Between Us

Chapter 9 — Almost

The thing about almost moments is that they're worse than actual moments.

Actual moments you can deal with. You can process them, file them away, build a logical explanation for why they happened and why they won't happen again. Almost moments just sit there, unresolved, taking up space in your brain at 2am when you're supposed to be sleeping.

I had an almost moment with Zane on a Wednesday night and I'm still not entirely over it.

It started normally enough.

Tutoring session, library, 6pm. We'd been going through enzyme kinetics which is genuinely one of the most tedious topics in existence but Zane had a way of explaining things that made them stick — using examples that had no business working but somehow did.

"Think of the enzyme like a very picky bouncer," he said, tapping my notes. "It only lets in substrates that fit the active site. Wrong shape? You're not getting in."

"That's actually helpful."

"I know."

"You don't have to sound so pleased about it."

"I spent twenty minutes thinking of that analogy. I'm allowed to be pleased."

I smiled at my notes. Tried not to. Smiled anyway.

We finished around 8pm and packed up slowly the way we always did — neither of us in a particular rush, stretching the ending without acknowledging that we were stretching it.

Outside it had rained while we were inside. The ground was wet and the air smelled like damp earth and the campus lights reflected off the puddles in a way that made everything look slightly unreal.

We were walking back when I stepped directly into a puddle I hadn't seen.

Not a small one.

A genuinely impressive puddle that soaked through my shoe immediately and made the kind of sound that leaves no room for dignity.

I stopped walking.

Zane stopped beside me.

I looked down at my soaked shoe.

He looked down at my soaked shoe.

"Don't," I said.

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"You were going to laugh."

"I would never—" he pressed his lips together, "—laugh."

"You're laughing right now."

"I'm not laughing."

"Your face is laughing."

He turned his head away. His shoulders shook once. Just once.

"Zane."

"I'm not laughing," he said, very seriously, to the tree he was currently facing.

"I hate you," I said, which was not true but felt appropriate.

He turned back around. The almost-laugh was gone but something warmer had replaced it — something soft around the eyes that he didn't seem to be trying to hide.

"Come on," he said, and without thinking about it he took my hand and steered me around the rest of the puddles on the path, navigating them like he'd memorized where every one was.

I let him.

That was the first almost moment — but not the main one.

The main one happened at the hostel gate.

We stopped there like we always did and I was about to say goodnight when I realized I still had his hoodie on — I'd worn it again, third time now, purely for warmth — and I started to pull it off to return it.

"Ava."

"You should have it back—"

"Ava." His voice was quiet. "Keep it."

I looked up.

He was closer than I'd realized. Not inappropriately close — just close enough that I could see the specific way he was looking at me, which was not the way someone looks at a person they're pretending to date.

It was the way someone looks at a person they're trying to figure out.

Or trying not to.

I forgot what I was doing with the hoodie entirely.

Neither of us said anything for a moment that stretched longer than it should have.

Then his phone buzzed in his pocket and the moment snapped like a thread pulled too tight and we both stepped back slightly without acknowledging that we'd been close at all.

He looked at his phone. Something crossed his face — unreadable, gone before I could name it.

"I have to take this," he said.

"Go ahead."

He hesitated. Just for a second.

Then — "Goodnight Ava."

"Goodnight," I said.

I went inside.

Stood in the corridor for a moment just breathing.

Denise was asleep when I got to the room, which was the only mercy the universe offered me that night. I sat on my bed in the dark and held very still and tried to be logical about what had just happened.

Nothing had happened. That was the logical conclusion.

He'd held my hand around some puddles. He'd looked at me a certain way. There'd been a moment that wasn't really a moment because nothing had actually occurred.

Completely explainable.

Completely fine.

I put my face in my pillow and stayed there for a while.

It was not completely fine.