Eli | POV
For two hours I forgot about everything.
That was the honest truth of it. The wall. The note. Reeve's growing silences. Courtney going pale in a hallway. All of it just — receded, the way background noise recedes when something worth listening to finally starts.
Jade did that. Without trying.
She showed up with microwave popcorn because she didn't know what to bring and she said so directly — "I didn't know what to bring so I brought popcorn, is that weird" — and Reeve immediately liked her for it. He had a simple system for people: if you admitted uncertainty without being embarrassed by it, you were real. Jade was real within four minutes.
We watched something loud and stupid and fun, the five of us crammed into my living room — me, Jade, Reeve, and two others from our grade. Jade sat beside me on the floor with her back against the couch. Close enough that her shoulder touched mine twice during the movie. She didn't move away either time.
Neither did I.
Sable had the armchair. She always took the armchair — same spot, every time, slightly removed from the group in a way that looked like preference but maybe wasn't. I glanced at her once during the first hour and she was watching the screen, expression neutral, coffee mug in both hands.
Normal. Fine. Everything fine.
I almost believed it.
Halfway through the second movie Reeve stood up and stretched and said he was getting water and looked at me in a specific way — the way that meant follow me, not a request — and I got up and followed him to the kitchen.
He turned on the faucet. Let it run. Which meant he didn't actually want water, he wanted the sound of water, which meant he didn't want to be overheard.
My stomach tightened.
"What," I said quietly.
"I need to show you something." He kept his voice low, eyes on the doorway behind me. "I have a list. I've been putting it together for a while and I need you to actually look at it because—"
He stopped.
I turned around.
Sable was in the kitchen doorway.
She wasn't doing anything. Just standing there with her empty mug, head tilted slightly, looking at Reeve with an expression I'd seen her use before — calm, patient, the specific stillness of someone who has already done their math and is simply waiting for the rest of the room to catch up.
She looked at him the way you look at a problem you've already solved.
Reeve's mouth closed.
The faucet ran between us.
"Refill," Sable said pleasantly, holding up her mug. She crossed to the sink — past Reeve, close enough that her arm nearly brushed his — and filled it with water, not coffee, which she never drank plain. Then she turned and smiled at both of us.
"Movie's getting good," she said. "You're missing it."
She walked back out.
Reeve and I stood in the kitchen for three full seconds without speaking. His jaw was tight. He looked at the doorway she'd just left through, then at me, and something in his expression had changed — not afraid exactly. More like confirmed.
"Later," he said finally. Quietly.
"Reeve—"
"Later, Eli." He turned the faucet off. "Not here."
Later didn't come.
The movie ended and people gathered their things and Jade said goodnight in the doorway — she touched my arm briefly, just her fingers on my sleeve, and I held onto that small warmth all the way down the front path.
Sable walked with me to the corner where our routes split. She was easy and light the whole way, talking about nothing — something she'd seen online, something her mom had said — and I walked beside her and tried twice to find the right words.
Finally I said, "Did something happen with you and Reeve tonight?"
She looked over at me. Soft surprise on her face. "What do you mean?"
"In the kitchen. He went quiet when you came in."
"Did he?" She considered it, tilted her head like she was genuinely puzzling over it. "He's been weird with me lately. I think he just—" She paused. "Some people can't stand seeing you happy, Eli. They'd rather keep you worried."
I looked at her. "What does that mean?"
"It means Reeve likes being your most important person." She said it gently, without cruelty, like she was delivering information I needed. "When someone new comes in and you start — glowing, the way you were tonight — it threatens that. So he manufactures reasons for you to be unsettled. Keeps you needing him."
She shrugged once. Clean and final.
"I'm probably wrong," she added. "I just know how much he matters to you and I don't want him using that."
She squeezed my hand once at the corner and turned and walked away and I stood there with her words rearranging something in my chest and hated how reasonable they sounded.
I checked my phone walking back up my path.
A text from Jade. Sent twelve minutes ago.
Hey. So your friend Sable came up to me tonight. Said something I think you should probably know about.
I stopped walking.
My thumbs moved fast: What did she say?
I watched the three dots appear.
Disappear.
Appear again.
Then:
Never mind. It's fine. Goodnight Eli.
I stood on my front path in the dark and read that twice.
Never mind. It's fine.
From the girl who asked direct questions about everything. From the girl who had never once in my presence chosen the easier, quieter answer when the true one was available. From the girl who noticed things and said them because she had a low tolerance for pretending.
That girl had typed never mind.
That girl had typed it's fine.
It was not fine.
Whatever Sable had said to her in the twelve minutes I'd been in that kitchen — whatever had been quiet enough that I hadn't noticed and deliberate enough that Jade had started a text and then pulled it back — had worked.
I stared at my phone.
Behind me the front door was unlocked.
The kitchen light was on.
I hadn't left it on.