35. Theo #2
It is immediate and whole, the kind of smile that doesn’t ask permission from the people around us.
Her navy blazer makes her look polished, but her hair is already losing pins, and one curl has escaped near her cheek.
She hurries down the path with her bag against her hip and reaches me before I can decide whether to walk or stand still.
“Star,” she says, and then her arms are around me.
I fold into her. My face finds the side of her neck, and her scent fills my lungs, honeyed pear and vanilla tea with coffee and paper tucked underneath.
She holds me in the middle of the walkway, one hand in my hair and the other flat between my shoulder blades, and for the first time since leaving the house, I stop feeling like I'm being careful with every inch of myself.
“You came,” she says against my temple.
“I said I would.” My hands curl in the back of her blazer, and the fabric is smooth under my fingers instead of soft like her cardigans. “You look pretty.”
Her laugh shakes a little. “I’m supposed to look employable.”
“You look both.”
She pulls back enough to see my face, and her smile goes tender around the edges. She opens her mouth, but Garrett closes his car door behind us, and the moment adjusts to fit him into it.
“Thank you for bringing him,” Callie says, turning toward him with one hand still holding mine.
“Of course.” Garrett’s gaze moves over our joined hands, the sweater sleeves covering my knuckles, the way Callie stands close enough that her shoulder touches mine. “I’ll stay nearby. Text me when he’s ready to come home.”
“I can bring him back after the interview if he wants to wait,” Callie says, and hope moves through me so quickly that I grip her fingers.
Garrett’s expression stays gentle. “We’ll see how he feels after lunch. The house is ready if campus becomes too much.”
Callie looks down at me. She doesn't correct him loudly. She doesn't make the walkway a place where everyone has to watch us disagree. She squeezes my hand and says, “We’ll see how you feel.”
The café with the soup is warmer than outside and full of the smell of coffee, toasted bread, tomato, and rain caught in people’s clothes.
The lunch rush hasn’t fully started yet, so Callie chooses a table near the window where I can see the door and still sit with my back to the wall.
She does it without announcing that she’s doing it for me.
She only touches the chair and asks if this one works, and when I nod, her shoulders drop like she has been holding her breath since the walkway.
I order tomato soup because I said I wanted the café with the soup, and Callie orders grilled cheese with hers so I can steal the corner pieces.
She also buys a lemon bar from the pastry case because she says it looks too opinionated to leave behind.
I don’t know what that means, but the seriousness in her face when she chooses it makes a laugh come out of me before I can stop it.
“There he is,” she murmurs, setting the tray down.
“I didn’t go anywhere.”
“No,” she says, sitting across from me. “You didn’t.”
The words are too soft for the noise around us.
I look at the soup until the steam makes my eyes sting, then pick up my spoon.
For a few minutes, lunch is exactly what I wanted.
Callie tells me about the building where her interview will happen and the woman on the committee who wears glasses on a chain.
She tells me a student stopped her in the hall to ask whether blue books were real or just something professors made up to scare freshmen.
I tell her Sloane tied my shoes like the laces had personally threatened his family, and her smile gets so wide she has to cover it with her napkin.
“He loves you,” she says, warm and sure.
“I know.” I dip a corner of grilled cheese into my soup, watching the bread soften at the edge. “He loves loudly.”
“He does.” She breaks another corner off and puts it on my plate. “Idris loves like he’s already checked the exits and packed three snacks.”
I glance toward her bag under the table. “Did he pack snacks?”
“He packed a protein bar and moved it to the front pocket because apparently I can’t be trusted with side pockets.”
“He’s right about that.” I say it carefully, ready to take it back if it lands wrong, but Callie gasps with fake outrage and nudges my shoe under the table.
It feels good. It feels normal enough that my body stops listening so hard for the heat beneath my skin.
The café noise softens into a hum. Callie eats half her soup and almost none of the sandwich because she keeps pushing pieces toward me.
When I tell her she needs to eat before the interview, her eyes go shiny in a way that makes me understand Idris’s worry better.
“I’m eating,” she says.
“You’re feeding me.”
“I can do both.” She takes a bite to prove it, chewing with exaggerated dignity until I smile again. “See? Very employable. Excellent soup management.”
I look at her across the table, beautiful and nervous and trying so hard to make this hour something I can keep. The words rise before Garrett’s voice can teach them caution.
“I missed you as soon as you left,” I say.
Callie’s expression changes. Her hand comes across the table, palm up, and I put my fingers in hers because she doesn’t grab. “I missed you too.”
“I know I have a few days.” I rub my thumb over her knuckle, following the shape of it. “I know the heat hasn’t started. I know everyone keeps saying we have time. But sometimes my body doesn’t believe time is real.”
“That makes sense to me.” She says it without pity, which helps more than almost anything else could. “My body keeps acting like the interview is already a goodbye, and I know that isn’t true either.”
“It isn’t,” I say immediately.
“I know.” She holds my fingers tighter. “I’m coming home after. Whatever happens in that room, I’m coming home.”
I believe her again. The belief settles in me, tender and necessary, and I'm still holding her hand when the café door opens with a jangle of the bell and a burst of louder voices.
A group of students comes in all at once, laughing, shaking rain from umbrellas, backpacks swinging as they crowd toward the counter.
One bumps the back of my chair hard enough to make it scrape against the tile.
Heat flashes under my skin. It isn't the full opening of a heat. I know that even through the sudden rush of panic. It is a spike, bright and fast, blooming from the base of my spine to the back of my throat until the café lights sharpen and the steam from my soup feels too hot on my face.
Callie’s thumb stills over my knuckles. “Star?”
“I’m here.” I make the words come out because I can, and because she needs them. “It got loud.”
“We can step outside.” She is already moving her bag with her foot, clearing the path without making it look like an evacuation. Her hand stays open around mine. “Slowly, okay?”
I nod and stand when she does. Someone turns too fast behind me. A backpack catches the edge of our table, and the tray jumps. My soup sloshes, the mug beside it tips, and the cup hits the tile before I understand it is falling. Ceramic breaks with a sound that goes straight through my bones.
I reach down. I shouldn't reach down, but the movement happens before thought. A bright line opens across my palm, and hot tea splashes my wrist. Callie says my name. My knees hit the tile a second later, not because I fall far, only because the room slips sideways and my body chooses the floor.
Callie is there immediately. She catches my wrist before my fingers can close around the cut, pressing a napkin over my palm with one hand while the other cups my cheek and turns my face away from the broken pieces.
Her voice becomes calm in a way that isn't pretend.
It is scared underneath, but she keeps the fear out of my hands.
“Eyes on me,” she says. “Theo, look at me. Color.”
“Yellow.” My voice shakes, but the word is clear. I swallow hard and try again because one word doesn't feel like enough. “Yellow because everything got loud. I’m scared, but I’m here.”
“Good. That’s good.” Her breath catches, then steadies. “Thank you for telling me. Keep looking at me.”
People are talking around us. The student with the backpack keeps apologizing, and someone from behind the counter brings towels. Callie doesn't let go of my face until I’m looking at her properly. Then she speaks over the noise with her professor voice, not loud but impossible to miss.
“Please step back and give him space,” she says, still holding pressure to my palm. “We need a towel and a clear path to campus health.”
The crowd moves. It doesn't disappear, but the air around me opens by a few inches.
Callie wraps the towel around my hand, checks the red splash on my wrist, and looks at my knees without making me feel inspected.
Her hair has come loose from its pins, and her blazer sleeve is wet with tea, but her hands are steady.
“I can walk,” I tell her.
“I know you can.” She slides one arm around my waist and waits until I lean into her. “I’m walking with you.”
Campus health is two doors down, but the hallway feels much longer.
Callie keeps me against her side the whole way, one hand at my waist and the other around my wrapped palm.
She talks to me about the floor, the next door, the chair by the wall.
She doesn't tell me I'm fine. She doesn't tell me I'm safe until we are sitting down and she has put herself between me and the open doorway.
The nurse smells like peppermint gum and antiseptic.
She is kind in a brisk way, asking questions while she rinses my palm and checks the cut under the bright exam light.
The line across my skin is shallow. My wrist is red but not blistering.
My knees are bruised from the tile, and my body keeps trembling around the spike that came too fast and left too much brightness behind it.