Page 118 of What We Don't Say: Part One

I look out the window before my face can do something I’ll have to explain. Campus is still twenty minutes away. The road passes in green strips and wet pavement, the sky low and pale above the trees. I think about Callie’s hand in my hair under the dining table, how she told me I was allowed to need her, how she said wanting her didn’t hurt her. I think about Garrett saying love can still ask too much when the timing is wrong.

“I want her to have a good interview,” I say.

“I know you do.” Garrett slows at a light and rests his hand briefly over mine. The pressure keeps me from worrying the sweater cuff against my mouth. “Then give her a good lunch. Something simple and sweet. Something she can take into that room with her instead of something she has to recover from.”

“I’m not trying to make her recover from me.”

“I know,” he says at once. “That’s why I’m reminding you before the day asks too much of everyone.”

The light changes before I can find an answer that feels safe to say. Garrett’s hand returns to the wheel, and I stare at my phone until the screen dims. I could text Sloane. I could text Idris. I could say Garrett is talking in that careful way again, and it makes my ribs feel too small. But the words look foolish in my head. Garrett is driving me to the lunch I asked for. He iskeeping the car cool. He is saying Callie matters. Nothing he says is bad enough to hold up and point at.

The campus rises out of the trees in red brick and damp stone. Students move along the paths in clusters, coffee cups in hand, backpacks thumping against their hips, laughter carrying too sharply through the open window when Garrett pulls into the visitor lot. I press my lips together and remind myself that I wanted this. I wanted one normal hour before everything at home became blankets and heat and people checking my temperature while trying not to look afraid.

Garrett parks near the humanities building. He turns the engine off but doesn’t get out right away, and I know he is looking at me even before I turn my head.

“If you become unsteady, call me,” he says. “I’ll stay nearby until lunch is finished.”

“I can call Sloane too.”

“You can,” he says, with no change in tone. “Sloane is very close to the edge today because he’s worried about you and Calliope. Use care with what you ask of him, that’s all.”

I nod because arguing would take more words than I have. The car door opens, and campus noise pours in: tires on wet asphalt, a far-off mower, students calling to each other near the library steps. The sound strikes my skin with little sparks, but then I see Callie waiting outside the café, and everything else drops away.

She lights up when she sees me.

It is immediate and whole, the kind of smile that doesn’t ask permission from the people around us. Her navy blazer makes her look polished, but her hair is already losing pins, and one curl has escaped near her cheek. She hurries down the path with her bag against her hip and reaches me before I can decide whether to walk or stand still.

“Star,” she says, and then her arms are around me.

I fold into her. My face finds the side of her neck, and her scent fills my lungs, honeyed pear and vanilla tea with coffee and paper tucked underneath. She holds me in the middle of the walkway, one hand in my hair and the other flat between my shoulder blades, and for the first time since leaving the house, I stop feeling like I'm being careful with every inch of myself.

“You came,” she says against my temple.

“I said I would.” My hands curl in the back of her blazer, and the fabric is smooth under my fingers instead of soft like her cardigans. “You look pretty.”

Her laugh shakes a little. “I’m supposed to look employable.”

“You look both.”

She pulls back enough to see my face, and her smile goes tender around the edges. She opens her mouth, but Garrett closes his car door behind us, and the moment adjusts to fit him into it.

“Thank you for bringing him,” Callie says, turning toward him with one hand still holding mine.

“Of course.” Garrett’s gaze moves over our joined hands, the sweater sleeves covering my knuckles, the way Callie stands close enough that her shoulder touches mine. “I’ll stay nearby. Text me when he’s ready to come home.”

“I can bring him back after the interview if he wants to wait,” Callie says, and hope moves through me so quickly that I grip her fingers.

Garrett’s expression stays gentle. “We’ll see how he feels after lunch. The house is ready if campus becomes too much.”

Callie looks down at me. She doesn't correct him loudly. She doesn't make the walkway a place where everyone has to watch us disagree. She squeezes my hand and says, “We’ll see how you feel.”

The café with the soup is warmer than outside and full of the smell of coffee, toasted bread, tomato, and rain caught inpeople’s clothes. The lunch rush hasn’t fully started yet, so Callie chooses a table near the window where I can see the door and still sit with my back to the wall. She does it without announcing that she’s doing it for me. She only touches the chair and asks if this one works, and when I nod, her shoulders drop like she has been holding her breath since the walkway.

I order tomato soup because I said I wanted the café with the soup, and Callie orders grilled cheese with hers so I can steal the corner pieces. She also buys a lemon bar from the pastry case because she says it looks too opinionated to leave behind. I don’t know what that means, but the seriousness in her face when she chooses it makes a laugh come out of me before I can stop it.

“There he is,” she murmurs, setting the tray down.

“I didn’t go anywhere.”