Sable had a talent for extracting information out of me before I even realized I was giving it up, which was how, twenty minutes after lab ended, I found myself sitting across from her at our usual bench outside the cafeteria, describing the entire electron transport chain conversation in more detail than the assignment itself required.
“So he explained it well,” Sable said, unwrapping a granola bar like this was the most normal debrief in the world. “And you didn’t hate it.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t hate it.”
“You said, and I quote, ‘it was fine, actually,’ about a conversation with Jace Bennett. Do you understand how far that is from where you started three days ago?”
“It was one conversation about mitochondria. It’s not a personality shift.”
“Uh huh.” Sable didn’t look convinced, and honestly, neither was I, not entirely — there had been a strange half-second in the lab where working next to him had felt easy in a way I hadn’t expected, and I didn’t love that I’d noticed it, let alone that I was now explaining it to Sable in more detail than necessary.
