Something Changed
1929 Words
Nathan sounded jealous of Vincent.
The thought sat there in my chest, ridiculous and strange, like something I wasn't supposed to know.
"Nathan?"
Silence.
Not the comfortable kind. The kind that made my stomach twist a little.
"Did you fall asleep on me?" I asked, half teasing, half nervous.
"No." His voice came back quieter than before. "I'm here."
"You asked a weird question."
"I know."
I pulled my blanket higher, tucking my knees up. Across the room, Jay had gone suspiciously quiet, pretending to be very interested in his phone instead of my conversation.
"Vincent makes everyone laugh," I said carefully. "It's not just me."
"I know that too."
"Then why—"
"Forget it." A short breath. "It doesn't matter."
But it clearly did. I could hear it in the way his words came out slower than usual, like he was choosing them instead of just speaking them.
"You've had a long day," I said instead of pushing.
"You have no idea."
"Bad meetings?"
"Something like that."
I hesitated, then said it without thinking too hard about it. It was just a habit by now, the kind of thing I said to Jay when he came home defeated, the kind of thing I said to myself on nights I didn't want to admit I needed saying it.
"You don't have to carry all of it by yourself, you know. I'm here. Whatever it is."
Nothing.
Not a word.
Not even the soft sound of him breathing through the phone.
"Nathan?"
Still nothing.
My stomach dropped a little. "Did the call drop?"
I checked my screen. The call was still connected. Seconds ticking by. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen.
"Nathan, you're freaking me out a little."
"I'm here." His voice came back rough. Different. Like something had cracked slightly on his end and he was trying to talk around it. "Sorry. I'm here."
"You went quiet for like twenty seconds."
"I know."
"Are you okay?"
A pause. Longer than it should have been for such a simple question.
"Yeah," he said finally. Softer now. Almost careful. "I'm okay."
He didn't sound okay. He sounded like someone who'd just been hit with something he wasn't ready for, and I had no idea what I'd said to cause it. It was such a small thing. A normal thing. The kind of sentence that fell out of my mouth without permission half the time.
"You're being weird," I said.
"Probably."
"Helpful."
A faint sound on his end. Almost a laugh, but not quite. More like the ghost of one.
"Get some sleep, Isla."
"That's it? "
"Goodnight."
The call ended before I could argue. I stared at my phone for a second, frowning at the blank screen like it owed me an explanation.
"Wh... what was that?" Jay asked from the couch, not even pretending to look at his phone anymore.
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"He went quiet. Like, really quiet. Then hung up weird."
Jay raised an eyebrow. "Weird how?"
"I don't know, Jay. Weird weird."
"Helpful explanation."
"That's what he said too."
Jay smirked and went back to his game, but I lay there a while longer, staring at the ceiling, replaying the silence in my head. Twenty seconds wasn't long. Except it had felt long. It had felt like something shifting underneath both of us without either of us choosing it.
---
The next morning, I told myself I'd imagined it.
That theory lasted exactly until I stepped into the office and Nathan looked up from his tablet the second I walked past his open door.
Not a glance.
A look. The kind that lingered a beat too long before he caught himself and went back to his screen.
I slowed my steps without meaning to.
"Morning," I said, mostly out of habit.
"Morning." His voice was even. Normal. Almost too normal, like he'd practiced it.
I kept walking, telling myself it was nothing.
It happened again an hour later.
I was crossing the floor with a folder in hand when I felt it—that same prickling awareness I'd felt the day before by the elevator, except heavier this time.
I looked over and found Nathan already watching me from his office doorway, one hand braced on the frame, expression unreadable.
The moment he realized I'd noticed, he straightened and turned back inside without a word.
"Okay, that was weird," I muttered to no one.
By midmorning, even I couldn't ignore it anymore.
The first time, I dismissed it.
The second time, I called it coincidence.
By the third time, a tiny voice in my head started getting annoyingly smug.
He's staring.
He's not staring.
The voice sounded unconvinced.
He's definitely staring.
I focused harder on my screen.
People look at people all the time.
Not like that.
I refused to answer the voice after that.
Mostly because I hated that it might be right.
I told myself I was imagining it.
Then, across the room, it happened again.
Nathan stood near Elena's desk in the middle of a conversation. His attention should have been on whatever she was showing him.
Instead, his eyes flicked toward me.
Two seconds.
Maybe three.
Then they returned to Elena like nothing had happened.
I tried to focus on my work after that, but it was impossible to ignore.
It wasn't the cold, distant Nathan from yesterday morning.
It wasn't sharp or clipped or annoyed.
It was something else entirely.
Softer.
Heavier.
Like he was looking at me and seeing something I couldn't see myself.
It unsettled me more than his coldness ever had.
By early afternoon, Vincent had noticed too, because of course he had.
"You're doing the frown again," he said, dropping into the chair beside my desk like he owned it.
"I'm not frowning."
"You're definitely frowning. It's your thinking-too-hard frown. Very distinct from your regular frown."
"I have multiple frowns now?"
"You have a whole catalog."
He glanced toward Nathan's office before looking back at me.
"He's been off today."
My pulse quickened slightly.
"Off how?"
"Quieter than usual. And he keeps finding excuses to walk past your desk."
"He does not."
"Three times in the last hour. I counted."
"Why does everyone keep counting?"
"Because it's the most interesting thing happening in this building, and frankly, we don't get a lot of entertainment around here."
I shot him a look, but he only smiled and stole a pen off my desk like that was a perfectly normal thing to do.
The rest of the afternoon passed in strange fragments.
A look here.
A pause there.
Nathan asking Elena a question but somehow ending up glancing at me halfway through it.
Nathan standing a little too long near the break room when I was inside getting coffee, like he was deciding whether to come in.
None of it added up to anything I could explain.
And none of it stopped.
By the time the office started clearing out for the evening, my nerves were thoroughly worn down from trying to make sense of a man who apparently communicated exclusively through unexplained silences and lingering looks.
I was gathering my things when I felt it again.
That awareness.
That strange pull.
I looked toward Nathan's office.
He was already looking at me.
Not glancing.
Not checking.
Looking.
Fully.
Like he'd been doing it for longer than I realized and hadn't bothered hiding it this time.
My breath caught somewhere in my throat.
For a second, neither of us moved.
The office around us kept going.
Phones ringing somewhere.
Someone laughing near the printer.
Vincent's voice carrying from two desks over.
But none of it touched the space between his eyes and mine.
The tiny voice in my head immediately lost its mind.
Oh.
My face grew warm.
No.
OH, HE'S DEFINITELY STARING.
Shut up.
I wasn't entirely sure whether I was talking to the voice or myself anymore.
Then Nathan looked away first.
Just like that.
No explanation.
He turned back to his desk like nothing had happened.
And suddenly that felt important.
Far more important than it should have.
---
That night, the call came earlier than usual.
12:40
I picked up on the second ring, my heart already a little unsteady before he even said anything.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey." His voice sounded normal. Steady. Like the man from this morning's strange, lingering looks had never existed at all.
We talked the way we always did — about nothing important, about his day, about mine, about Jay losing spectacularly at some game he refused to admit he was bad at. It felt easy. Familiar. The kind of conversation that made the rest of the day's strangeness feel almost imagined.
Almost.
Because just as I started to relax into it, just as I assumed the call was winding down the way it always did, Nathan went quiet again.
"You still there?" I asked.
"Yeah." A pause. "I'm here."
Something in his tone shifted. Lower. Slower. Like he was working up to something he hadn't planned on saying.
"Isla."
"Yeah?"
Another pause, longer this time.
"Some people leave a bigger mark on your life than they realize."
I blinked, sitting up a little straighter against my pillow. "What?"
But he didn't answer.
"Nathan—"
"Goodnight."
The call ended before I could say another word.
I stared at the screen, at his name fading from the display, at the silence that followed it.
Something had changed.
I just had no idea what.
- Writer
