Mae is staring at me with an expression that I cannot fully decode through the fog of my own shame. Processing. Calculating. Running the data of this encounter through whatever emotional framework she has built to navigate a world that keeps surprising her in ways she did not budget for.
Jace arrives at my shoulder with his characteristic lack of urgency, strolling up to the scene like a man who has been watching a very engaging television program and has decided to join the viewing party. His golden-brown eyes sweep over Mae with a quick assessment that carries more warmth than scrutiny.
"Wow." His voice is pitched for charm, the teasing register he deploys when he wants to make someone smile without requiring them to do any emotional labor. "You grew up nicely, MaeMae."
She blinks at him, her hazel eyes narrowing with the effort of placing a face that has changed significantly since the last time it appeared in her field of vision.
"Do I... know you?"
His hand flies to his chest with the theatrical devastation of a man who has been morally wounded by the failure of a stranger to recognize his face.
"Damn. I'm that easy to forget? I'm appalled. Wounded. My ego may never recover."
I roll my eyes with enough centrifugal force to power a small generator.
"Hell yeah you are. Because you were a shy fucker who didn't talk to anyone, remember? You'd just lurk in the corner like some kind of social vampire, watching everyone else have conversations while you picked at your lunch."
"I wasobserving." The protest arrives with the rehearsed conviction of a man who has defended this distinction many times. "There's a difference."
"There really isn't."
"You're just jealous because I had an air of mystery and you had an air of 'please notice me, I'm desperate for attention.'"
I gasp. The sound is pure, undiluted outrage, compressed into a single inhalation that could strip paint from a wall.
"I was NOT desperate for attention! I was enthusiastic! There's a massive difference!"
"Sure. Keep telling yourself that."
The bickering is automatic. Reflexive. The verbal sparring that Jace and I have been conducting since we were old enough to formulate insults, our rhythm so practiced and our timing so instinctive that we could do this in our sleep. It is comfortable in a way that feels necessary right now, grounding me in familiarity while the rest of my emotional landscape shifts beneath my feet like tectonic plates adjusting to accommodate the magnitude of what just happened.
"Wait." Mae's voice cuts through our volley with the sharp click of recognition assembling itself from fragments. "Jace? Jace Nakamura?"
His face illuminates. Joy spreading across his angular features with a brightness that transforms his usual air of curated detachment into genuine, uncalculated delight.
"She remembers!" He spreads his arms wide, presenting himself like a prize won at a carnival. "The prodigal MaeMae recognizes me at last. My faith in our childhood friendship is restored."
"Don't be dramatic," I mutter, though the relief of watching Mae smile at him loosens a knot between my shoulder blades that has been constricting since the moment I shouted her name across the corridor. "She probably just recognized your ego. It's hard to miss."
"Jealousy doesn't look good on you, Holloway."
"Neither does that hairstyle, but you don't see me pointing it out every five seconds."
Mae's eyes are darting between us, her expression shifting from confusion to recognition to the specific, wistful amusement of someone watching a dynamic she remembers being part of and is not sure she is still welcome in.
"You two know each other?" she asks, gesturing between us.
I sigh with theatrical despair that is approximately forty percent genuine.
"Unfortunately. Our parents are business partners. I've been stuck with him since birth, basically. It's a curse I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy."
"You love me," Jace declares, with the smug certainty of a man stating a meteorological fact.
"I tolerate you. There's a difference."
"You cried when I went away to hockey camp for two weeks."
He did not just bring up the hockey camp incident.
