29 #2
I shot him a look, but there was no real bite behind it. I closed my laptop because suddenly there was no way I was going to concentrate on anything else.
“Ever since I was little,” I said quietly, “my dad has only ever called me Eve or trouble.”
The air in the room changed.
I felt it almost immediately. His posture shifted, and the easy expression on his face disappeared. The cabin seemed to settle around us.
“Why?” he asked.
His voice was careful now. Not casual. He sounded as though he were stepping closer without actually moving.
“Because I was always doing something,” I said, staring down at my hands. “Or trying to. I was just a lonely kid who wanted some attention from her parents.”
He did not interrupt.
He simply waited.
Somehow, that made it harder.
I did not have to fill the silence, but I found myself doing it anyway.
“He was always working. Always travelling. Always doing something more important than being there, and my mother hated dropping me for his days, as much as she hated him not having enough of those days.”
My throat tightened, but I kept going.
“So I started doing things to get his attention.”
A moment passed before he asked, quietly, “Like what?”
I almost smiled because I knew exactly how it sounded.
“Breaking things.” His mouth twitched as though he was trying to decide whether he was allowed to laugh. “Skipping classes, just random stuff like that. I know the first time I did something that caught his attention.”
“What?”
“I once took apart his watch.”
That made him look at me properly.
“You took apart his watch?”
“I wanted to see how it worked.”
He stared at me.
“Did you put it back together?”
“No.”
A quiet, disbelieving laugh escaped him.
“That’s evil.”
“I was eight.”
“Still. I bet it must’ve been expensive.”
I nodded, a smile on my lips despite myself.
For a brief moment, the heaviness lifted.
Then I looked down again.
“Anyway, whenever I got into trouble, he’d come and have his talks with me.”
The smile faded before I even realised it was gone.
“That was the only time I was sure I’d see him. So, the more I did them, the more I saw him.”
The words sat between us, heavy and unpolished. They were far too honest for the way I usually spoke about my father.
When I finally looked up, Rihaan was not smiling anymore.
He was simply still.
Something in his expression had changed into something quieter and deeper, as though he was holding the weight of what I had said without trying to take it from me or fix it.
“So eventually,” I continued, because stopping somehow felt worse, “trouble just became the word attached to me. He now just means it out of love, I know. But I’ve grown out of it too.”
Silence followed.
Then, gently, he said, “We’ll just have to come up with something else, then.”
It should not have affected me the way it did.
It was such a simple thing to say.
But my chest tightened anyway, as though some part of me had been waiting for exactly that answer and did not know what to do with it now that I had heard it.
“Yeah?” I asked, softer than I intended.
“Yeah.”
There was something almost certain in the way he said it, as though the decision had already been made.
“I’ll think of something.”
I watched him turn back towards the bags, unpacking them as though the conversation had not just shifted something between us.
But it had.
I could feel it in the air, beneath my skin, in the sudden restlessness that made it difficult to sit still.
“What did you buy?” I asked, mostly because I needed something normal.
“Food, and some other stuff.”
“I can see that. Did you get me a book?”
He glanced towards me and shrugged.
“I saw that you’d finished it earlier.” He pulled a paperback from one of the bags as though it were nothing special. “So, I got you the next one in the series.”
I stared at the copy he’d placed in my hand. “It was terrible.”
“You still finished it in a short few hours.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You want me to go and return it?”
“Don’t you dare,” I whispered, clutching it closer to my chest.
He remembered.
He placed another book beside the bag, then added a small box to the growing pile.
I already knew what it was before he said anything. “Matcha?”
He nodded. “Authentic Matcha.”
My eyebrows lifted.
“And tools.”
I stared at him. “You asked for recommendations?”
“I saw a local brand had a stall in the store, so I asked the woman in the shop about the correct ones.”
That made me sit up a little straighter.
“You did?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
He looked at me as though the answer were obvious.
“You like it.”
I stared at him.
It was not simply that he had bought it for me. It was that he had noticed. He had remembered. Everything. Then he had acted on it without making a performance out of any of it.
As though caring about me were not something he had to think about.
It was simply something he did.
“You’re ridiculous,” I said quietly.
“I’ve been told.”
But I was no longer really teasing him.
Then I saw the rest of the things he had brought back.
Books. Snacks. The exact crackers I liked. Chocolate I had mentioned once without even thinking about it.
Something shifted in my chest again.
“You actually listened,” I said, almost to myself.
His brow furrowed slightly. “Obviously, I’m a great listener.”
I rolled my eyes at his response, but I looked away before he could see too much.
Because it was becoming harder to hide things from him.
And I was beginning to realise how much I wanted to stop trying.
He continued putting things away, and I watched him for a moment longer than I should have before a thought surfaced. “Have you decided what you want in that room?”
He stopped.
His hand rested against the cupboard. “No.”