Chapter 9
SOREN
Iremember exactly where she was standing.
Not generally. Not somewhere in the room. Exactly where.
Kitchen. Left side of the island. Back against the counter like she didn’t quite belong. Like she’d ended up in the center of something by accident and didn’t know how to leave without drawing attention to herself.
Everyone else was loud. Bodies pressed too close, voices overlapping, music bleeding through the walls like it was alive.
But she wasn’t part of it. She was just… there. Watching.
That’s what caught me. Not her face. Not at first, although that was certainly captivating when I did notice it.
People think attention is obvious. It’s not. Most of them don’t see anything. They just react. Perform.
She was quiet, though. Still. Tracking everything like she didn’t trust it. Like she was waiting for something to shift.
I leaned against the doorway and watched her for a while. Long enough to confirm it.
She wasn’t drunk enough to blur. Not careless, or dissolving into the room like everyone else. Contained. That’s rare.
Someone bumped into her shoulder, hard enough that it should have pissed her off. She just steadied herself. Adjusted. Didn’t make a scene. Didn’t even look at them.
I moved closer. Not directly.
Never directly.
Angle matters. Timing matters. People feel it when you approach head-on. They brace.
So I circled. Took a drink I didn’t want. Paused at conversations I wasn’t listening to. Let the room keep moving while I didn’t.
Then I stepped into her space like I’d always been there. “You look like you hate it here.”
She blinked, like I’d pulled her out of something. “I don’t hate it,” she said.
Soft. Careful. A small lie.
I tilted my head slightly. Watched her recalibrate. “You don’t belong here,” I said.
Her mouth parted, just a fraction.
People think flattery works. It doesn’t.
Recognition does.
And I see her.
“I do,” she said.
But there was hesitation now.
I leaned my shoulder against the counter beside her. Not touching. Close enough she’d feel it if she moved. “You’re watching everyone like you’re waiting for something to go wrong.”
Her breath caught. “I’m not,” she said.
Quieter this time. Another lie. Smaller.
I smiled slightly. “Okay.” Let her keep it.
People cling harder when you try to take it from them.
Noise swelled. Someone shouting from the living room. Glass breaking somewhere.
She flinched. Barely.
“You want to get out of here?” I asked.
Eye contact. Full. Unfiltered.
Her eyes weren’t soft. But they were alert. Like she was trying to figure out if I was safe. Or if I just looked like it.
“Where would we go?” she asked.
Not no.
I let a second pass before answering. Not rushing. Not filling the space. “Anywhere quieter.”
She hesitated, looked me over briefly one more time as if to make sure I didn’t have ‘Serial Killer’ tattooed discreetly anywhere, and then she nodded.
That’s all it took.
We didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t need to. The kind of people at that party wouldn’t notice absence unless it affected them.
Outside, the air was cooler. It smelled like the leftovers of a bonfire and cheap cigarettes. She exhaled like she’d been holding it.
I watched her instead of speaking. Let her settle. Let the silence stretch.
“Do you do this a lot?” she asked finally.
“Leave college parties where everyone is being drunk and loud and obnoxious?”
“With strangers.”
I smiled. Just slightly. “You don’t feel like a stranger.”
She smiled back, her guard down.
Not fully trust—not yet, of course not—but something close.
We walked. Didn’t talk much. Didn’t need to.
She kept glancing at me like she was trying to place me. Like she should already know something she couldn’t quite reach.
I liked that.
At one point, her hand brushed mine. Accident. Probably.
I didn’t react. Didn’t grab. Didn’t close the distance. Just let it happen. Let it pass.
We stopped under a streetlight.
She looked at me again, longer this time. “You’re different,” she said.
I didn’t ask how. I already knew. “You noticed.”
Her lips parted slightly.
That’s when it happened.
We didn’t touch. It wasn’t about that.
When she decided—without saying it—that I was something she could step toward.
The way she looked at me when she realized she wasn’t as guarded with me as she had to be around everyone else.
People think those decisions are loud.
They’re not. They’re quiet. Internal. Almost invisible.
But they’re permanent.
She won’t remember it like that, I’m sure.
She’ll say it was nothing.
A blur. A party. A random night.
That’s fine.
Memory isn’t about accuracy.
It’s about ownership.
And that night was mine.