3. Chapter 3 #2
"Jessica."
"Sophia, I swear—"
She's already past me. She does one full slow lap of the sitting room with her hands pressed together in front of her mouth, and then throws herself sideways onto the couch and lies there with her eyes shut.
"This is my couch now. I've decided. This is where I live."
Renzo has gone straight to the fireplace and is running his thumb along the mantel.
"This is real marble."
"Is that bad?"
"It's marble, Jessica. It's a dormitory." He looks around the room with genuine grievance. "That chair is worse than the room, though. That chair is the ugliest object I have ever seen in my life."
Declan has stopped in the doorway with two bags and the flat astonishment of a very large man who spent last year in a very small space.
"Jess. This room is bigger than the whole common area we had."
"I know."
"No. The whole one. Where all of us ate."
"Declan, I know."
Freya hasn't said anything. She's at the window, checking the catch, the frame, the drop below. Then the door. Then the second bedroom.
"Good sight line," she says.
"For what?"
"The courtyard."
"Freya."
"I like the window seat." She sits in it. That's apparently the end of that conversation.
Torres carries my bag through into the bedroom, leaves it there, comes back out, and drops his own bag on the floor of the little second room like a man putting his keys in a bowl.
I watch him do it.
"Are you moving in?"
"Probably."
"Do you want to discuss that with me?"
"I did. Just now." He tips his head at the bag. "You saw it happen."
He's already moved countries for this. I'm not sure what I expected.
"If he doesn't take it," Sophia says from the couch without opening her eyes, "I want it."
"You have a room."
"I have a room , Jessica. You have a suite . There's a difference and I intend to exploit it."
A few minutes later there's a coat over the ugly chair, Declan is on the floor with his back against the couch because there is somehow still not enough furniture for six people, Renzo has located a kettle and is complaining about it, Sophia has claimed a shelf in my bathroom without asking, and Freya has read four pages of something in the window seat and looks like she's been sitting there for a year.
It stops looking important almost immediately. It just looks like ours.
I sit on the arm of the couch and let that be true for a minute.
"Hey," Sophia says. "Important question. Does being impossibly huge when shifted mean you finally get custody of your lizard?"
"No."
"No?"
"The pet rules are not affected by my situation. I asked twice." I pull my knees up. "Pickles remains the professor's tenant."
"That's outrageous."
"That's what I said."
"You could turn into a dragon and they won't let you have a gecko."
"Exactly, it’s so messed up."
"Was Matthias upset about having lizard company again?" Renzo asks.
"Not at all. He offered to send me bedtime pictures."
Declan laughs so hard he hits his head on the couch.
Two seconds later the door — which I did not lock, because apparently I learn nothing — opens.
"There she is," Luke says.
And every part of me goes toward him at once.
He's across the room before I'm off the couch arm. Both hands on my face. He kisses me in front of all five of my friends like there is no version of this where he doesn't, and I get a fistful of his shirt, and four months of a phone against my ear turns into absolutely nothing at all.
Somewhere behind me a mug goes down on the marble too hard.
"Hi," I say, when I get my mouth back.
"Hello." His thumb moves along my cheekbone once. "You look well. You look tired. Both."
"It's been a summer."
"It's been too long," he whispers.
And then I notice the quiet.
I turn around.
Declan has stopped mid-laugh. Renzo is holding the kettle at an angle that is going to be a problem in about four seconds. Freya has closed her book on her finger. Torres is leaning in the doorway of the second bedroom with his arms folded and a smile on his face.
Sophia is sitting bolt upright on my couch.
" WHAT, " she says.
"What?"
"WHAT."
And it takes me an embarrassingly long half second.
Oh.
Oh, no.
They knew Luke was training me. They knew there was something happening that I wouldn't put a word to. Sophia spent an entire spring being delighted about me disappearing every afternoon.
They do not know this.
"So," I say. "Okay. There's a thing."
"THERE'S A THING."
"Sophia."
"When." She is off the couch. "When did this happen. Give me a date, Jessica."
"...The night before the Trial."
She stops.
"The night before the Trial," Sophia repeats.
"Yes."
"April."
"That's usually when the Trial is."
"I have talked to you every day since June." She is advancing on me. "I told you about the café . I told you about the café for four months. I described the water pressure ."
"You did."
"And you sat there. On the phone. Withholding this. Is it serious?"
Freya's head comes up.
She looks at Luke. Then she looks past me, at the doorway, where Torres has not moved and is not pretending to be surprised by any of this.
"Both of them," Freya says.
It's not a question.
Nobody says anything.
Renzo puts the kettle down.
"Both of them," Sophia says. Flat. Then, an octave up, " BOTH OF THEM? "
"We are . . . together."
"Did all of this happen at the same time?"
"Yes."
"Both of you. Official. The same night."
"Yes," Torres says.
Renzo puts his hand up. "That's a mechanical question and I have several follow-ups."
"It isn't a mechanical question," Luke says.
"The follow-ups are."