Chapter 33 Lost in grief
The cafeteria was half-full when they arrived, the usual noise of clinking trays, low chatter, and the hum of fluorescent lights overhead. Students huddled around tables, laughing, scrolling, biting into sandwiches like the world hadn’t broken apart just a week ago.
For Lila, it felt like stepping into another planet. The air smelled of fries and coffee, but even that seemed distant, a smell she could sense but not feel.
Roy held the door for her, waiting as she hesitated before stepping inside. Her fingers were wrapped tightly around the strap of her bag, knuckles pale. She looked like she might turn around any moment.
“Let’s sit there,” Roy said gently, pointing to a small booth near the corner window.
She nodded wordlessly.
They sat across from each other, the soft hum of the dining hall muffled by the glass walls around them. A waitress appeared, pad in hand.
“What would you like?”
Lila glanced at the menu, her eyes moving over the words without seeing them. “I’m fine,” she murmured.
Roy frowned. “You’ve got to eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t been hungry for days,” he said quietly.
Her lips pressed into a thin line. “It doesn’t matter.”
Roy looked at her and saw the small tremor in her hands, the dull glaze in her eyes. The color had drained from her face. She looked like someone halfway between this world and somewhere she couldn’t escape.
He turned to the waitress. “She’ll have the soup and toast. And a coffee. Please.”
Lila opened her mouth to protest, but he just gave her a soft look that silenced her.
“Trust me,” he said. “It’s not terrible.”
She managed the faintest twitch of a smile or maybe it was just a reflex, some fragment of politeness left over from before everything fell apart.
When the waitress left, the silence between them settled like a heavy fog. Roy tried to find something to say, something light, something normal but the words all felt wrong.
He watched her stare at the window, eyes following the people outside, her reflection faint against the glass.
She looks lost, he thought. Like she’s not even sure she’s still here.
Minutes passed. Maybe fifteen. The waitress returned, sliding plates onto the table, a bowl of soup steaming softly, golden toast beside it. Lila didn’t move. She didn’t even glance down.
Roy cleared his throat. “It’s getting cold.”
No response.
He leaned forward slightly and tapped her hand. “Hey.”
Her eyes blinked back into focus, as if surfacing from underwater.
“What?”
He smiled gently. “Your food’s here.”
She looked down, startled as if she hadn’t even realized it had been served. The soup’s surface shimmered with a thin film of warmth.
“Oh.” Her voice cracked. “Right, sorry.”
She reached for the spoon, her fingers barely steady enough to lift it. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For ordering.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” he said softly. “You need to eat.”
Lila stared at the spoon, watching her reflection tremble in the liquid. She didn’t attempt to lift the spoon to her lips. Instead, her lips parted, and her eyes filled.
It happened slowly, the tears first gathering, then spilling over before she could stop them. She looked down quickly, her shoulders shaking once, twice.
“I’m sorry,” she said under her breath. “I just.. I can’t..”
Roy reached across the table, resting his hand over hers. “You don’t have to be sorry, Lila.”
She tried to breathe, but it came out as a quiet sob. “I keep thinking about her.”
Roy said nothing.
“She’d hate this,” Lila went on, her voice trembling. “She’d be laughing right now, you know? She’d tell me I look miserable and that soup isn’t real food.”
Her laugh cracked mid-sentence.
“She used to, she used to make everything feel easy. We’d stay up late, just talking about the dumbest things. What color clouds actually are, how coffee tastes different at night, what kind of flower matches your personality. Stupid things.”
Roy’s throat tightened. “They weren’t stupid.”
Lila shook her head, staring at her untouched meal. “She could walk into any room and it just shifted. Like she carried her own light.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And now it’s just gone.”
Roy didn’t know what to say to that, there was nothing to say. He watched her fingers curl slightly against the edge of the table, her body tense like she was bracing against a storm only she could feel.
He wanted to tell her time would heal it. But he knew how hollow that sounded when the wound was still bleeding.
So instead, he said, “You don’t have to forget her to keep going.”
Lila’s gaze lifted to his eyes, red but steady. “I don’t even know how to keep going. Every time I laugh, I feel guilty. Every time I eat, I think of her. She’d tell me to stop acting like a ghost, but.” She stopped, pressing her hand to her mouth as another tear slipped free. “She’s not here to say it.”
Roy squeezed her hand gently. “Then I’ll say it for her.”
She blinked, confused.
“You’re still here, Lila,” he said quietly. “And she’d want you to be.”
Something in her expression softened just slightly. The grief didn’t leave her face, but it shifted, like it had made room for something else.
Maybe that was how healing started not by forgetting, but by learning to carry the weight differently.
They sat there for a while. The noise of the cafeteria faded into the background, the laughter, footsteps, trays clattering. Life moving on, with or without them.
Lila picked up her fork, finally. She poked at the toast, broke off a piece, and stared at it as if trying to remember what it meant to eat.
When she finally took a small bite, Roy pretended not to notice, afraid to break the fragile spell of progress.
She chewed slowly, swallowed, then whispered, almost to herself, “She would’ve ordered fries. She would have said soup’s for sad people.”
Roy smiled. “She sounds like she was a handful.”
“She was,” Lila said softly, a tiny laugh escaping her. “But the best kind.”
It was the first real sound of warmth that had left her since the funeral.
Roy leaned back slightly, relief flickering across his face. For a moment, the world felt less heavy. The light from the window fell across their table, soft and golden.
Lila traced her fingertip along the rim of her cup, lost in the rhythm of it. She thought about how quiet her dorm had been that morning, how Ruby’s empty bed still looked untouched. She thought about how laughter sounded like something from another lifetime.
And for the first time, she thought maybe she wanted to hear it again.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But someday.
Roy’s voice broke through her thoughts. “You know, I still remember the first time I met Ruby. She spilled an entire smoothie on my notes.”
Lila blinked. “She never told me that.”
“She pretended it was my fault.”
Lila laughed, shaking her head. “That sounds exactly like her.”
The sound was light and fragile, but real. It hung in the air between them, like a fragile thread of something she thought she’d lost.
Roy smiled, glad to see her laugh again.
“See? Soup’s working,” he teased softly.
“Maybe,” she murmured, glancing at her bowl. “Or maybe it’s the company.”
Their eyes met for a brief second, enough to make her look away, embarrassed by the sudden warmth she felt in her chest.
The clock above the counter ticked softly. Outside, the sky was beginning to dim, gold fading to pale gray.
It should’ve felt ordinary. But nothing felt ordinary anymore.
Lila picked up her coffee and took a slow sip. It was bitter, too strong, but she didn’t complain. It was the first thing she’d tasted in days that felt real.
Roy reached across the table, drumming his fingers lightly. “You okay?”
She nodded faintly. “Getting there.”
And she almost believed it.
The cafeteria’s crowd had thinned now. The waitress passed by to clear the next table, smiling at them. Lila tried to smile back, but her lips barely moved.
She set her cup down and looked at Roy. “Thank you. For this. For staying, for inviting me.”
He shrugged lightly. “You’d do the same for me.”
Lila opened her mouth to reply but stopped when she felt a light tap on her shoulder.
It was gentle, almost hesitant.
She turned slowly.