~~~~~ Emery’s POV ~~~~~
Monday’s session had left me drained in a way I hadn’t expected.
Not physically, but the specific kind of tired that comes from holding a conversation carefully, weighing every word before it left my mouth so it landed as a tutor and not as whatever else.
By the time I got out of my last class Tuesday evening, I didn’t have it in me to cook, didn’t have it in me to sit in my apartment eating cereal over the sink like I usually did on nights like this.
So I did something I almost never did and walked the four blocks to the little Italian place near campus.
The one with the string lights in the window that made it look nicer than the prices actually were.
I told myself it was just about not wanting to cook.
I mostly believed it.
The hostess seated me near the window without asking, the way she always did when I came in alone, which wasn’t often but was often enough that she recognized me.
A girl who needed forty-five minutes of quiet and something warm that wasn’t ramen.
I’d brought a book I had no real intention of reading, more of a prop than anything.
Something to keep my hands busy while I let the day settle off my shoulders.
The place was quiet for a Tuesday, only a handful of tables occupied, and soft music was drifting from somewhere near the kitchen, and I’d just been seated at a small two-top near the window when I heard my name.
“Hale?”
I looked up, and there she was—Calloway.
She was standing a few feet from my table with a to-go bag already in one hand, looking as startled to see me as I clearly must have looked to see her.
She wasn’t in practice gear for once, just jeans and a soft gray sweater that made her look younger.
Somehow, less like the team captain from the recruiting posters and more like an actual person who occasionally left the rink and existed in the world doing normal things, like ordering takeout on a Tuesday.
“This is the last place I expected to run into you,” I said before I could think better of it.
“Same.” She glanced at the to-go bag in her hand like she was reconsidering it entirely.
“I usually just grab and go.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually sat down here before.”
“Well, you’re welcome to sit down now.
Unless the takeout’s for someone else.”
“It’s for me: a sad, solo Tuesday dinner, very glamorous.” She said it lightly, but there was something underneath it, a flicker of the same exhaustion I recognized in myself.
The kind that came from a schedule with no real breaks in it.
“Are you inviting me to stay?”
I hadn’t meant to, not exactly; the words had just slipped out the way things kept slipping out around her lately, unplanned and a little too honest.
But now that they were said, I found I didn’t want to take them back. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“I mean, we’re not supposed to meet again until Wednesday.
This would just be a coincidence.
Two people who happen to know each other, happening to eat at the same restaurant.”
“A coincidence,” she repeated, the corner of her mouth curving in that way it did right before she decided to do something she would claim later wasn’t planned.
“I can work with a coincidence,” she said, and sat down.
The waiter came by and took her order to stay instead, and for a moment neither of us said anything.
The string lights cast everything in a soft, warm glow that made the whole restaurant feel smaller and more private than it probably was.
“So,” she said finally, “no chemistry talk tonight.
House rule.”
“Fine by me.
What do we talk about instead?”
“I don’t know.
Normal things.
What do people talk about at dinner when it’s not a tutoring session?”
“I genuinely don’t remember.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a normal dinner with someone who wasn’t Priya complaining about her thermodynamics professor.”
That got an actual laugh out of her, easy and unguarded in a way that still caught me off guard every time she laughed like that.
“Fine.
Tell me something about you that has nothing to do with chemistry, tutoring, or rent.
A rule-of-three unrelated fact.”
I thought about it for a second, turning my water glass slowly the way I always did when I was stalling.
“I used to want to be a marine biologist before chemistry took over.
I had this whole plan when I was twelve: tide pools and dolphins, the whole thing.”
“What happened?”
“Landlocked state.
It was a realistically expensive dream.
Chemistry felt more practical, and it turns out I actually like it, so it wasn’t exactly a sacrifice.” I shrugged.
“Your turn.
Something that has nothing to do with hockey.”
She was quiet for a moment, like she genuinely had to think about it, which told me more than the answer itself eventually did. Get faster updates on g.com.
“I used to draw a lot.
Actually, when I was a kid, before hockey ate every free hour I had.
I still doodle sometimes, on the corners of my notes.
Bad habit for someone who’s supposed to be paying attention in lecture.”
“I’ve seen your notes.
There’s a very detailed cartoon goalie in the margin of your last worksheet,” I said, smiling.
“You weren’t supposed to notice that.”
“I notice everything.
It’s the whole brand, remember?”
She laughed again, and something about the sound of it—twice in one dinner, easy, natural, nothing performed about it—settled warm in my chest in a way I was getting less and less good at ignoring.
The food arrived soon, and we traded bites without discussing it the same way we always seemed to, and the conversation kept drifting somewhere easy and unplanned.
Nothing like the careful, weighed exchanges of a tutoring session.
It felt, for the first time since I had met her, like just two people having dinner, no deal attached, no stipend riding on how well the evening went.
Neither of us noticed that a phone was angled toward our table from two booths over, held low and casual by a stranger who had clearly recognized her the second she’d sat down, snapping a handful of photos between bites of their own meal with the practiced discretion of someone who did this often enough to have gotten good at it.
We just kept talking, the string lights glowing warm above us, both of us far too absorbed in each other to notice we were being watched at all.
By the time we finally split the bill—she tried to cover it again, and I refused again—
The restaurant had nearly emptied out, and neither of us had mentioned chemistry once the entire night.
“Same time tomorrow,” Calloway said, standing outside on the sidewalk, breath visible in the cold.
It wasn’t quite a question.
“Same time tomorrow,” I confirmed.
She stared at me for a second longer than the moment strictly required.
Like she wanted to say something else and decided against it.
And then she was walking off toward the athletic dorms, her hands tucked into her jacket pockets, and I stood there a moment longer than necessary myself, watching her go, feeling lighter than I had any right to feel after what was supposed to have been just an ordinary, unplanned dinner.
I smiled to myself and walked toward the bus stop, head down against the wind, replaying the marine biologist story and the cartoon goalie doodle and the sound of her laugh, twice in one night, easy and unguarded.
The bus came a few minutes later.
I climbed on, found a seat near the back, and watched the streetlights blur past the window the whole ride home, still smiling, still not thinking about rent, still not thinking about anything except a gray sweater and a laugh I wanted to hear again.
“What a nice day.” I muttered under my breath.