Lunch? With her and the other two girls? They want to have lunch with… me? But why? I’ve been nothing but an embarrassment to the campus, and yet they want me around.
I studied her a bit longer, trying to find any kind of sign that she was joking, messing with me. An eye roll, smirk, anything but no. I got nothing. She was serious, real and genuine with her request. I shifted my gaze away, anywhere but her eyes.
I misread her again.
Again.
She must have seen the hesitation in my face, because her tone softened immediately. “If you’re not comfortable, then just me,” she offered.
My eyes lifted to hers, startled. She’d be willing to leave her two friends for me?
“We all want to be friends with you,” she went on gently, “but if you’re not ready yet, then I hope hanging out with me would be okay?”
I felt something warm press against my ribs, like the start of a crack in old, thick ice. No one has ever said something like that to me before. I swallowed hard and managed the smallest nod.
Her face lit up almost immediately, like a child on Christmas morning. “Yeah?” her voice a bit louder now, excitement laced over it. “Meet me here at one?”
I nodded again, slower this time, like my body hadn’t caught up to my head yet.
“Great!” Her smile widened before she shoved the bag into her locker. “I’ll see you here.”
She waved, casual and effortless, like this was normal. Like I was normal. Then she disappeared down the hall toward class, her hair bouncing as she turned the corner.
I stood there for a beat too long, clutching the strap of my bag like it could ground me. No one had ever invited me like that before.
Chapter Four
Joshua
Through the glass pane of the hallway window, I froze.
Her lips moved. For the first time, I saw them part, not for me, but for someone else. Words I couldn’t hear, couldn’t steal, falling into someone else’s hands while I stood outside like a fucking stranger.
My jaw tightened. The pen in my grip nearly snapped.
Fuck.
I thought back to that hum on the field, that small, almost careless sound that still tore through me like it was meant for my ears alone. Alex had called her voice soft and gentle. He was wrong. He didn’t describe it properly, vague. Too vague.
It was softer. Softer than words should be allowed to sound.
Softer than I’d imagined in the sleepless nights I’d spent trying to hear her in my head.
She doesn’t even know what she does to me.
I didn’t need her lips to form the words for me. That hum, it was enough. More than enough.
Just a second of sound, soft and unguarded, and now I can carve it into the back of my skull. Replay it until it’s no longer just a hum, until it bends and reshapes into anything I want it to be.
One note gave me a thousand words.
One little sound is a doorway. I pushed through and mapped everything on the other side, her kneeling, the tilt of her head, the way her lips would shape my name if she ever let them.
Alex might have heard enough to ruin me, but he was careless with it. He let the sound fall into a room that meant nothing.
Me? I’d hoard it.
I’d build a cathedral out of that hum and lay my name at its altar, and I’d wait until the day she gave me the real thing.
