Chapter 7 Friday

Scarlett

Maya's house was warm and loud and smelled like popcorn and the kind of scented candle that tried to be a whole personality, and Scarlett stood in the doorway for approximately three seconds before Maya grabbed her wrist and pulled her inside like she'd been expected for years.

"You came," Maya said, like this was a personal victory.

"You said it wasn't a question."

"It wasn't. I'm just pleased my intimidation tactics worked." She steered Scarlett through a hallway lined with framed photos, Maya at various ages, a woman who must be her mother with the same bright eyes, a man in a football jersey, into a living room that had been comprehensively arranged for an evening of doing nothing productively.

Blankets everywhere. Two large bowls of popcorn. Someone had pushed the coffee table back and arranged the couch cushions on the floor in a way that suggested serious commitment to comfort.

Two people were already there. A boy Scarlett vaguely recognised from English class, slight, sharp-faced, currently arguing with the television remote, and Caden, sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, long legs stretched out, looking entirely too comfortable in someone else's living room.

He looked up when she walked in.

Something in his expression settled, like a held breath released. Like he'd been waiting without meaning to show it and hadn't quite managed.

"You came," he said.

"That's what I said," Maya told him.

"Didn't ask you."

"It's my house."

Scarlett looked between them. "Are you two always like this?"

"Always," the boy with the remote confirmed without looking up. "I'm Eli, by the way. I'd shake your hand but I'm in a conflict with this remote and I can't break focus."

"Scarlett," she said.

"I know. You're all anyone's talked about for a week." He finally looked up, grinned. "No pressure."

Caden

She sat down on the floor three feet away from him and tucked her knees up and accepted the popcorn bowl Maya handed her and looked around the room with that particular expression she had taking stock, cataloguing exits, deciding whether it was safe.

He watched her decide it was.

It happened in increments. Her shoulders dropped a fraction. The careful set of her jaw softened. When Eli said something ridiculous about the movie Maya had chosen and Maya threw a cushion at him with considerable accuracy, Scarlett laughed, short and surprised, like it had escaped before she could think about it.

There it was.

He felt it like a physical thing, that laugh. Brief and unguarded and real in a way that made everything else in the room go slightly quiet around it.

He looked back at the screen before she could catch him.

"You've seen this already," she said, from three feet away.

He glanced over. She was looking at him rather than the film, eyes slightly narrowed, reading him the way she did, direct, unhurried, like she had all the time in the world to figure out exactly what you weren't saying.

"How do you know," he said.

"You're not watching it. You keep looking at everyone else's reactions instead."

He considered denying it. "Twice," he said. "It's a good film."

"Then why are you looking at everyone else?"

"I like watching people watch things they haven't seen." He paused. "It's better than the thing itself sometimes."

She looked at him for a moment. Then back at the screen. "That's either very perceptive or very strange."

"Can't it be both?"

The corner of her mouth moved. Not quite a smile. He was beginning to understand the geography of her expressions, the ones she gave freely and the ones she kept back, and the small tells that meant something was trying to get out.

Scarlett

The film was good. I actually watched it, mostly, which was more than she could say for most evenings. Maya commentated under her breath in a way that was more entertaining than distracting. Eli fell asleep forty minutes in with the dignity of someone who considered this a skill. Maya covered him with a blanket without pausing her commentary.

At some point the popcorn migrated and Scarlett ended up closer to Caden than she'd started without being entirely sure how that had happened. Close enough that she was aware of the warmth of him, the steadiness, that pull that never fully quieted doing its low persistent thing in her chest.

She kept her eyes on the screen.

When the credits rolled Maya stretched enormously and announced she was getting more drinks and disappeared into the kitchen, stepping over Eli with the practice of long familiarity.

The room went quiet.

Scarlett became very aware of the candle on the windowsill. The low light. The specific quality of the silence that had settled over the room like something deliberate.

"Can I ask you something," Caden said.

His voice was different. Quieter. The easy warmth of the evening still in it but something underneath that was more careful.

"You can ask," she said.

"Do you like it here." A pause. "Honestly."

She turned to look at him. He was already looking at her, close enough that she could see the detail of his eyes in the low light, darker now than they were in daylight, something in them that was very still and very intent.

"Honestly?" She considered. "More than I expected to."

"What did you expect?"

"The same as everywhere else." She looked down at the blanket across her lap. "Something to survive until the next place."

The silence that followed had weight to it. Not uncomfortable, the opposite, somehow, like the kind of quiet that only happened between people who had stopped performing for each other.

"And now?" he asked.

She looked up. He hadn't moved, hadn't looked away, and the pull was very loud now and she was very tired of pretending she couldn't feel it.

"Now I don't know," she said honestly. "That's new."

Something shifted in his expression. Soft and serious at once.

He reached over slowly, giving her every opportunity to pull back and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers barely grazed her jaw. Three seconds at most.

She didn't pull back.

"Good," he said quietly. "I'm glad you stayed."

From the kitchen Maya's voice rang out cheerfully "I have juice, lemonade, or water, choose your destiny" and the moment broke open into the ordinary warmth of the evening again.

But Scarlett sat with the feeling of three seconds and the word good and something in her chest that felt dangerously, terrifyingly like belonging.

She let herself have it.

Just for tonight.