Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

MARA

The exam was at ten AM.

I knew this because I'd scheduled it, essentially — I'd spent eight weeks preparing him for it and I knew Kamali's testing calendar better than my own at this point. I went to my own classes and tried not to think about it and succeeded poorly.

By third period I'd checked the time four times. By fifth I'd stopped pretending to check for any other reason and just accepted it. Jess passed me a note in AP English that said he's fine, stop and I folded it into my pocket and tried to look like someone whose mind was on unreliable narrators.

The thing was, it wasn't about the exam anymore. The exam was just a fixed point, a time I'd attached the other thing to because I needed somewhere to put it. What I actually wanted was to see his face. To say the things I'd been rearranging in my head since Sunday. To stop being on the wrong side of the distance I'd put between us.

Lunch came. I went to my corner table out of habit and then stopped.

Cole was already there.

Not eating. Just sitting, backpack still on, jacket still on, like he'd come straight from the exam room and hadn't decided yet whether to stay. He was looking at his phone but he wasn't reading it — the screen had gone dark and he hadn't unlocked it. He was just holding it and looking at the table and I stood at the edge of the cafeteria and watched him for a moment and felt something pull in my chest so hard it almost made me step back.

I didn't step back.

I walked to the table and sat down across from him. He looked up.

His eyes were tired. Not sad exactly. The careful version of him, the one with everything held close.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi."

"How was it."

A beat. "Good. I think I did well."

"You did well. I know you did."

He looked at me steadily. "Mara—"

"I know," I said. "I know. Can I go first?"

Something moved across his face. He sat back slightly. "Yeah."

I put my hands flat on the table. "I saw you Thursday. In the gym corridor. With Maya Chen." I kept my voice even. "She was laughing and you were laughing and she had her hand on your arm and I watched for about four seconds and then I turned around and went home and spent the entire weekend building a case against myself."

He was very still.

"Jess told me about the spirit committee," I said. "On Monday. So I already know it was nothing. That's not the point." I looked at my hands. "The point is I didn't ask you. Something scared me and instead of asking I just — closed. And I've been doing that my whole life and it's a terrible habit and you deserved better than four days of me going quiet on you."

The cafeteria moved around us, loud and indifferent, the way it always was.

Cole leaned forward slowly. "You thought I was—"

"I didn't let myself finish the thought. I just reacted."

"Mara." His voice was low. "I haven't looked at anyone else since I sat down at this table the first time."

Something in my chest came loose. Just slightly. "I know that now."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Because I need you to actually know it. Not just know it because Jess explained the spirit committee. Know it because—" He stopped. Pressed his mouth together. "Because I've been sitting here for forty minutes trying to figure out what I did wrong and the answer kept coming back nothing and that was the worst part. Not knowing."

"You didn't do anything wrong."

"Yeah, you said that Sunday and then went silent for three days."

"I know." I met his eyes. "I'm sorry. I mean it."

He looked at me for a long moment. The careful expression was still there but something behind it had shifted, some of the tension gone out of it. "Why does everything scare you so much."

It wasn't an accusation. It was a real question, the quiet kind.

"Because everything I have I worked for," I said. "Nothing came easy. And when things start to feel easy I don't trust it. I wait for it to cost something."

"I'm not going to cost you something."

"I know that intellectually."

"But."

"But I'm working on the rest of it." I looked at him. "I'm trying."

He reached across the table and turned my hand over, palm up, and looked at it for a second. Then he put his hand in mine and closed his fingers around it and looked up.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Yeah." Simple. Certain. "We're okay."

I breathed out slowly. "Just like that."

"Just like that." He squeezed my hand once. "I'm not keeping score. I don't want to do that."

I looked at him across the table, this boy who'd walked into my corner of the cafeteria two months ago because he was failing bio and needed my help, and thought about how none of this was what I'd planned for my senior year. Not any of it. And how the unplanned thing was sitting right here holding my hand like it intended to stay.

"How did you actually feel about the exam," I said.

His mouth curved. "Honestly? I think I aced it."

"The sodium-potassium pump."

"Three sodium out, two potassium in, runs on ATP." He said it without pausing. "Every time."

I laughed. The real kind, the kind that came up before you could curate it. He watched it happen with that almost-smile of his and then the full version arrived, the one he didn't give out easily, warm and unguarded and just for me.

"There you are," he said quietly.

I looked at him. "I've been here."

"I know." He turned my hand over once in his. "Just making sure."

Jess appeared with her tray, looked at our joined hands on the table, looked at my face, and sat down next to me without a word.

She stole one of my chips.

I let her.