Chapter 43 The Other Side Of Everything

Chapter 43 The Other Side Of Everything
December arrived the way it always did — without asking, rearranging everything.

The campus shifted into end-of-semester mode, which meant the library was suddenly full of people who had apparently not attended lectures since September and were now trying to make peace with that decision. Priya practically lived in the study rooms. I found her there on a Tuesday evening with four empty coffee cups and an expression of someone who had transcended ordinary stress and entered a different plane entirely.

"How are you doing," I said.

"I have read this same page eleven times," she said. "Eleven. I counted."

"Have you eaten today."

"Define eaten."

I put a sandwich on the table in front of her. She looked at it like it was evidence of something. Then she picked it up and ate half of it in thirty seconds.

"Riley is coming over later," she said between bites. "After her studio session. She said she'll bring food."

"How is that going," I said.

Priya put the sandwich down and looked at me with an expression that was trying to be casual and not managing it at all. "It's going well."

"That's not a Priya answer. That's an everyone else answer. Try again."

She looked at the table. "It's going better than I knew anything could go. She texts me good morning and she remembers things I said three weeks ago and she laughs at my jokes genuinely and when she looks at me I feel—" She stopped. "I feel like myself. The best version of it. Like she's somehow pulling the truest parts of me to the surface just by being around."

I looked at her.

"Priya," I said.

"I know."

"That's—"

"I know Zara."

"Have you told her that."

She looked at the remaining half sandwich. "Not in those words. But I think she knows. She's very perceptive. It's inconvenient."

I smiled. "Tell her. In those words. When you're ready."

"I will." She picked the sandwich back up. "Also she wants to meet Chase properly. She said she keeps hearing about him and she wants to see for herself if he's real or if I made him up."

"He's real," I said.

"That's what I told her. She's skeptical. She said no one does what he did with the PA system in real life."

"He absolutely did."

"I know." Priya finished the sandwich. "Double date. Me, Riley, you, Chase. Before the semester ends."

"Deal," I said.

She went back to her textbook. I went back to mine. The study room was warm and the campus outside was cold and somewhere across the building Riley was finishing a studio session and was going to bring food and Priya was going to tell her the truest thing when she was ready and that was a beautiful thing to sit near.
— — —
The double date happened on a Thursday evening.

We went to a restaurant in the city — not the Italian place Chase and I had been to, somewhere new, a small Korean place that Riley had found two weeks after arriving at Westbridge because she had a gift for locating good food in unfamiliar cities. It was warm and loud in the best way and the four of us took a table in the corner and the evening arranged itself into something that felt, within about fifteen minutes, entirely natural.

Riley was exactly what I had expected and also nothing like I expected. She was funny — the quick unexpected kind that landed before you had time to prepare for it. She asked Chase questions with the direct curiosity she brought to everything and Chase answered them honestly and she listened with her whole attention and I watched Priya watching Riley listen and understood completely why Priya felt the way she felt.

"So the PA system," Riley said to Chase at some point. "Like the actual campus PA system."

"The actual campus PA system," Chase confirmed.

"In front of everyone."

"In front of everyone."

Riley looked at me. "And you said it back. In the dining hall."

"I stood up and said it back," I said.

Riley looked between us for a moment. Then she looked at Priya. "They're real."

"I told you," Priya said.

"I believed you. I just needed to see it." Riley picked up her chopsticks. "Okay. I'm satisfied."

Chase looked at me. I looked at him. We both tried not to smile and failed.

The dinner lasted three hours. We talked about everything — Riley's work in the art department, a piece she was developing for the end of year showcase that she described with her hands moving the way she did when something excited her. Chase's scholarship and the probation that was nearly up. Priya's ongoing battle with her module reading list. The essay that had been shared two hundred and forty times online since it went live.

At one point Riley reached over and squeezed Priya's hand under the table — not a big gesture, just there and then gone — and Priya looked at her briefly with that private smile and went back to the conversation.

I caught Chase's eye across the table.

He raised his eyebrows slightly.

I smiled into my food.

Outside afterward on the pavement the four of us stood in the cold deciding which direction everyone was heading and Riley said she and Priya were going back to Priya's to watch a film and Chase said we were heading the same way for the first ten minutes so we all walked together and the city was doing the December thing with lights in windows and cold air and the four of us taking up the pavement together talking about nothing and the evening felt full in a way that didn't need anything adding to it.

At the junction where we split Priya hugged me and said quietly into my ear: "I told her. In those words. Last night."

I pulled back and looked at her face.

She was glowing. There was no other word for it.

"And?" I said.

"She said she already knew," Priya said. "She said she had known since the east café. That she had been waiting for me to catch up."

I stared at her.

"She was waiting for me," Priya said. Like she was still processing it herself. "This whole time."

I grabbed both her hands.

"Priya Anand," I said.

"I know," she said. Eyes bright. "I know."

Riley appeared at her shoulder and looked between us. "Are we doing the thing where you two communicate in a language the rest of us don't speak?"

"Yes," Priya said.

"Okay," Riley said easily, and took Priya's hand. "Come on. The film starts in twenty minutes."

They walked away down the pavement. I watched them go — Priya and Riley, hands together, Riley saying something that made Priya tip her head back and laugh into the December night.

Chase came to stand beside me.

"Good evening," he said.

"Really good," I said.

He took my hand and we walked home the other way and the city lights were everywhere and the cold was the kind that made everything feel clear and I held his hand and thought about how full the evening had been and how none of it was what I had expected my life to look like a year ago.

It was better.

It was so much better.