WHAT HE WON'T ADMIT
1442 Words
CHAPTER EIGHT , WHAT HE WON'T ADMIT
He had followed her.
Not planned.
Not calculated.
Not the kind of decision that came with reasoning attached.
One moment he was watching Nova disappear back through the grocery store door with the cheerful indifference of a child who had already moved on to the next thing , and the next moment his feet were moving and the afternoon air was cold against his face and Sera Hollins was half a block ahead of him walking like she had somewhere to be and absolutely no idea he was behind her.
He told himself he was just walking in the same direction.
He told himself that for about forty-five seconds before he stopped pretending.
She walked fast.
Head slightly down, bag pulled close, the focused purposeful stride of someone running a tight schedule who had learned a long time ago that pace was a form of control.
No performance.
No awareness of being watched. Just, her.
Moving through the ordinary Saturday afternoon like it was something to be managed rather than experienced.
He watched the wind catch the edge of her jacket.
He watched her shift her bag without breaking stride.
At the crossing, she paused, checked both sides, and moved again efficient, automatic, already thinking ahead of herself.
What are you doing.
He had no answer for that.
He stopped walking
For a second, it felt like the world had kept moving without him and he hated that he was the one who had paused.
Stood on the pavement while the city moved around him and watched her turn a corner and disappear and felt something he had no interest in naming settle heavily in his chest like an unwanted guest that had decided it lived there now.
He stood there for longer than he would ever admit.
Then he turned and walked back the way he came, jaw tight, hands deep in his pockets, the afternoon doing nothing useful with its light.
The encounter kept replaying whether he wanted it to or not.
Nova's hand finding Sera's in the cereal aisle.
Sera crouching down to Nova's level without being asked, not performing warmth, just, doing it, naturally, like it cost her nothing.
The laugh that came out of her when Nova said something.
Unguarded.
Real.
The kind of laugh that didn't know it was being watched.
And then outside.
The three feet of pavement between them.
The look on Sera's face when she registered who Nova had brought her to, not fear, never fear, just that particular steadiness she carried everywhere like a second skin.
He had walked away because walking away was the only move that wasn't dangerous.
He had followed her because apparently that was the kind of person he was becoming and he had no idea when that had happened.
Nova was already home when he got back.
She was on the couch with her picture book, open on her lap, looking entirely too pleased with herself for someone who claimed to have just been getting bread.
She glanced up when he came in, registered his expression, and looked back down at her book with a quiet, undisturbed feeling of someone who had done nothing wrong and knew it.
Zade closed the door.
He looked at her.
She turned a page.
"Nova." He kept his voice even.
Careful.
The voice he used when he needed to say something important without letting the weight of it show.
"What happened today , bringing a stranger over to me like that , "
"She wasn't a stranger after I learned her name," Nova said, without looking up.
"That's not , " He stopped. Exhaled. Tried again.
"You don't know anything about her."
"I know she crouched down when she talked to me."
Nova finally looked up, her expression carrying that particular quality it sometimes had, older than her face, steadier than her years.
"Most people don't do that. They just talk to me from up there."
She gestured faintly upward. "She didn't."
Zade said nothing.
"And she laughed like she meant it," Nova added, returning to her book.
"Some people laugh like they're performing. She didn't."
The accuracy of that observation landed somewhere Zade had no intention of letting it land.
He moved to the chair across from her and sat, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.
"I need you to be careful," he said quietly.
"People around me, my life at school, it's complicated.
Not everyone who seems nice is safe to be around."
Nova considered this with the seriousness it deserved.
"Is she not safe?"
Zade opened his mouth.
Closed it.
The honest answer was that Sera Hollins was probably the most straightforward person he had encountered since arriving at Eastwood, no agenda, no performance, no carefully constructed version of herself designed to get something from him.
What she was, was inconvenient.
Disruptive.
The kind of presence that got into the gaps of things and widened them.
But not unsafe.
Not to Nova.
"Just be careful," he said finally.
"That's all I'm saying."
Nova studied him for a moment with her mother's eyes, patient, seeing too much , and then nodded once.
Small and certain. "Okay," she said. "I'll be careful."
She went back to her book.
Zade sat across from her and stared at the middle distance and did not think about a laugh he hadn't been supposed to hear.
The café the next afternoon was the usual setup, Zack already in his chair, Adien halfway through something that was allegedly coffee, Leo quiet in the corner with his americano and his habit of watching everything without appearing to.
Zade dropped into his seat, ordered without looking at the menu, and said nothing for approximately four minutes while the conversation moved around him.
Zack noticed first.
He always noticed first.
"You've got the face."
"What face."
"The one where something happened and you're deciding whether to tell us."
Zade picked up his coffee.
"Nothing happened."
Adien looked at him over the rim of his cup. "Right."
Silence for a moment.
The café hummed around them, other conversations, the hiss of the machine behind the counter, the particular ambient noise of a Sunday afternoon that had nowhere urgent to be.
"I ran into her," Zade said finally. Casually.
The tone of someone mentioning something mildly inconvenient.
"Yesterday. Grocery store near my apartment."
The table's attention sharpened without anyone visibly moving.
"Coincidence?" Zack asked.
"Obviously."
"And?"
Zade shrugged one shoulder.
"And nothing. We saw each other. I left."
Adien tilted his head. "That's it?"
"That's it."
Leo set his cup down with the quiet deliberateness of someone who had something to say and was choosing his moment.
"You came in looking like you hadn't slept."
"I sleep fine."
"Sure."
Zade looked out the window.
The street outside was doing its ordinary Sunday thing, unhurried, unremarkable, completely indifferent to the fact that he had stood on a pavement the day before and watched a girl turn a corner and felt something crack open in his chest that he had spent considerable effort keeping sealed.
"She's annoying," he said, to no one in particular.
"You've mentioned," Adien said.
"She doesn't, " He stopped.
Picked up his coffee again. Put it down.
"She doesn't react the way people react.
To anything.
It's, " He shook his head slightly.
"Annoying."
Zack was grinning now. Zade could see it in his peripheral vision without looking directly at it.
"Don't," Zade said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
Zack held both hands up in the universal gesture of someone who was absolutely about to say something and had decided to let the silence do it instead.
Leo looked at Zade steadily. "What are you going to do about it?"
Zade was quiet for a moment.
Outside a group of students passed the window, laughing about something, coats pulled against the autumn chill, entirely unburdened by whatever this was.
"Nothing," he said.
The word landed flat.
Even he could hear that it didn't sound like nothing.
Adien and Zack exchanged a look that Zade clocked and chose not to address.
"She's a distraction," Zade said, final.
"That's all."
Nobody argued with him.
Nobody agreed either.
And that, the specific quality of his three closest friends saying absolutely nothing, was somehow the loudest response they could have given him.
Zade drank his coffee.
Looked out the window.
Said nothing else.
But somewhere underneath the silence, underneath the carefully maintained surface of someone who had decided this was nothing, something had already shifted.
Something quiet and certain and impossible to un-shift.
He just wasn't ready to look at it yet.
- Writer
