Between Us

Chapter 11 — The Rumor

I found out about the rumour on a Friday morning from Denise, which meant the entire campus already knew.

Denise had a system — she never told you bad news directly. She would bring you food first. So when she showed up at my desk at 7am with a meat pie and a bottle of water and a very specific expression on her face I put down my highlighter and waited.

"What happened," I said.

"Good morning to you too."

"Denise."

She sat on the edge of her bed, unwrapped her own meat pie, took a bite, chewed slowly. "Someone is saying that Zane is only with you because of a bet."

I stared at her.

"A bet," I repeated.

"That's what's going around." She picked at the wrapper. "Someone — nobody knows who started it — is saying that Zane bet his friends he could date the most serious girl on campus before the semester ended. And that you're—" she paused.

"The most serious girl on campus," I finished.

"I didn't want to say it."

I sat with that for a moment.

The logical part of my brain — the part that was always running, always processing — started doing its job immediately. Dissecting the rumour. Identifying the source. Noting that it could very easily have come from Keira's direction because the timing was too convenient and the specific detail about a bet was too pointed to be random.

The other part of my brain — the part I'd been trying very hard not to listen to for the past two weeks — felt something quiet and cold settle in my chest.

Because here was the thing.

We WERE pretending.

The whole thing WAS essentially a bet — or a deal, same difference. He'd needed something, I'd needed something, we'd agreed to perform something that wasn't real.

So why did hearing it said out loud feel like something being taken from me?

I saw Zane before BIO 215.

He was already waiting at the bottom of the stairs, which he'd been doing every morning for two weeks now without either of us acknowledging that it had become a thing. He looked up when I approached and something in my expression must have told him immediately because his easy morning energy shifted.

"You heard," he said.

"Is it true?"

The words came out before I could dress them up or soften them. Direct. A little raw.

He looked at me for a long moment. "No," he said. Steady. No hesitation.

"Zane—"

"Ava." He stepped slightly closer, lowered his voice. "Look at me."

I looked at him.

"It's not true," he said. "I don't know where it came from but it's not true and I need you to know that."

I searched his face for the thing I was afraid of finding — the performance, the careful calculation, the ease of someone who was very good at saying the right thing.

I didn't find it.

What I found was something that looked a lot like genuine concern about what I was thinking.

"Okay," I said quietly.

"Okay?"

"I believe you."

He exhaled — slow, like he'd been holding it. "Thank you."

We walked to BIO 215 in silence. But he stayed closer than usual, close enough that our arms brushed with every step, and he didn't move away and neither did I.

The rumour had done its damage by lunchtime.

I could feel it — the shift in how people looked at me, the specific quality of certain silences when I walked past. The girls who'd introduced themselves in the bathroom had stopped doing that. Someone in my practical group made a comment that was just vague enough to deny but pointed enough to land.

I ate lunch alone for the first time in two weeks.

I told myself it was fine. I'd eaten alone for the entirety of first semester and it had been fine then.

It felt different now and I couldn't fully explain why.

At 1pm my phone buzzed.

Where are you?

I looked at the message. Then at my corner table. Then back at the message.

Usual spot, I typed back.

Four minutes later Zane appeared in the cafeteria doorway, scanned the room, found me, and walked over with his tray like it was the most natural thing in the world. He sat down across from me. Put his food on the table. Looked at me.

"You don't have to—" I started.

"I know," he said.

He opened his bottle of water. Started eating. Pulled out his phone and put on something low — music, just audible enough to fill the silence between us without demanding anything from it.

We ate lunch.

Nobody bothered us.

And somewhere in the middle of it something that had felt cold and settled in my chest since 7am quietly came loose.

I didn't say thank you.

He didn't make me.

That was somehow better than anything he could have said.

That evening he texted me at 9pm.

You good?

I smiled at my phone for approximately three seconds before I remembered I wasn't supposed to be doing that.

I'm good, I typed back. Thanks for lunch.

Anytime.

Then after a pause:

I mean it. Anytime.

I put my phone down.

Picked it back up.

Put it down again.

"You're smiling at your phone," Denise said from across the room without looking up from her book.

"I'm not."

"You literally are."

"Goodnight Denise."

"It's 9pm—"

"Goodnight."

She laughed. I buried my face in my pillow.

The rumour didn't matter.

Somehow — without me noticing exactly when it happened — he'd become the person I went to when things didn't feel okay.

That was either very good or very bad.

I genuinely had no idea which.