The Recipe For Disaster

The Long Way Around

Mia had been avoiding Theo for five days when he finally stopped letting her.

She was walking back from the radio station, headphones in, not listening to anything, just using them as a prop to avoid conversations she didn't want to have, and he fell into step beside her like he had been waiting, which he probably had, and she slowed down but didn't stop, and he matched her pace and said he wasn't going to chase her forever but he also wasn't going to pretend the last two weeks hadn't happened, and Mia said that was a lot of things he wasn't going to do, and he almost smiled at that, almost, but he caught it and held it back like he understood this wasn't the moment for easy grins, and he said he knew the screenshot had been real, he wasn't going to lie about that, the words had been his, from a conversation months ago when Vanessa had texted him out of nowhere asking how he was settling in, and he had been honest in the way people are only honest when they think nobody else is watching, and he had said something stupid and unfinished about Mia, about not being sure what he felt, and he understood why reading it had hurt, he would have been hurt too, but he needed her to know that by the time those words existed on a screen he already knew they weren't true, because something had shifted the week before when they had stayed in the common room until two in the morning arguing about whether a film counted as good if it was technically brilliant but emotionally hollow, and Mia had gotten so genuinely annoyed at his take that she had jabbed her finger into the table to make her point, and he had looked at her in that moment and thought this is not an idea of a person, this is an actual person, and he had been trying to figure out how to say that without sounding ridiculous ever since, and Mia kept walking and didn't say anything for a moment, and then she said she believed him, and he looked at her surprised, and she said she had believed him the first time actually, and that had been the problem, because it would have been so much easier to stay angry if she hadn't, and he stopped walking entirely and she took two more steps before stopping too, and she turned around and he looked at her the way he had apparently been looking at her for weeks without her fully registering it, and she said she just needed to know it wouldn't happen again, not the screenshot, that was Vanessa's doing, but the avoidance, the letting things sit in old chats unsaid while she walked around not knowing, and he said it wouldn't, he was not built for that kind of quiet, anyone who had ever shared a floor with him could confirm that, and she laughed before she could stop herself and then immediately tried to reel it back in, and he noticed and the almost smile came back but he still didn't push it, he just said he had missed making her laugh, it was a specific kind of laugh, the kind that happened before she decided whether she was going to allow it, and Mia looked away because she didn't have an answer to that that didn't give too much away, and she said she wasn't promising anything, and he said he wasn't asking her to, he was just asking her not to walk the long way around the library to avoid him anymore, and she said she hadn't been doing that, and he gave her a look that said they both knew that was a complete lie, and she sighed and said fine, she would take the normal route to the library again, and he said that was all he was asking for, and they stood there on the path for another moment that stretched a little longer than it needed to, and then Mia said she had somewhere to be, and he nodded and stepped aside, and she walked past him, and she was three steps away when he said her name, and she turned, and he said for what it's worth, I think you're one of the most interesting people I've ever met, and I've known that since week two, and Mia turned back around before he could see what that did to her face, and she kept walking, and she did not allow the smile until she was completely around the corner.