Eli | POV
I almost didn't ask her.
That was the honest truth. I had the words ready three separate times — in the hallway after second period, outside the library at lunch, at the water fountain when it was just us for exactly eleven seconds — and each time I swallowed them back down and told myself it wasn't the right moment.
The fourth time I was just tired of myself.
"Do you want to get coffee sometime?" I said. "Just us. Like an actual thing."
Jade looked at me. She had her bag strap in both hands and the afternoon light was doing something to her face that I wasn't going to think about too hard.
"An actual thing," she repeated.
"Yeah."
"As in a date."
"As in a date."
She smiled. Not a polite smile. Not the kind people gave you when they were about to let you down easy. A real one — the kind that started slow and then just took over, and she ducked her chin for a second like she was trying to contain it, which somehow made it worse.
"Yeah," she said. "Okay. Saturday."
I walked to my next class feeling like the floor was tilted.
Saturday came and I was ready twenty minutes early, which I refused to think about.
We met at the coffee place two blocks from the park — not fancy, just the one with the mismatched chairs and the chalkboard menu and the guy at the counter who never remembered your name but always remembered your order. Jade was already there when I arrived. She had a table by the window and she was reading something on her phone and she looked up when the bell above the door rang and grinned like she'd been caught doing something embarrassing.
"I was early," she said immediately.
"So was I," I said.
"Okay good." She put her phone down. "I thought I was being weird."
"You weren't."
"We were both weird."
"Equally," I said, and sat down.
That was the whole tone of it. Easy. No performance, no stretching to fill silence — silence didn't even really happen. She talked about the book she'd been reading, I talked about the documentary Reeve had made me watch at midnight last Tuesday, she had opinions about it despite never having seen it, I disagreed with all of them, she defended her position using only logic and stubbornness, I conceded one point, she accepted the win graciously.
We walked after. Through the park, then around the block, then further than we meant to go because neither of us said okay, I should head back.
At some point she grabbed my sleeve to pull me out of the way of a cyclist and didn't fully let go after, her fingers loose around my wrist, and we walked like that for half a block before I turned my hand over and she shifted her grip without comment, like it was nothing, like it was just the obvious next thing.
It wasn't nothing.
I knew that. She knew that. We just didn't make it into a big moment, and somehow that made it bigger.
I walked home with my hands in my pockets and the specific feeling of someone who'd just remembered the world had good things in it.
I texted Sable before I even reached my front door.
That part I didn't think about. I just did it — the same reflex I'd had for nine years, the one that said something good happened, tell Sable. She was my person. She was the one who got the first call, the first text, the first version of everything.
Had the best afternoon, I wrote. Asked Jade on a date. She said yes. We just got back.
I unlocked my door. Made a drink. Sat on the kitchen counter.
My phone buzzed.
I picked it up.
That's great, Eli.
I read it.
Read it again.
Five words — or three words and a punctuation and an emoji if you wanted to be exact about it. From the person who, when I told her I'd passed my driver's test, sent fourteen messages back to back. From the person who, when I told her Reeve had done something funny, asked seven follow-up questions. From the person who always had more to say than anyone, who filled silences before they formed, who had opinions about everything I did.
That's great, Eli. Smiley face.
Flat and neat and finished.
I set my phone face-down on the counter.
I tried to name what I felt and couldn't quite get there. Not hurt. Not exactly. More like the feeling of stepping on a stair in the dark and having it land wrong — not a fall, just an unexpected shift, a half-second where your body didn't know what the ground was doing.
It felt like a warning. I couldn't explain why. I couldn't point to the specific word or the specific punctuation mark and say this is the thing that's wrong. It was just — the shape of it. The temperature. The way it was exactly what you'd say to someone you were performing fine for.
I left my phone on the counter and made dinner and watched something I didn't remember afterward and went to bed at eleven.
At midnight my phone lit up.
Can I ask you something weird?
Jade.
I was awake immediately. Yeah. What's up.
Has Sable ever mentioned me? Like specifically?
I sat up.
My first instinct was to say of course, in normal ways, you came up naturally. But that instinct stopped halfway because I was suddenly running back through every conversation and realizing Sable almost never said Jade's name. She talked around her. She said the new girl or your friend or her — always with a careful distance, like naming her directly would cost something.
Why? I typed.
The three dots appeared. Held for a long time. Longer than the question needed.
Disappeared.
Then:
No reason. I'll tell you in person.
I stared at my ceiling.
No reason from the girl who always had a reason. I'll tell you in person from the girl who asked direct questions about everything.
I thought about the kitchen light I hadn't left on.
I thought about never mind, it's fine.
I thought about Sable's face in the kitchen doorway, completely calm, looking at Reeve like a problem she'd already solved.
I put my phone down.
I did not sleep for a very long time.