Between Us

Chapter 18 — The Thing About Trust

The Saturday date changed something.

Not dramatically — nothing between us ever happened dramatically, which I was starting to think was one of my favourite things about it. It was just a shift, quiet and settled, like furniture rearranged in a room you know well. Everything was in a slightly different place but it still felt like home.

We were easier with each other after that.

Monday morning he showed up with coffee.

Not asked for, not announced — just two cups from the small place near the gate, handed to me at the bottom of the stairs with the same energy he handed me everything, like it was nothing, like he hadn't walked fifteen minutes out of his way to get it.

I looked at the cup. Then at him.

"You remembered," I said.

"No sugar, slight milk." He started walking. "You mentioned it once three weeks ago."

I stood there for a second.

He looked back. "You coming?"

I caught up with him.

I didn't say anything about the fact that he'd remembered something I'd mentioned once in passing three weeks ago. But I thought about it for the entire walk to BIO 215 and then for most of the lecture and then a little bit after that.

The assessment on Wednesday went well.

Better than well actually — I finished early, checked my work twice, felt that specific quiet satisfaction of knowing you understood something properly. Zane finished around the same time and we walked out together into the bright midmorning and he looked at me and said "how'd it go" and I said "good I think" and he said "I know" like it wasn't even a question and I didn't know why that landed so solidly but it did.

The thing that tested everything happened on Thursday.

It started with a message I wasn't supposed to see.

Zane had left his phone on the library table when he went to get water and it lit up with a notification — just a preview, just a name and the first few words. I wasn't trying to read it. I genuinely wasn't.

But the name was a girl's name I didn't recognise and the first words were last night was—

And then the screen went dark.

I was staring at my notes when he came back.

He sat down. Picked up his phone. Glanced at it. Put it face down.

Said nothing.

I said nothing either.

We studied for another forty minutes and I heard approximately none of it because there was a very loud and unhelpful argument happening in my head between the part of me that trusted him and the part of me that had learned a long time ago that trusting people completely was how you ended up blindsided.

He noticed at the fifty minute mark.

"Hey." Quiet. "Where'd you go?"

"I'm here."

"You've reread that page four times." A pause. "That's my line."

I looked up.

He was watching me with that careful attention of his — the kind that saw more than was comfortable.

"I saw your phone," I said. Flat. Direct. Because I didn't know how to be anything else. "A notification. A name I don't know and — part of a message."

Something moved across his face. Not guilt — something more like understanding.

"Okay," he said carefully. "What did you see?"

I told him.

He was quiet for a moment. Then he picked up his phone, unlocked it, and put it on the table facing me.

"Read it," he said.

I looked at him.

"Ava." Steady. "Read it."

I looked at the message.

The name was Amara. The full message read: last night was so helpful thank you for explaining the stats I actually understood it this time you're literally a lifesaver.

I read it twice.

Stats. Explaining. Lifesaver.

I put the phone down.

Zane was still watching me. Not angry — something more patient than that.

"She's in my elective," he said. "Statistics. She's been struggling. I've been helping her study." A pause. "That's it."

The library was very quiet.

"You didn't have to show me," I said finally.

"I know."

"Most people would have just explained."

"I know." He held my gaze. "But you needed to see it. Not just hear it." He leaned forward slightly. "I'm not going to give you reasons not to trust me Ava. I know that's not how it works — I know trust is built over time and I know you don't give it easily and I'm not asking you to." Something honest and unhurried in his voice. "I'm just asking you to tell me when something bothers you. Like you just did. And I'll always show you."

I looked at him for a long moment.

At the boy who'd unlocked his phone and put it on the table without hesitation.

"Okay," I said quietly.

"Okay?"

"Okay." I picked up my pen. "Michaelis-Menten. Where were we?"

Something settled in his expression. Warm and certain.

"Page four," he said. "Which you've read four times."

"I was processing."

"You're always processing."

"It's one of my better qualities."

He smiled at his notes.

We kept studying.

That evening I called my mum.

Not about Zane specifically — I wasn't ready for that conversation yet and my mum had a way of knowing things before you told her that required preparation. Just a normal call, how are you, how's the semester, are you eating.

At the end she said — the way she always said things, quietly and without preamble — "You sound different."

"Different how?"

"Lighter." A pause. "Something good is happening."

I looked at the ceiling of my room.

"Maybe," I said.

She made a small satisfied sound and didn't push.

I hung up and lay in the dark and thought about unlocked phones and coffee with no sugar and thinking places and 2am calls and a boy who said I'll always show you like it was just a fact about himself.

Something good was happening.

I was almost sure of it.