Then
Even stranger: it continued to spill out of her long past the point where people’s eyes usually glazed over.
For once she hadn’t been concerned that she was taking up too much space, hyper-fixating in a way others wouldn’t understand.
As if college and writing classes were giving her some get out of going on about these things card.
A free pass to at least occasionally wax lyrical about books.
It was only when she was done that she realized her mistake.
Because sure, most people in the room weren’t wrinkling their noses at her, the way many had in high school. The majority seemed to find this completely ordinary, if not as exciting as she did.
But there was one who didn’t.
The guy with the cool comments.
The one who hadn’t turned out to be cool at all.
Caleb Miller. Caleb Miller, who had now three times seen fit to tell her that her stories were unrealistic and lovestruck.
And who was currently staring across the table at her, in the ringing silence that followed her passionate waterfall of words about what it meant to her to read that maybe humanity shouldn’t go on if it were willing to sacrifice children, a little girl, a girl like her.
And he looked like every one of them had slapped him.
His eyes were actually big—only momentarily, but still.
They were almost moons before he seemed to realize she was watching, and forced them back to normal size.
Plus there was this stillness to him, this quiet that she didn’t quite understand, until he got himself back together.
His chest moved, and it became clear. He had been holding his breath. Or his breath had caught in his throat.
She was sure of it, even as he sat back in his seat and folded his arms over his body.
Blew out in this withering way. Acted like it hadn’t knocked the oxygen out of his lungs.
“That sounds ridiculous,” he said, in this offhanded kind of way.
And she knew, when he did, that he had meant she was ridiculous.
That his shock had been over just how ridiculous a person could be, in fact.
Because he was the thing that was here to remind her this wasn’t different from high school.
It was just as cold toward cringe people like her.
People who could be a little messy, a little too passionate, a little too willing to tell things to strangers who didn’t care.
You need to be more circumspect, more professional, she told herself.
Though she couldn’t quite let him have that much power.
She had to bring him down a peg or two.
“I guess romance is no longer giving you the high of hating a single feeling,” she told him.
Then instead of ending the sentence with Caleb, as she’d intended, she ended it with something that felt more right.
“Miller,” she said, and was almost certain she saw him sort of flinch.
At the very least, his eyes flicked to her.
So she added one more thing, with relish.
“Now even zombie stories are too sappy for your stony heart.”