He pouts.
Actually pouts. His lower lip pushes forward in a display of wounded vanity that is so unexpected on his angular, reserved face that it short-circuits whatever apology I was preparing to deliver next.
"I look just fine when my glasses aren't broken."
"I said I'd pay for them! How much?"
He huffs, adjusting the crooked frames on his nose with one finger.
"Six hundred bucks." The number drops with flat, unflinching delivery. "Since I'm blind as a bat and the lenses are custom."
I gawk at him.
Six hundred dollars. For glasses. That my skull destroyed during a reckless forest sprint because I was too busy obsessing over an application deadline to watch where I was running.
He rolls his eyes at my expression.
"Whatever. Forget it."
"What's your e-transfer?"
The eye roll halts. He frowns, one eyebrow arching above the cracked lens in a way that makes the rainbow on his cheek shift position.
"What?"
"Your e-transfer. Your email. Whatever you use for digital payments." I am already pulling my phone from the zippered pocket of my running shorts, the ancient device that my father keeps threatening to replace and I keep insisting works perfectly well for its three essential functions: calls, texts, and guilt-induced financial transactions with strangers whose eyewear I have destroyed. "Give me the address."
He stares at me. Squinting, still, through the cracked lens that is doing approximately forty percent of its original job.
I wave my phone at him.
"The email. Today, please. Before your retinas deteriorate further from exposure to unfiltered sunlight."
He mutters it. Low enough that I have to lean in to catch the letters, which puts me back in range of his scent, which makes my hindbrain sit up and wag its tail with renewed enthusiasm that I pointedly ignore.
I type the address into my phone, squinting at the cracked screen of my own ancient device with the focused determinationof someone who refuses to acknowledge the irony of a girl with a shattered phone screen lecturing a man about broken glasses.
I hold the screen toward him.
"This right?"
He leans in, squinting through the functional portion of his remaining lens.
"Yeah."
I press send.
Six hundred dollars leaves my account with a swiftness that my bank balance will not forgive and my conscience absolutely required. The confirmation notification pings on both our devices simultaneously, and his frown deepens into genuine confusion as he registers the transaction on his own phone.
"Why are you actually doing this?"
The question carries a bewilderment that feels too layered for a six-hundred-dollar e-transfer. Like he is not asking about the money. Like he is asking why a stranger would bother following through on an obligation most people would dodge with a shrug and asorry about that, good luck.
"Well, you need to see, right?" I pocket my phone. "I can't go around breaking people's valuables and thinking I can get away with it. That's not how I operate."
He does not respond. Just looks at me through his broken frames with an expression I cannot decode. Curiosity, maybe. Or the particular confusion of someone who expected the worst and got something marginally better.
"Anyway." I take a step back toward the trail, feeling the morning air cool against the lingering heat on my skin. "I've gotta go. My pace is completely shot and I need at least another two miles before breakfast." I lift a hand in a half-wave that lands somewhere between casual and apologetic. "Sorry again. About the glasses. And the, uh. Falling on you. Situation."
