Chapter 20 – Ava’s Warnings
1497 Words
(Real Life – Café)
By the next afternoon, I could tell Ava was plotting something.
She had that look — the one where her eyes narrowed just slightly, lips pursed like she was holding back a lecture. It was her “concern disguised as casual banter” face, and I’d seen it enough times to know I was in trouble.
“Café,” she’d said that morning, practically dragging me out of the dorm. “No excuses, no ghosting, no ‘I have notes to catch up on.’ You’re coming.”
Now we were sitting by the window of the little café across from campus, the one with creaky wooden chairs and mismatched mugs that all looked like they’d been rescued from different thrift stores. Outside, students passed in lazy groups, their laughter spilling through the open door with the breeze.
Inside, it smelled like espresso and cinnamon — warm and safe, like a place untouched by strange dreams or impossible connections.
But my thoughts weren’t here. They were still in the gym.
Still caught on that one moment when our eyes met through the mirror — when time seemed to forget itself and everything inside me realigned around a heartbeat that wasn’t entirely mine.
Ava stirred her iced latte, straw clinking against the glass. She was watching me the way people watch someone who might drift off mid-conversation.
“So,” she said finally, breaking the silence, “are we gonna talk about it, or do I have to start guessing?”
“About what?” I asked, feigning innocence.
She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t do that. You know exactly what.”
I picked at a sugar packet, tearing tiny pieces off just to give my hands something to do. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”
“Fine.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Let’s start with the fact that you’ve been weird lately.”
“Weird how?”
“Like…” She gestured vaguely. “Half here, half somewhere else. You zone out all the time. You don’t eat much, you don’t sleep much, and you keep looking like you’re expecting someone to walk through the door any second.”
I looked away, out the window. The sunlight had turned gold against the pavement.
“I’m fine,” I said softly.
She snorted. “You always say that right before doing something profoundly not fine.”
I smiled, but it didn’t reach my eyes. “You worry too much.”
“Zoe.” Her tone shifted — less teasing, more serious. “I’m not trying to be annoying. I just—” she hesitated, chewing her lip. “I don’t like seeing you like this. You’re acting like you’re falling for someone who doesn’t even exist.”
The words landed harder than she probably meant them to.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. The café’s noise faded into a distant hum — the chatter, the clinking cups, the hiss of the espresso machine — all muffled beneath the echo of her words.
Falling for someone who doesn’t exist.
I wanted to laugh it off. Tell her she was being dramatic. But the truth? The truth sat heavy in my chest because she wasn’t entirely wrong.
Ava sighed when I didn’t answer. “You met this guy once, maybe twice. You don’t even know him. And yet you’re... what? Dreaming about him? Writing about him?”
I blinked. “How do you—”
“I saw your notebook,” she admitted, looking a little guilty. “The one you left open on your desk. ‘He said I called him.’ What does that even mean, Zoe?”
I felt heat rise to my face. “You read that?”
“Only a little!” she said quickly, holding up her hands. “I wasn’t snooping, I swear. I just—” She paused, then sighed again. “It scared me, okay? It’s like you’re slipping into something I can’t follow you into.”
I stared at the coffee in front of me, tracing the rim of the mug with my thumb. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Then help me,” she said, voice softening. “Try.”
I looked up at her then, at her steady brown eyes and the faint crease between her brows — the same look she got before a test or a storm. She wasn’t angry. She was scared.
So I tried.
“It’s not just a crush,” I said quietly. “It’s not even attraction, not really. It’s like…” I struggled for words, the right shape of it. “Like I’ve met him before. Like my body remembers him, even if my mind doesn’t.”
Ava exhaled slowly, leaning back. “That’s… poetic,” she said carefully, “and also a little terrifying.”
“I know how it sounds,” I murmured.
“Yeah. Like the beginning of a horror movie.”
I laughed weakly, but it didn’t last. “It’s not like that. It doesn’t feel dangerous.”
“No?”
“No.” I hesitated. “It feels inevitable.”
Ava rubbed her temple. “God, you’re such a literature major.”
That made me smile — just barely. “You say that like it’s a crime.”
“Not a crime,” she said, smirking faintly. “Just… textbook Zoe. Romanticize the unexplainable until it looks like destiny.”
I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. Because maybe she was right.
The barista called out an order; someone laughed near the counter. Outside, a bus hissed to a stop. Everything went on, ordinary and bright.
And yet all I could think about was him.
The way his gaze had felt like gravity. The way his smile had stirred something deep and wordless.
I hadn’t even spoken to him. Not once. And still, every part of me responded to his presence like I was remembering something ancient and personal.
Ava reached across the table, her hand brushing mine. “Just promise me something, okay?”
“What?”
“Don’t lose yourself in this. Whoever he is — dream guy, real guy, ghost of your past life — don’t let him take up more space in your head than you do.”
I stared at her hand, her chipped blue nail polish, the way her thumb tapped anxiously against her coffee cup.
“I’ll try,” I said finally.
“Good,” she said, though her tone made it clear she didn’t quite believe me.
We talked about other things after that — classes, professors, a ridiculous rumor about the dorm vending machine being haunted — but the undercurrent stayed. She kept glancing at me when she thought I wasn’t looking, like she expected me to vanish mid-sentence.
When we finished our drinks, she insisted on walking me back. “You’re too distracted to cross streets unsupervised,” she joked.
I laughed, but the truth was, she wasn’t wrong. My mind was elsewhere — still replaying fragments of that dream, that gaze, that inexplicable pull.
When we reached the dorm, she nudged my shoulder. “You know I’m just looking out for you, right?”
“I know,” I said.
“Good. Because if this turns into some supernatural drama where you start levitating or glowing in your sleep, I’m calling an exorcist.”
That made me smile, genuinely this time. “Noted.”
She grinned, satisfied. “Night, weirdo.”
“Night.”
When she dived into her bed, I lingered in the hallway for a moment. The lights buzzed faintly overhead.
I should’ve gone to my room, done my readings, gone back to pretending my life was still simple.
Instead, I pulled out my phone.
The gym app was still open from earlier. My thumb hovered over the schedule — the same time slot, the same class he’d been in before.
Tomorrow, 5 p.m.
I didn’t press it. Not yet. But the temptation pulsed under my skin, quiet and undeniable.
When I finally went to bed, the café’s warmth lingered faintly in my mind — the hum of conversation, the echo of Ava’s voice saying I was acting like I was falling for a stranger.
I turned that thought over and over, like a coin catching the light.
Falling for a stranger.
She was right. I was.
But it didn’t feel wrong.
If anything, it felt like gravity — impossible to resist, and even harder to explain.
Before I drifted off, I opened my notebook again.
The last page still held the words from before:
> I don’t know if I’m losing my mind or finding it.
Underneath, I added one more line:
> She’s right. I am falling. And I don’t even know where he’ll catch me — or if he will.
Then I closed the notebook, turned off the light, and let the dark take me.
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- Writer
