Chapter 44 What Sophie Knows

Chapter 44 What Sophie Knows

"You look good," Sophie says, before she's fully out of the car. She's taking me in from three feet away with the assessing eye of someone who's been monitoring me from a distance for months. "Like actually good. Not I'm fine please stop asking good."

"I am actually good," I say.

"I know. That's what I said." She holds up the pastry box she's carrying. "Can AuntB have one of these or is she diabetic."

"She's not diabetic and she'll be offended you asked."

"Noted." She falls into step beside me toward the front door. "You cut your hair."

"Just a trim."

"It looks intentional."

"Everything I do is intentional, Sophie."

"That's true." She bumps her shoulder against mine. "I missed you."

"I know. I missed you too."

We eat at the kitchen table while Aunt Bisi asks Sophie the full catalogue of questions — family, studies, whether she's eating properly, whether the young men at her school are respectful — and Sophie answers all of them with the patient warmth she deploys when she genuinely likes someone. They get along immediately. Of course they do.

When Aunt Bisi excuses herself to the garden, Sophie refills her tea, sets her elbows on the table, and looks at me.

"Okay," she says. "Tell me about the phone call."

I stare at her. "How do you know about the phone call."

"Caleb told Rowan who told his girlfriend who told me." She waves a hand. "Standard pipeline. I know it happened. I know it was long. I know he was insufferably calm about it afterward in the way he gets when something went well and he's trying not to perform about it." She tilts her head. "What happened?"

"We talked."

"For two hours."

"About things."

"Mira."

I wrap both hands around my mug. "We're on the same page," I say. "About what we want. When it gets to be something real." I pause. "I told him it's on the horizon."

Sophie looks at me for a long moment. Something in her face goes soft in a way she doesn't usually permit in public. "Okay," she says quietly. "Okay."

"Don't cry."

"I'm not crying." She visibly is not crying by a very narrow margin. "I'm just — you both drove me insane for an entire semester and I'm relieved it's going somewhere."

"Sophie—"

"Separately and together you were both so—" She presses her lips together. "He would sit in calc every day and do that thing where he wasn't looking at you that was the most obvious not-looking I have ever witnessed. And you would go completely rigid every time someone mentioned his name and say things like I don't have feelings about Caleb Hart in the tone of someone who very clearly had feelings about Caleb Hart."

"I was convinced I didn't."

"I know." She shakes her head. "You are very smart about everything except yourself."

I can't argue with this. "I'm working on it."

"That's actually the impressive part." She breaks off a piece of croissant and points it at me. "Most people just stay wrong about themselves. You did something."

We sit in the comfortable silence of people who've known each other long enough for quiet to be easy. Aunt Bisi's radio comes on faintly from somewhere deeper in the house.

"He's different," Sophie says eventually. "Since October. The suspension, the counseling — something changed. He was always the person who walked into rooms like he owned them. He's still confident — that's just Caleb — but it's quieter now. Like he stopped using the room as a stage."

I think about the phone call. The way he talked about the game — not the score, not the performance of it. The play. The moment the thing itself worked.

"I noticed," I say.

"I figured." She finishes her croissant. "So what's the plan?"

"There isn't one yet. I'll know when."

"When you're what?"

I think about how to say it precisely. "When seeing him feels like something I want," I say. "Not something I need." I pause. "There's a difference."

Sophie holds that for a moment. "Yeah," she says. "There really is."

\---

After she leaves I go for a run — later than usual, nearly six, the January dark already full over the park. The path lights are on, orange-gold against the cold, and I have the loop almost to myself.

I run two loops. On the second I stop thinking and just run — lungs and legs and the frozen air and the path lights repeating, repeating, the rhythm of it working something loose in my chest that's been tight since October.

When I get back I eat the dinner Aunt Bisi left covered on the stove. I sit at the desk. I open my chemistry notes.

At ten I close the notebook and I text Caleb: Sophie came today. She told me you told Rowan about the phone call.

Caleb: In my defense I only told him it went well.

Mira: And how did you know it went well?

Caleb: Because you said horizon.

I look at the word he picked out of everything I said — horizon — and feel the warmth of being known accurately by someone who paid attention.

Mira: Goodnight, Hart.

Caleb: Night, Lawson.

I turn off the lamp.

\---

End of Chapter 44