Chapter 2: Six Kilometres
787 Words
The car was warm.
Unreasonably, almost unfairly warm compared to the cold she had been walking through for the past hour. The seat was soft leather, the dashboard glowed a quiet amber, and everything smelled faintly of cedar and something else she couldn't name but noticed anyway. She pressed her back against the seat and kept her eyes forward.
He drove the way he looked. Unhurried. Completely in control.
One hand on the wheel, the other resting on the console between them. Close enough that she was aware of it without looking directly at it. The silence sat between them, not uncomfortable exactly, just very present, like a third passenger neither of them had invited.
"You had an interview tonight," he said.
"Yes."
"In Mirren."
She glanced at him. "The lanyard again?"
The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile but close enough that she noticed. "The lanyard again."
She looked back at the road. "It didn't go well."
He didn't fill the silence with empty words. No I'm sorry to hear that or something better will come along. He just nodded once and let it exist and somehow that was better than anything he could have said.
She found herself exhaling slowly for the first time all evening.
The trees blurred past on either side, dark and dense, and the amber glow of the dashboard made everything feel strangely contained, like this car existed slightly outside of the real world. She was aware of how close the console was between them. Aware of his hand resting there, relaxed, unhurried.
She looked away from it.
"You live at the Callen farmhouse?" he asked.
"Near it. My uncle works there."
"And you?"
"I'm looking." A beat. "Obviously."
He glanced at her sideways. Just briefly. She felt it without turning her head, the particular weight of someone's full attention landing on you from an angle.
"How old are you?"
"Does it matter?"
"No," he said. "I'm just asking."
She considered not answering. "Twenty."
He said nothing to that. Just looked back at the road. But something shifted in the air between them, barely noticeable, the way pressure changes before weather turns.
Two more kilometres passed.
"You should eat something when you get home," he said quietly.
Aria turned and looked at him properly for the first time since getting in the car. He was watching the road, jaw relaxed, expression unreadable. Like he had said something completely ordinary.
"Excuse me?"
"You haven't eaten." Still watching the road. "I can tell."
She stared at him. "You don't know anything about me."
"No," he agreed. "But I know what someone looks like when they've been running on nothing all day."
The words landed somewhere she wasn't prepared for. Not because they were poetic or particularly profound but because they were accurate and no one had been accurate about her in a very long time. No one had looked closely enough.
She turned back to the window.
"I'm fine," she said.
"You keep saying that."
"Because I keep meaning it."
He didn't push. Didn't smile. Didn't do anything except drive and let the silence settle back around them like it belonged there.
And that was somehow the most unsettling thing about him.
The car slowed as the dirt road branching toward her uncle's property came into view. He pulled up and stopped without being told which turn to take and she didn't ask how he knew. She reached for the door handle immediately.
"Aria."
She stopped. Her hand still on the door.
Her name in his mouth was different than it was anywhere else. She couldn't explain why and didn't try.
She turned to look at him.
He was holding something out between two fingers. A card. Plain white, just a number printed in clean black type. No name. No title. Just digits.
"In case the road is dark again," he said.
She looked at the card. Then at him. His green eyes were steady and patient and giving absolutely nothing away while somehow saying more than she was ready to hear.
She took it.
She stepped out without another word and walked toward the house without looking back. But her fingers curled around that card tighter than they needed to and she didn't loosen her grip.
Behind her she heard the car idle.
She got to the door, pushed it open, stepped inside.
Only then did she hear him drive away.
She stood in the dark hallway of her uncle's house, card pressed into her palm, heart doing something she didn't have a name for yet and wasn't sure she wanted one.
She should throw it away.
She looked down at the number.
She didn't.
End of Chapter 2
- Writer
