out. It was during finals, I remember that much. We were both English majors, me and Sarah. She was my roommate, we’d been living together since freshman year. We knew everything about each other, or I thought I did. We’d pull these all-nighters, fueled by terrible coffee and whatever stale donuts we could scrounge up from the student union. This particular night, we were knee-deep in some ridiculously dense Shakespeare play, I think it was *King Lear*. The kind of play that makes you want to just give up and move to a cabin in the woods. The apartment was a mess, naturally. Textbooks everywhere, empty ramen containers. Sarah was sprawled on the floor, highlighter in hand, looking utterly exhausted but still so focused. Her hair was all over the place, kind of sticking up in little tufts. She had this way of biting her lip when she was concentrating, and the lamplight from the desk lamp, that old metal one with the green shade, it just caught her face in a certain way. And I was sitting on the lumpy couch, trying to make sense of some monologue, and I looked at her. And it wasn't like, oh she’s pretty. I’d seen her a million times. We’d gossiped about boys, about professors, about what we’d wear to parties. I’d watched her cry over a bad grade, held her hair back when she drank too much. She was just… Sarah. But that night, it was different. I saw her and something in my stomach just FLIPPED. It was like a little electric shock. I remember thinking, *what was that?* My heart actually sped up. It felt like I’d just run a sprint or something. She looked up then, probably felt me staring. She gave me this tired smile, pushed her hair out of her eyes. "This is killing me," she said, and her voice was a little raspy from lack of sleep. "You think we can actually pass this thing?" And I just… I couldn’t answer right away. I had to clear my throat. "Yeah, yeah, we got this," I mumbled, trying to sound normal, trying to focus on Lear and his stupid daughters. But all I could think about was her eyes, how they crinkled at the corners when she smiled, how the light made her skin glow. We kept studying, but I couldn’t concentrate anymore. Every time she shifted, every time she sighed, I was hyper-aware of her. I kept thinking about reaching out, just to touch her arm, maybe to say something comforting. But what? It wasn't like I had ever felt that way about a girl before. Never even crossed my mind. All my crushes, all my boyfriends, they were always boys. Always. And here was Sarah, my best friend, my roommate, and suddenly… this feeling. It was so confusing. It was like my brain was trying to short-circuit. The next morning, everything felt… normal again. The sun was up, we were both hungover on coffee, cramming last-minute notes before the exam. The feeling wasn't as intense. It was still there, a little hum underneath everything, but it wasn't that overwhelming surge. And then we just went on with our lives. I dated men, got married, had kids. She moved to Seattle, became a graphic designer, I think she eventually married a guy who was a chef. We drifted apart, like most college friends do. Just Christmas cards for a while, then nothing. But sometimes, especially when I’m alone in the house, when my husband is asleep and the city outside is quiet, that memory just comes flooding back. That little spark, that confusion. I never acted on it. Never even spoke about it. Just pushed it down, ignored it. Because that’s what you did, right? That’s what felt normal. But now, all these years later, I wonder. What if? What if I had just… said something? What if I had explored that feeling? It’s not regret exactly, not for my life, my kids, my husband, I love them. But it’s this strange, hollow ache for something that never even got a chance to exist. A road not taken, and I wonder what was down it. It keeps me up.