She kept typing. Garrett stayed where he was, in the chair across from her, and did his best impression of someone who had somewhere to be that wasn’t three feet away from where he already was.
A few minutes passed like that. Keys clicking,
the occasional pause while she scrolled back through something, the low hum of the laptop fan working harder than it probably should have been. Outside, a car went past too fast for the street, and somewhere below that a door shut.
Garrett checked his phone. Nothing had changed. He checked it again two minutes later, mostly out of habit, and got the same result, the system giving him nothing to look at.
He wasn’t used to this part. The waiting around part, where there wasn’t a problem in front of him he could do something about. He was better, or at least more comfortable, when there was a specific thing to fix. Right now there wasn’t one, and he found himself oddly bad at simply existing in a room with another person without trying to be useful to them.
"You always this quiet?" she asked, not looking up from the screen.
"Depends on the room."
"That’s not really an answer."
"It’s the honest one, though."
She glanced up at that, like she hadn’t expected honesty to be the thing he led with.
"Fair enough." She went back to typing, then added, without much weight behind it, "I’m Freya, by the way. Since we’re apparently doing this now."
"Garrett."
"I know. It’s on your buzzer." She typed for a few more seconds, then made a small frustrated noise at the screen. "Ugh. Okay, actually, do you have a USB stick? Mine’s completely full and I need to back this up before I keep going, because if this laptop dies again mid save I will actually lose my mind."
"I think I should have. Give me a second."
He got up, went to the drawer under the TV where all the things that didn’t belong anywhere else in the flat had ended up living, and found one buried under a tangle of old charging cables. He wiped the dust off it against his jeans before handing it over.
"Thanks," she said, plugging it in immediately. "Genuinely, this is saving my night."
"No problem."
She kept working. He sat back down, and this time didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with an offer of something she hadn’t asked for. It was easier than the version of himself from twenty minutes ago would have made it.
He waited for the phone to do something. It didn’t.
No notification. No flicker of text across the lock screen. Nothing.
He frowned slightly and picked it up anyway, just to be sure, turning it over like the screen might be hiding something from a bad angle. Still nothing. He’d done exactly what she needed, without trying to manufacture the moment, without asking three follow up questions to make himself look useful. She’d had a problem and He’d solved it. That was, by every definition he could come up with, the thing the system had told him to do.
What exactly do you want from me, he thought, and didn’t say it out loud, because there wasn’t anyone in the room who could answer that except the phone, and the phone clearly wasn’t in the mood.
"You alright?" Freya asked, catching the look on his face.
"Fine. Just thinking."
"About the USB stick?"
"Something like that."
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t push it, which he appreciated more than he let on.
She checked the time around half ten, glanced at her progress bar, and started closing tabs.
"I think I’m actually good from here," she said. "Enough saved that if the power comes back on I can finish the rest at mine."
"You want to check first? Might not be back yet."
"I’ll risk it. If it’s still out I’ll be very annoyed, but at least I’ve got the file now." She started coiling the charger cable around her hand, unplugging it from the wall with her foot braced against the sofa leg for leverage.
"Thanks for this. I was about to start hunting for an all night café, and at this point in the semester I don’t have the will to leave the building for that."
"It’s fine. Wasn’t doing anything anyway."
"Still. You didn’t have to say yes..." She slung the laptop bag over her shoulder and looked around the flat once more, the same brief scan from earlier, window, coffee table, the general shape of the room, before her eyes came back to him. "...You’ve got a weirdly tidy flat for someone who answered the door looking like he’d been asleep for a week."
"I have my moments."
"Sure you do." She said it lightly, not unkindly, the kind of comment that didn’t need defending, and he didn’t try to. She headed for the door and he followed, more out of instinct than necessity.
"Good luck with the rest of it," he said.
"Thanks. See you around, I guess."
"Yeah, sure."
She left. He shut the door behind her and stood there for a second longer than the moment required.
He checked the phone one more time before he did anything else. Still nothing. No progress marker, no acknowledgment, not even the flat, unhelpful line the system had given him earlier. Just silence, which somehow felt worse than a rejection would have.
He didn’t chase it. Apparently, nothing had changed. No job, University in the morning, which he still had to actually get himself to, mess or no mess, system or no system.
He thought about Jacey for a second, not the conversation, not the specifics, just the fact of her, the space where she used to be, and let it pass through without holding onto it.
She was still gone. That hadn’t changed either. Some things just sat there being true whether he examined them or not.
He got ready for bed without much ceremony and turned the light off.
The alarm went off at 7am the way it always did, and Garrett lay there for exactly as long as he usually allowed himself before making his body do something about it.
He sat up, looked at the room in the flat grey light coming through the window, and saw it properly for what felt like the first time in a while, the wardrobe door not quite shut over the clothes he’d shoved in it, the bin bag still sitting behind the sofa where he’d stashed it, the mugs still hiding in the cabinet under the sink.
He didn’t think about it much. He got up, opened the wardrobe, and started sorting the clothes into something resembling categories.
He carried the bin bag out to the chute in the corridor. He washed the mugs, actually washed them this time, and left them upside down on the rack to dry.
None of it was for anyone. Nobody was coming over. There was no notification waiting to reward him for it. He just did it, the way you do a thing you’ve decided you’re going to keep doing without making a whole event out of the decision.
He showered, got dressed, checked his bag for the readings he needed, and put a granola bar in his pocket because it was the only breakfast option that didn’t require standing at the counter for ten minutes he didn’t have.
He checked his phone on the way out.
[PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: INCOMPLETE.]
No explanation. No hint. Just the same three words, sitting there like they’d been waiting for him to look.
He locked the door behind him, phone still in his hand, and looked at the screen a second longer before putting it in his pocket.
"We’ll figure you out eventually," he said, to no one in particular, and headed for the stairs.
"There’ve gotta be girls I can help at school."