Chapter 68: Faction Meeting
POV: Carly
She had known the faction meeting was going to be uncomfortable.
She had not fully accounted for the specific quality of uncomfortable that came from sitting at a round table with your bruised ex-boyfriend on one end and your new vampire boyfriend a few seats away and a banshee representative who clearly wished she was anywhere else.
Professor Swanson sat at the head of the table with the expression of someone who had been doing this long enough to have seen most things and was currently seeing a new thing.
Carly kept her notes organized in front of her and her posture straight and her expression professional and told herself this was just a meeting. She had run a hundred meetings. She could run this one.
Tommy had not looked at her since they sat down.
He was looking at the table or the wall or anywhere that was not her and the bruise along his jaw had darkened overnight into something impressive and she felt a complicated mixture of guilt and something else she was not going to name sitting in her chest about it.
Niko was leaning back in his chair two seats down with his arms crossed and his face completely neutral and his eyes moving around the table with the specific attention of someone cataloguing everything without appearing to.
He caught her eye once.
She looked at her notes.
He almost smiled. She felt it without seeing it.
Professor Swanson had been pulling teeth for forty minutes getting anyone to contribute meaningfully to the general agenda items. The tension in the room was doing something to the air that made ordinary conversation feel impossible and nobody was trying particularly hard to overcome it.
Tommy had contributed exactly three words in forty minutes.
Sophie the banshee representative had contributed slightly more but with the energy of someone counting down to an exit.
Niko had been perfectly civil which somehow made Tommy angrier every time he spoke.
Carly had been running the meeting as best she could with what she had to work with which was not much.
"Last item." Professor Swanson said. "Homecoming. Carly."
She stood up.
She pulled up her laptop and clicked through to the presentation she had been building for three weeks and felt the familiar focus that came when she was talking about something she actually cared about settle through her.
She went through it cleanly.
The theme. Sinners and Saints. The color scheme. The ticket pricing. The stage setup. The DJ. The catering poll she had sent to every student. The decorations currently being finalized. The budget breakdown. The timeline between now and the event.
It was good work. She knew it was good work. She had put a significant amount of herself into it and it showed in the details.
Professor Swanson was nodding.
Sophie was taking notes.
Niko was watching her with that expression. The one that lived somewhere between admiring and amused and was hers specifically.
She did not look at him for too long.
She wrapped up. "Any questions."
Tommy made a sound.
She looked at him.
"Twenty dollars a ticket." He said. "For a dance."
She kept her voice even. "The production value justifies it. Most students at this school have the budget."
"Most." He said. "What about the ones who don't."
"There is a scholarship fund built into the budget for students who need assistance." She said. "Which I included on slide nine if you had been following along."
A beat of silence.
Professor Swanson pressed her lips together in a way that suggested she was covering something.
Tommy looked back at the table.
"I think it sounds wonderful." Sophie said. The first full sentence she had contributed all meeting.
"Thank you Sophie." Carly said.
"I didn't realize you had a talent for event planning." Niko said. Casually. Like he was just noting something.
She looked at him.
His expression was completely innocent.
She knew he was fully aware that the theme was his idea and was enjoying this specific dynamic enormously.
"Thank you Niko." She said. Matching his casual tone exactly.
Something flickered in his eyes.
Tommy's jaw tightened.
Professor Swanson stood up. "Wonderful presentation Carly. The dance sounds exceptional. I think that covers everything for today." She gathered her notes. "I'll see most of you in class. Some of you." She looked at Tommy and then at Niko with the specific expression she reserved for people she expected to see in her office. "Sooner than that."
She walked out.
Sophie was right behind her.
Tommy stood. Looked at Carly. Then at Niko. Then back at Carly with an expression that had the specific weight of something he had decided not to say and was managing not to say with visible effort.
Then he walked out without a word.
The door closed.
Carly exhaled.
She clicked her laptop shut and began packing her notes and felt the specific relief of a thing being over and also the specific awareness of who was still in the room with her.
She heard his chair move.
He appeared beside her at the table.
She looked up.
He was watching her pack with that expression. The shy one. The one that came out when he was about to say something he had actually thought about and was slightly uncertain how it would land.
She had learned to love that expression.
She waited.
He cleared his throat. "So."
"So." She said.
He was quiet for a moment. Picking at the edge of the table with one finger. Not looking at her directly.
"What would you say." He said carefully. "To a proper first date. This Saturday."
She stopped packing.
She looked at him.
"Not tacos." He said quickly. "Not sneaking off campus. Actual off campus passes, already sorted. Something proper." He paused. "You being picked up and taken somewhere nice. The whole thing."
She blinked. "You already got the passes."
"Three days ago." He said.
She stared at him. "You planned this three days ago."
He shrugged one shoulder. "I had a feeling."
"About what." She said.
"That you were going to figure it out eventually." He said. Simply. Like it had never been in question.
She felt the warmth move through her chest.
She thought about everything it had taken to get to this specific moment. The project and the wall and the church and the park and the grass and the hallway and every argument and every almost and every time she had pulled back and every time he had stayed anyway.
She thought about walking across a cafeteria yesterday with her tray and her chin up and every eye in the room on her and not caring about a single one of them.
She thought about Saturday.
She smiled. Wide and real and completely unmanaged.
"I would say yes." She said.
His face did the thing.
The real thing. The full version of it that she had been collecting glimpses of for weeks and was now seeing properly and was going to see as many times as possible going forward.
She kissed him.
Quick and certain.
He kissed her back.
She pulled away and picked up her bag and headed for the door.
"Saturday." She said over her shoulder.
"Saturday." He confirmed.
She walked out into the corridor and heard him laugh quietly to himself behind her and kept walking with that smile she was not trying to manage at all.