Chapter 11 Changes
POV: Aurora
She stood in the hallway for a moment after he was gone.
The alcove was quiet. Faint music from someone's room two floors up. The hum of the heating system. Her own breathing slowly evening out.
She pressed her back against the wall and stared at the ceiling.
She had known Niko Monroeson for four years. Had been in his friend group for three. Had been whatever this was for almost six months. She knew his tells better than anyone in that room did, better than Enzo who had known him the longest, better than Marcel who was the most perceptive of all of them.
She knew when he was hungry. She knew when the thing with his family was sitting on him. She knew the difference between the quiet that meant he was fine and the quiet that meant he was somewhere very far away inside his own head.
This had been the second kind for two weeks.
And it had started before his mother's text. She was almost sure of it.
She turned it over in her mind the way she had been turning it over quietly for days. What changed two weeks ago. What was different.
The semester started. Classes began. Nothing unusual.
Except.
She thought about the cafeteria. Watching him across the room go completely still for a full minute while she was talking and realizing his attention had gone somewhere else entirely. She had looked to see what he was looking at and there was too much going on in the room to find it.
She thought about practice last week. Coming off the field to find him on the bleachers with that expression he got when something had genuinely caught him off guard. She had asked what was funny and he had said nothing and shrugged and she had believed him because Niko didn't lie about the small things.
She was starting to think it wasn't a small thing.
She pushed off the wall and stood up straight.
Aurora was not the kind of girl who spiraled. She was not going to stand in a hallway catastrophizing over a boy who had never once promised her anything, who she had walked into this arrangement with both eyes open.
She was also not stupid.
Something had shifted in him and it wasn't his mother's texts and it wasn't general end of semester stress and it had a shape she couldn't quite see yet but was beginning to outline itself around the edges.
She smoothed her hair back and turned toward the door.
When she found out what it was she would deal with it then.
For now she pushed the door open and walked back into the room where Enzo was already losing another argument and Marcel was already laughing and she dropped onto the couch and pretended she hadn't been standing in a hallway feeling something she didn't have a name for yet quietly take root in her chest.
Author's Note:
Aurora sees more than she lets on and honestly she deserves better than standing in hallways with unanswered questions. Niko baby what are you doing. Drop a like and tell me in the comments, are you Team Aurora or are you already too far gone on the Carly situation to care?