Where the Hologram Learns to Breathe

The rain had stopped an hour ago, but the cobblestones still remembered it, holding up my reflection like a second self stitched from amber light. I stood outside his bookshop, the green tiles behind me humming with bottled wine and forgotten pages, and felt myself thinning again—just a projection of a girl who used to cry in elevators. My varsity jacket hung open like a frame around nothing; the cream top clung where my heart should have been beating.
Then his shadow fell across me, not dark but warm, the way streetlamps warm you without touching. He did not speak. He only reached out and let his fingertips rest on my wrist, and in that single point of contact I felt matter flood back into me—blood, pulse, the heavy sweet gravity of being real. My reflection on the wet stones flickered and then stayed, no longer a ghost but a girl with brown hair and a bag in her hand.
"You are not made of light," he murmured, his breath fogging the cold air between us. "I can hold you." And I believed him, because for the first time in weeks my skin felt like skin, and the city's glow was no longer the only thing keeping me visible. I leaned into him, a hologram finally learning to breathe, and let warmth become my new source code.

Editor: Hologram Dreamer