CHAPTER 5:THE SPACE BETWEEN
818 Words
The house was quiet in the way Savannah was beginning to recognize as temporary peace.
Aiden had left early basketball practice, or training, or whatever name he gave to running from things he didn’t want to sit still with. Her mother had already gone to the hospital before sunrise, leaving behind a faint smell of coffee and exhaustion in the air.
So it was just Savannah.
And silence.
She stood in the kitchen longer than necessary, staring into a bowl of cereal that had softened into something unappealing. The spoon rested untouched in her hand.
But she wasn’t really looking at the food.
Her mind was elsewhere.
It kept circling back.
Jay Carter’s voice.
Not loud. Not forceful.
Certain.
You see more than you let on.
That sentence had settled somewhere under her skin and refused to leave.
She didn’t like that.
Not because it was wrong.
Because it felt too close to being right.
Her phone vibrated against the counter.
Once.
Then again.
Unknown number.
Her fingers paused before she picked it up.
“You gonna pretend yesterday didn’t happen? Or are we gonna talk about how you kept staring at me like I was your favorite mistake”?
Savannah blinked slowly at the screen.
The audacity wasn’t surprising anymore.
It was the accuracy that unsettled her.
She typed back.
Savannah: “I don’t make mistakes”.
Almost immediately
Jay: “That’s funny. You just replied to me”.
A pause.
Then another message.
“Art’s better when someone sees you. You coming today”?
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
Savannah: “I’m always there”.
She stared at that last message longer than she should have.
Because it wasn’t entirely true.
But it also wasn’t entirely false anymore.
And that thought bothered her more than she expected.
---
Later, the art classroom felt different.
Or maybe she did.
Savannah arrived early, like always, choosing her usual seat near the middle back corner where she could observe without being observed.
That plan lasted exactly thirty seconds.
Jay Carter walked in.
He didn’t hesitate.
Didn’t scan the room like he was choosing.
He just moved direct, casual, certain and dropped into the seat beside her like it had always belonged to him.
Savannah didn’t look up immediately.
But she felt it.
The shift in air.
The proximity.
The scent of him clean soap, something faintly woody, and something else she didn’t have a name for but definitely associated with trouble.
Her grip tightened slightly on her pencil.
“Draw what you feel,” Mr. Donnelly said from the front of the room, adjusting his glasses. “Not what you see.”
Savannah almost laughed at that.
Because what she felt was sitting two inches away from her pretending like he didn’t rearrange her entire focus.
She lowered her gaze to her sketchpad.
Tried.
Failed.
A pencil moved beside her.
Quiet. Controlled. Confident.
She glanced sideways.
Jay wasn’t looking at her.
He was drawing.
Not rushing. Not hesitating.
Just steady lines forming something she couldn’t see yet.
Her eyes lingered longer than she meant to.
Then he shifted the page slightly.
And she saw it.
Her breath caught.
It wasn’t her face.
It was her presence.
A figure sitting alone in space that felt too large around her shoulders slightly turned away from the world, eyes distant, like she existed beside life rather than inside it.
Savannah froze.
“You drew me?” she whispered before she could stop herself.
Jay finally looked at her.
Slowly.
Like he had been waiting for her to notice.
“You make it hard not to,” he said.
There was no teasing in it.
That was what made it worse.
Savannah should have pulled away.
Should have said something sharp.
Should have reclaimed control of the moment.
But her body didn’t move.
Her thoughts didn’t organize.
And when their elbows brushed accidentally just a small, unintentional contact,she didn’t pull back immediately.
She stayed.
Just for a second too long.
The room didn’t feel like a classroom anymore.
It felt suspended.
Like time had decided to hold its breath.
Savannah forced herself to look down again.
Focus.
Control.
Distance.
Anything.
But her pulse wasn’t cooperating.
And neither was the quiet between them.
---
By the time the bell rang, the spell didn’t break cleanly.
It frayed.
Savannah packed her things quickly, movements slightly sharper than usual, like she could outrun the feeling if she moved fast enough.
She stood to leave.
“Same time tomorrow?” Jay asked.
Her fingers paused on her bag strap.
She turned slightly.
Looked at him properly this time.
Expression unreadable.
“I don’t make plans with chaos,” she said.
A beat of silence.
Then Jay smiled.
Slow.
Calm.
Dangerous in its simplicity.
“But you are one,” he said.
And Savannah hated how her silence felt like agreement instead of denial.
- Writer
