3. Chapter 3 #3
Declan has stood up. Declan, who is six foot four and has never once used his size to intimidate, is beaming at me like I've been given an award.
"That's brilliant," he says. "Jess. That's brilliant."
"Declan—"
"No, it is. Two of them. What are the odds?"
"Astronomically bad," Freya says. "That's rather the point."
"You knew," I say to her.
"I knew something." She opens her book again, without reading it. "I didn't know that."
Sophia rounds on Torres.
"And you."
"Me," Torres agrees.
"You moved countries and didn’t mention this."
"I did."
"You packed up your entire life at Frosthaven and came back here and let me talk about the café ."
"It's a good café."
"IT ISN'T. IT'S A TERRIBLE CAFé."
Torres is enjoying this more than I have ever seen him enjoy anything.
Luke, meanwhile, has the expression of a man who has walked into a room expecting one outcome and is now watching people discuss his private life at volume.
"Are we finished?" he says.
"We are nowhere near finished," Sophia says.
"I was afraid of that."
And then Freya says, quietly, from the window seat, "Wait."
The room turns.
"The night before the Trial," she says. "And then you all left. For four months."
"...Yes."
Nobody says anything for a moment. Even Sophia.
Because they know what the Trial was. And they can do the arithmetic on what came after, which is a plane, and an ocean, and a phone.
"Jess," Sophia says, in a completely different voice.
"It's fine."
"It's not fine. It's the worst thing I have ever heard."
Luke's hand settles on the back of my neck. Torres has come away from the doorway and is close enough that his shoulder is against mine, and I lean into it without deciding to.
"It was a long summer," Luke says.
"We're not talking about the summer," I say.
"No," he agrees. "We're not."
Sophia opens her mouth.
"Sophia," Freya says, "don't."
Sophia closes it. She looks genuinely wounded by the effort.
"This is the most secure student housing on campus," says another voice from the doorway.
Soren fills a doorway. He doesn't come in. He stands there with his hands in his pockets and takes in the entire scene: Sophia on her feet mid-outrage, Declan grinning at nothing, Renzo and the kettle, Freya in the window, Luke's hand on the back of my neck.
Then Torres's bags, through the open door of the second bedroom.
Then me.
I watch him put it together. He's fast. He always was. Whatever he does with it doesn't reach his face.
"You've been here twelve minutes," he says.
I look around at all of it. The coat over the ugly chair. Declan on the floor. Sophia's shoes under my desk.
"We're efficient."
And Evren Soren, who spent an entire year looking at me like I was a scheduling error, smiles.
It's small. It's about a quarter of a second. But it happens and I'm so surprised I just stand there. Damn, I forgot how potent his smile is.
Sophia's head snaps toward him. "Did he just—"
"No," I say.
"He absolutely—"
"Sophia."
Soren's face has gone back to its usual settings, but he's still in the doorway.
"The catch on your second window is loose," he says. "It's been loose for years. Report it or it'll rattle all winter and you'll go mad."
"How could you possibly know that?"
"Because this was my room. First two years. They moved me across the corridor when my pack wanted me in the corner suite."
I have no idea what to do with that, so I say, "Was the chair here?"
"The chair was here."
"Renzo hates the chair."
"Everyone hates the chair," Soren says.
Then he steps aside, because someone else is coming down the corridor.
Ander stops in my doorway.
He looks at me. Then past me, into the room, at the coats and the bags and the six people in it and Luke standing at my shoulder.
"You're living here," he says.
"That's generally what the luggage indicates."
"In this residence?"
"Down the corridor from you, apparently. Try to contain yourself."
"Yes, well. Second-year orientation is at nine," Luke says, into the silence. "Placements start this week."
"Nine?"
"Yes."
"Second year is already terrible."
"You haven't unpacked."
"I know."
They go, eventually. Luke kisses me at the door and tells me he'll find me in the morning. He doesn't check the room first. Last year he always checked the room first.
Then he takes Soren with him down the corridor, and behind me Renzo has started asking Freya whether the window seat is technically communal property.
Ander doesn't leave with them.
I follow him out into the corridor because I want to know why, and he's still standing there with his hands behind his back like a man at a memorial service.
He looks past me into my room.
"This corridor used to be quiet," he says.
I lean against my own doorway.
"Not anymore, but that sounds like a good memory."
His eyes come back to me and stay there. I feel it in my chest. Neither of us says anything and I have no idea what to do with my face.
Then his attention goes past me one more time, to the open door of the second bedroom, and the four bags on the floor of it that are very obviously not mine.
It stays there a second.
When he looks at me again I can't read it at all.
"This is going to be a very long year," Ander says.