THE UNWELCOME HAVEN
1309 Words
Garvey Thorne's house had once been the primary headquarters for the Full House. It was a sprawling, slightly weathered two-story home tucked away at the cul-de-sac of Elm Street, identifiable by the massive oak tree in the backyard that held the remnants of their childhood treehouse.
Three years ago, Gabriella had known every creaking floorboard, the exact password to the Wi-Fi, and which cabinet held the stale potato chips.
But as she walked up the gravel driveway
the next afternoon alongside Liu, Melvin, and Liam, her knees felt structural weak. The car ride over had been an exercise in suffocating awkwardness, with Melvin rambling incoherently about trigonometry formulas to prevent a fistfight between Liu and Liam over the radio station.
"Everyone remember the rules," Liu whispered aggressively as they reached the front porch. She looked at Gabriella, her gaze lingering on her face. "We are here for thirty percent of our grade. We do not look at the old photo frames, we do not talk about the eighth-grade graduation party, and we do not provoke the beast."
"The beast lives in a very nice house," Melvin whispered, adjusting his glasses as the heavy oak front door swung open before Liu could even knock.
Garvey stood in the entryway. He had traded his denim jacket for a faded grey hoodie, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows to reveal forearms covered in a few superficial scratches from working on his truck. He looked tired, his eyes dark, holding a stack of heavy calculus and advanced trig textbooks under one arm.
"You're late," he said flatly, stepping aside to let them in. "By four minutes."
"Liam insisted on stopping for a protein shake," Liu snapped, marching past him without an invitation. "Blame the athletic department."
"Hey, macro-nutrients are essential for the gridiron, Lin," Liam grunted, ducking his head to clear the doorway. He nodded at Garvey-a silent, stiff truce between two former varsity athletes who used to share a locker room. "Thorne."
"Miller," Garvey responded, his tone unreadable.
Gabriella walked in last. As she passed him, the narrow entryway forced her shoulder to brush against his chest. She caught her breath, her eyes darting up to his face. Garvey's gaze dropped to hers, his jaw clenching as he closed the door behind her with a definitive click.
The living room looked exactly the same, which made it ten times worse. The same faded brown leather couch where they had all crammed together to watch horror movies; the same scuff marks on the baseboards from where Liam had crashed his skateboard into the wall when they were twelve.
"Let's get this over with," Garvey said, clearing off a massive wooden dining table covered in car parts, tools, and loose blueprint papers. He shoved a circular metal gear out of the way, making room for their textbooks. "Harrison wants the baseline trigonometric analysis for the structural load vectors done by Friday. I checked the data. It's tedious, but if we split the coordinates, we can finish the data entry today."
"Wow," Melvin said, blinking as he dropped his backpack onto a chair. "You actually looked at the syllabus? Since when do you care about structural vectors, Garvey?"
Garvey's expression darkened for a fraction of a second. "Since my graduation depended on it, Ross. Sit down and open your book."
For the next two hours, the dining room was filled with the rhythmic, mechanical sounds of turning pages, the scratch of graphite on paper, and the occasional aggressive sigh from Liu whenever Liam typed the wrong variable into the graphing calculator.
Gabriella tried to focus on her sheet, but the proximity to Garvey was driving her insane. He sat directly across from her, his long legs stretching beneath the table, his sneakers occasionally brushing against hers. Every time their feet touched, a physical jolt ran up her leg, causing her to ruin her pencil lines.
"You're doing the sine conversions wrong," a low voice muttered.
Gabriella looked up. Garvey was staring at her notebook, his chin resting in his hand. He reached across the table, his long fingers extending until his pen tip tapped the margin of her paper. "The vector rotates counter-clockwise for Group C's dataset. You're calculating for the inverted quadrant."
"I know how to read a quadrant, Garvey," she whispered sharply, her eyes narrowing. "I was doing it this way because it matches the reference formulas on page twelve."
"The reference formulas are for a static lane," Garvey countered, his voice dropping into that quiet, gravelly register that made her heart do a stupid, chaotic flip. He leaned forward over the table, his face inches from hers across the wooden expanse. "We're working with a dynamic load. If you don't adjust the baseline, the whole structure collapses."
"Like you'd know anything about keeping a structure from collapsing," Gabriella shot back, the words flying out of her mouth before she could filter them.
The entire room went dead silent.
The sound of Melvin's typing stopped instantly. Liam froze with a pencil halfway to his mouth. Liu slowly looked up from her napkin-notes, her expression an icy warning.
Garvey's eyes darkened, the amber flecks turning into something cold and stormy. He set his pen down on the table with a soft, dangerous precision. "What did you say?"
"You heard me," Gabriella whispered, the three years of toxic restraint completely snapping. "You love talking about baseline structures and variables, Garvey. But the second things get complicated, you just let everything break. You're doing it right now. You're acting like a stranger in a house we used to practically live in."
Garvey stood up so fast his wooden chair scraped violently against the hardwood floor. "If you don't like the environment, Vance, the door is exactly where you left it."
"Hey! Both of you, shut up!" Liu slammed her hand on the table, her face red with frustration. "We are halfway through the data set! If you two blow this up now, we lose the afternoon's progress. Sit down, Garvey. Gabriella, look at your quadrant and fix the numbers."
"I need some air," Garvey muttered, turning on his heel and walking toward the back door that led to the kitchen and the yard. The screen door slammed shut behind him.
Gabriella sat there, her chest heaving, her knuckles white around her pencil.
"Nice going, Gaby," Liam sighed, leaning back in his chair. "We were actually getting work done for once."
"Don't blame her," Melvin defended, though his voice was shaking. "The tension in here is like... radioactive. I'm surprised the windows haven't shattered yet."
Liu stood up, looking at Gabriella with a mixture of pity and annoyance. "Go fix it."
"What?" Gabriella blinked. "Why me? He's the one who walked out!"
"Because you're the one who pulled the trigger on the conversation," Liu said, crossing her arms. "And because out of all of us, you're the only one who actually knows how to talk to him when he gets like this. Go out there, fake an apology, and get him back to this table so we can finish the vectors. We have forty minutes before the gossip accounts start checking if we survived the afternoon."
Gabriella stared at the kitchen doorway, her stomach churning with a potent mix of dread and a desperate, terrifying anticipation. She pushed her chair back, her sneakers clicking softly against the floor as she walked toward the backyard.
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