Chapter 7 — Read It to Me （Nora）
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I dropped my tote by the door-side chair and let out a breath I had been holding since the stairs.
He had squared his pens in a neat row and set a cup at my usual spot, and the lid was still warm when I brushed it.
“Tell me you didn't buy me coffee again, Hale,” I said, and I sank into the seat facing the door like I always did.
He glanced up, and his gray-green eyes caught the thin gray-gold light from the tall windows.
“It's an oat latte,” he said. “Extra shot. Cinnamon. You like it hot.” I felt my throat go tight in a good way, and I wrapped both hands around the cup.
“I do,” I said. “You're gonna spoil me, and then I'll be useless without you.”
I took a sip and let the warmth move through my hands first, then my chest, and only then did I let myself think about the session.
The radiator ticked under the windows, and rain tapped the brick outside in a soft, uneven hush.
My shoulders dropped a full inch, and I kicked my tote under the table.
“Okay,” I said. “Wednesday. Blitz reads. I'm ready. Sort of. Mostly not.”
I set my latte down and saw them right away, two pens on the side table angled wrong against the edge, one tipped across the other like they had been knocked and left.
My fingers twitched with a mind of their own, and I reached out and straightened one without thinking.
The plastic clicked soft against the wood, and I stopped with my hand still in the air.
“Okay, I'm not fixing your pens. I've quit. Mostly.” I pulled my hand back and wrapped it around my latte instead. Beck watched the small surrender with one corner of his mouth tipped up. “One,” he said. “You fixed one. That's restraint.”
“Don't praise me for being nosy,” I said, but I was grinning, and I nudged the side table with my knee like it was to blame.
“They were just sitting there all crooked, and my brain went nope.
You know that feeling? Like a picture hung sideways and you can't unsee it.” He nodded once, and his fingers lined up his own pens again, square and even.
“I know,” he said. “I know that feeling.”
I fished my pen out of my tote and clicked it once out of habit, a fast little snap that cracked through the room.
His shoulders jerked, and his chin dipped, and my stomach dropped straight through the floor.
I set the pen flat on the table so fast I nearly knocked my latte, and I pressed my palm over it like I could take the sound back.
“Sorry,” I said. “God, sorry. Old habit.
It's flat now. See? Flat and harmless.” He tapped two fingers on his left wrist, once and then again, and breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth.
I stayed still and kept my hands where he could see them, and I counted with him in my head without saying a word.
“Don't stop clicking on my account. Just — not fast. Slow's fine.” His voice was low and even, and his shoulders came down as he spoke, and his fingers stilled on his wrist. I felt something warm and achy press behind my ribs, and I nodded like it was the easiest promise in the world.
“Slow,” I said. “I can do slow. I'm very good at slow. Just ask my old laptop.”
That got me a real look, quick and amused, and then he reached for the marker tray and slid three markers into a row with the caps lined up.
The radiator hissed under the windows, and somebody slammed a locker out in the hall, and the sound rolled through the wall and faded.
I clicked my pen once, slow and soft, and set it down again to show him I meant it.
“Show me,” I said. “Routes first. Draw it like you see it.
Don't dumb it down for me.” I slid a blank play sheet across the scarred oak table and turned it so we could both see it.
He uncapped a black marker, and the sharp smell cut through the latte steam, and he bent over the page with his whole body gone still and sure.
He drew three lines without lifting the marker, fast and sure, one deep corner and two crossing stems that bloomed open like branches.
My breath caught high in my chest, and my skin went warm all over, and I forgot for a second that I was supposed to be the one teaching.
It looked like flight paths. It looked like stars pulled into order.
“That's gorgeous. I mean — look at that.
It's constellations.” The words came out hushed, and I leaned in so close our sleeves almost touched.
He stilled with the marker hovering, and his ears went a little pink, and he stared at the lines like he was seeing them through my eyes.
“Nobody calls it that,” he said. “They call it spacing. But yeah. Stars.”
“Well, they're wrong,” I said, and I tapped the deep corner with the back of my pen so I wouldn't smudge it.
“This one curves like the tail of something.
And this one — see how it crosses? That's the bright one in the middle. The one you steer by.” He tracked my pen, and his knee shifted under the table, and his voice dropped lower.
“You see shapes,” he said. “Most people see arrows.”
I felt that film-room awe again in my chest, big and fizzy, and I had to sit back before I did something dumb like grab his arm.
“I see them because you draw them that way,” I said.
“You don't draw plays. You draw sky. Don't argue.
I'm the tutor. I'm always right. It's in the handbook.” He huffed, almost a laugh, and capped the marker with a soft click.
“What handbook,” he said. “There is no handbook.”
A hallway door slammed, hard enough to rattle the glass in the tall windows, and my shoulders shot up around my ears on their own, and my hands went cold around my latte cup.
My ex used to corner me after class to rehash fights, and I learned to sit where I could see the door coming, and I hated that my body still did the math before my mind caught up.
I breathed in through the dust and rain smell, and I pressed my feet flat to the scarred wood floor, and I stayed seated and let the spike pass through me.
Beck had gone still across the table, watching me without crowding me, and his hands rested open on his thighs.
“Loud hall,” I said. “Thin walls. I'm fine. Keep going. Talk stars to me.”
He studied me for one more beat, and then he nodded and tapped the page like we had never left it.
“The corner,” he said. “He has to hold the safety. Then break. Like that.” I rolled my shoulders down and picked up my pen again, slow, deliberate, and I made myself smile.
“Holding and breaking,” I said. “Got it. Very dramatic. Very you.”
I let the quiet settle for a minute while the radiator hissed and the rain kept tapping the brick, and then I kept it light on purpose.
“Hey, didn't you leave that corner route up yesterday?
It's — gone.” I tipped my head toward the tall windows, toward the film room down the hall, and I watched his face.
“You had that whole tree half-drawn. I liked where it was going.”
His hand paused on the marker cap, and his jaw worked once, and his eyes went to the whiteboard on our own wall like he was checking it was clean too.
“I wipe it. Every night. Can't leave it up.” His voice came out flat, final, with no reason offered and no room to pry.
I nodded like that was a normal thing quarterbacks did, and I filed it away behind my ribs.
I wanted to ask why, and I could feel the question sitting on my tongue, bright and nosy and tutor-ish.
But his shoulders had gone square again, braced, and his fingers found the edge of the play sheet and lined it up with the table seam.
So I let it go, and I tapped my pen soft against my own wrist instead.
“Fair,” I said. “Clean board. Fresh start. I get it.”
I thought about the wet black smear I had seen on the film-room board that morning when I cut through to grab extra handouts, the wide wiped arc still damp at the edges.
Somebody had cleaned it minutes before I got there, or he got there early and did it himself.
And those two pens on the side table, knocked crooked.
I stacked the thoughts neat and set them aside, unanswered, and turned back to him.
“Okay,” I said. “So if the board's gone, it's in here.” I tapped my temple, and then, because that felt too bold, I tapped the page.
“Show me the corner again. Slower this time. Let me see the stars move.” His mouth eased, and the tight line of his shoulders softened, and he uncapped the marker again.
We bent over the play sheet together, and the close air went warm with latte steam and marker smell and rain.
His knee brushed mine under the oak table, a solid press of heat through denim, and I let it stay.
My breath stuck high in my throat, and my pulse kicked so loud I swore he could hear it over the radiator.
Heat sat there between us, thick and humming, and his thumb shifted on his marker and grazed my knuckle where we both reached at once.
We both pulled back a half inch, and then everything went still, and the air felt too small for my lungs.
I could see his pulse beating at his throat, fast and visible, and I looked away first before I stared.
“You don't get to look at me like that over a blitz card.
I won't survive it.” My voice came out low and half-laughing, and I kept my eyes on the routes so I wouldn't do something reckless.
He went very still beside me, and his knee stayed right where it was, warm and steady against mine.
“I'm not looking at you. I'm looking at the route. Mostly.”