Broken First (Never Again)

Episode Ten

The drive home was quiet. Joe had come in his own car and they had parted ways at the campus gate with a brief nod, the kind of farewell that didn't require words. Chris drove with the window cracked, the late afternoon air moving through the car. He didn't play music. He just drove.

He told himself this was just the game. He told himself it was going exactly as planned. He told himself that Katherine was like the others, that the mechanics were the same even if the timeline was longer, that every move she had made today was simply a girl doing what girls do when they like someone but don't want to appear to like them too quickly. He told himself all of that, and most of it was true.

But there was a small thing, tucked in the corner of his chest somewhere behind the confidence and the strategy and the memory of the bet, that felt different. He couldn't name it. He wasn't interested in naming it. He pressed it down flat and told himself it was nothing, just the particular satisfaction of a game going well.

He pulled up to Bradley's place later that evening to find Joe already there, parked on the street with the engine off, scrolling his phone. They went up together. Bradley answered in shorts and a house shirt, looking considerably more alive than Joe's description of him had suggested.

Hey buddy," Chris said.

"Hey. What's good, man."

Doing good. I didn't know you weren't well, not until Joe told me."

Yeah, I tried your line but it wasn't connecting, so I asked Joe to pass the message."

They settled into Bradley's sitting room, the familiar ease of boys who had spent too much time in each other's company to need to perform for each other. Tucker was still absent, still at his parents' place, his arrival time unspecified in the way only Tucker could get away with because Tucker's father operated on a schedule that had nothing to do with anyone else's timeline.

I have news," Chris said. "Tucker isn't here so it won't feel complete, but I'm going to say it anyway and we'll tell him when he gets back."

Go ahead," Joe said, straightening slightly.

Go ahead," Bradley echoed, for someone who was sick, you can hardly even know. This was one thing about guys when they are about to have discussion that has to do with girls they are always up and active. Bradley’s illness apparently was no obstacle to his curiosity.

I finally saw her. Had the real encounter. Got her number. Got her name from her own mouth. And got what I needed to know to take the next step."

The room changed temperature immediately. It was like the greatest news has dropped. The room was lively. It was vibe upon vibe. Happiness upon happiness. The bet was going in the right direction.

That's my real one!" Joe said, the energy in his voice jumping several levels.

How did it go down?" Bradley asked, leaning forward. "We want the full story.

And so Chris told them. He told them about walking up to her, about the corridor, about the way her friends had given them space without being asked. He told them about the conversation, the back-and-forth, the moment she told him he looked good and he had let her say it twice just to hear it again. He told them about Rachel coming back to pull her away, about the phone coming out of his hoodie pocket, about her fingers typing in the number herself.

He told them all of it, and as he told it he could feel the room responding, Bradley sitting up straighter, Joe making the sounds of a man whose faith had been completely validated. He told it the way you tell a story when you know you are the main character and the story is going the way main characters' stories are supposed to go.

What he did not tell them was the part about standing on the walkway with that unguarded grin while she was already around the corner. What he did not tell them was the quiet drive home. Some things you kept to yourself, not because they meant anything, but because meaning could be assigned to things that had no meaning by people who were looking for meanings, and Chris was not interested in anyone assigning meanings to something that was simply a man who was very good at a game, playing it very well.

She reached into my hoodie pocket herself and punched in the number," Chris said. "Then told me to text her, not call, because she won't pick up."

And you believe that?" Joe said.

"Absolutely not," Chris replied.

They both started laughing at the same time, and Bradley, who had been quiet with fever three hours ago, became suddenly and completely the loudest person in the room. Someone put on music. The energy shifted into something celebratory, something that felt like the early minutes of a party that hadn't officially started yet.

It was a game to them. All of it, the bet, the chase, the number, the next move. It was a sport they understood the rules of and played without guilt because to them Katherine was a player too, even if she didn't know she was playing. That was the part they never examined too carefully, the question of whether the other person's ignorance of the rules made the game something different from what they called it.

Chris didn't examine it tonight. He accepted the celebration and let it sit around him warmly.

Later, after Joe had left and Bradley had started to fade back into the drowsiness of someone who genuinely needed rest, Chris sat in his car outside for a moment before starting the engine. He looked at his phone. At her name in his contacts.

Katherine.

He had told her he would text. And he would. But not tonight. Tonight he would make her wait, just long enough for the silence to do its own work, just long enough for his name to cross her mind once in the space of her own quiet evening and wonder why she hadn't heard from him yet. That was the next move. That was always the next move.

He started the engine.

What he did not know, and what would take him a great deal longer to understand, was that Katherine was not sitting in her own quiet evening wondering. She was sitting on the edge of her bed with her earpods in, music playing, thinking about the way he had stood there with that grin when she looked back, and trying to decide what to do with the fact that the grin had felt real.

She was not the kind of girl who convinced herself of things that weren't there. She was also not the kind of girl who dismissed things that were. And something was there. She could not say yet what it was or what it meant or where it was going to lead. But it was there.

Rachel had already texted her twice asking for an update. She hadn't replied yet. She closed her eyes and let the music run, and behind her eyelids, just for a second, she saw that grin again.

Outside, somewhere across the city, Chris was driving home through the dark with the window cracked and the game fully in motion.

And neither of them had any idea what was actually beginning. He was in the right direction. His game was still intact, he knew Katherine was feeling him the moment she reach to the pocket of his hoddie and got his phone. It was unusual for moment like this but for Chris it was nothing special he was used to girls falling for him at first encounter so he was just okay and having the best time in college.