Chapter Four #2
I shrugged, glancing at the neat rows of handwriting in his notebook. His writing was small and tidy, and it was even color-coded.
“I don’t really need a full review,” I admitted. “Just...to fill in what I missed.”
He leaned forward. “All right. The thing with physics is that since it all builds on each other, you have to be sure to understand everything in order to keep up. So if anything is confusing at all, let me know.”
I pulled a few papers from my folder, spreading them across the table. “I think I’m caught up through the energy unit, but I still need to finish those lab sheets, and there were two quizzes I missed when...” I trailed off, realizing how that sentence would end. When everything fell apart.
Paxon didn’t push. He just nodded again, flipping through his own notes. “Yeah, those were the energy and forces lessons. I’ll help you with the worksheets; they’re basically the same materials. Once you go through them, you can ask about making up the quizzes before the test next week.”
I blinked. “Next week?”
He smiled faintly, a ghost of amusement flickering in his eyes. “Yeah, we’ve known about it for a few weeks now.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” I said dryly.
For a second, his grin widened before he caught himself, the moment slipping away as quickly as it came.
He turned his notebook toward me, tapping a problem on the page. “Okay, so this one’s about calculating work done against gravity. Want to give it a shot?”
I stared at the equation, trying to focus on the numbers and not the fact that he was sitting close enough for me to smell the faint sweetness of his cologne. “Sure.”
He watched as I worked through the problem, the sound of my pencil scratching across the paper filling the silence.
“You’re still fast at this,” he said quietly after a moment.
I glanced up, trying to switch my thoughts from the problem before me to what he said. “You sound surprised.”
“I’m not,” he said quickly. “Just impressed you’re able to pick up on this so fast.”
I fought against a frown. “I’m a good student. I’m just...there’s just a lot going on,” I murmured, dropping my gaze to the page.
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward exactly, but it wasn’t easy, either. It carried everything we hadn’t said in months: the late-night texts that had stopped, the way we’d avoided looking at each other in crowded rooms, the fact that even now, we were pretending this was only about physics.
He pointed to another section of notes. “You’ll need to finish the conservation of energy worksheet too. It’s worth a decent chunk of your grade.”
“Got it.”
He nodded once, tapping his pencil lightly against the edge of the table. “You’ll be fine. You just need to catch up a little.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said softly, tracing the edge of my paper. “Just catching up.”
The words hung between us, too simple for everything they really meant.
In the kitchen, I heard the faint clatter of dishes and Seth humming off-key. The normalcy of it grounded me, but it didn’t help ease the way my chest felt tight, like all the gravity I was calculating in the worksheet was pulling me closer to the boy across from me instead.
I had to wonder if he felt any of it.
By the time we finished reviewing the second worksheet, my brain was buzzing with numbers and equations that refused to stay still. I leaned back against the couch, rubbing my temples.
“Break time?” I asked.
Paxon smiled faintly, closing his notebook. “Yeah, I think you earned it.”
I stood, stretching the stiffness from my arms. “Bathroom,” I mumbled and slipped away, grateful for a few seconds of space.
The house was warm and quiet, the soft hum of Seth’s playlist barely audible under the whir of the vent above the stove.
I washed my hands, trying not to stare at myself too long in the mirror.
I didn’t like the girl looking back. Just looking at her made the frustration deep in my chest bubble up.
She kept hoping for something that might already be gone, and I had no idea what to do with her.
Voices carried from the kitchen when I left the bathroom.
Seth’s tone was low but firm. “You need to figure this out before you drag it out too long.”
“I know,” Paxon said, frustration threading through his voice. “Trust me, I know. I just can’t wrap my head around it.”
“Well, even if you eventually do wrap your head around it, if you keep not figuring it, it’ll be too long. Too much damage. A point of no return.”
My breath caught.
I shouldn’t have been listening. I knew that.
But the words hit harder than I wanted them to.
He voiced exactly where I felt like our path was currently headed.
To that moment where there was just...nothing.
An unfavorable end we wouldn’t be able to bounce back from.
I didn’t know exactly what it was going to look like, but I knew I had to face the truth.
It may be exactly where we ended, and each day I stared at him, and found no words to say to him, felt like a step closer to that.
I pressed my hand against the wall, staring at photos lining the stairwell.
All the snapshots of Seth and the guys growing up together.
Birthdays, camping trips, terrible haircuts, scraped knees and sunburns.
Their families. Their happiness. Years of history captured in a hundred easy smiles.
I used to love this hallway, seeing their history.
Now it was only a stark reminder that I didn’t belong.
The outsider who had slipped into their world only by chance and now felt like she was standing on the edge of it again, ready to fall out. A part of me wanted to go before anything got wrecked, before I could become the reason their perfect, lifelong friendship splintered.
Seth kept reassuring me that it wasn’t all or nothing, that we were each capable of acting like adults who talked and we could navigate this together and make whatever it became work.
But doubt still clung to me like a dark shadow hiding all my nightmares.
Because the truth was brutal: if one of them decided this wasn’t something he wanted.
..he’d pull away. Even if he didn’t mean to.
And the other would feel it. Their whole dynamic would shift.
And knowing that shift was because of me? I wasn’t sure I could survive that kind of guilt.
Seth lived in this quiet, hopeful certainty about what the future could be like. It was this beautiful, terrifying utopia where all of us fit. But I knew better than to trust something that perfect. Reality was messier, and I wasn’t sure we could all walk into this without someone getting hurt.
And if someone had to be hurt, I’d rather it be me than any of them.
The thought hollowed out my chest.
I took a quiet step back, then another, retreating toward the living room. After a few seconds, I made sure my footsteps were loud enough on the hardwood that they’d hear me coming.
When I rounded the corner, Seth was at the counter, stirring something in a mixing bowl with a whisk. Paxon sat at the island, his head tilted toward the open notebook even I knew he wasn’t actually reading.
I swallowed hard and forced a casual tone. “You guys talking about me?”
Seth looked over, giving me a grin. “Only good things.”
I smiled, but it felt too stiff to me. “Guess I should get back to work then.”
“Yeah,” Paxon said quietly. “Guess we should.”
As I sat back down, the air was heavier than before.
We went through a few more problems, our voices low and careful, neither of us saying anything that mattered.
We never talked about things that mattered anymore.
Every now and then, Paxon’s pencil tapped against the table in a rhythm that almost sounded like a heartbeat. Mine, maybe.
We wrapped up when Seth called from the kitchen that dinner was there. Paxon shook his head and gathered his things.
“I should go,” he said quietly.
“But Seth cooked for you too.”
“It’s fine. I need to head home and make sure Calvin is doing okay.”
I nodded, our gazes meeting for a brief second. I cleared my throat. “Drive safely.”
The words were simple, but it felt like there was so much more there as he walked out the door.
“Where did Paxon go?” Seth asked, popping his head into the room.
I blinked hard to ease the pressure behind my eyes and then faced him, wondering if I really was the one unraveling everything. “He left.”
Seth’s casualness slipped away into something I couldn’t quite understand. “All right. Looks like it’s just the two of us then. Come eat with me.” He nodded to the kitchen before disappearing.
Watching Paxon slip out like that and how that affected Seth, I had to wonder if that moment where enough was enough was a lot closer than I had expected. If I didn’t step away sooner than later, I was going to shatter their friendship and ruin everything.