Abigail turned the corner from the opposite hallway and caught them in her peripheral before she was fully into the corridor, the sight of her sister standing close to Adam snapping her back a step so fast her shoulder brushed the wall.
She pressed herself flat against the corner, heart kicking up into something quick and embarrassingly loud, the cold paint of the wall seeping through her jacket as she tried to make herself smaller.
Ah shit, I knew this day was coming but i didn't expect it now!
she told herself, the thought steady and reasonable even as her pulse refused to follow suit.
She angled her head just enough, her hearing sliding into focus without effort, the conversation down the corridor sharpening as if someone had adjusted a dial.
"Your training discipline is consistent," Anissa's voice carried, precise and even. "It's noticeable."
Abigail closed her eyes for half a second, the words landing with a secondhand mortification that curled somewhere low in her stomach.
Oh no. Oh, that's— that's horrible—
she thought, the sentence dissolving before it could finish, her mind scrambling for a comparison that fit and landing on something like a textbook trying to flirt.
Adam's reply came, uncertain but kind, and Abigail's attention shifted with it, the embarrassment threading with something else as she listened to the careful way he handled confusion.
"Do you have plans on Saturday," Anissa continued, the line as structured as a formula, "because we could go somewhere, just the two of us."
Abigail pressed her lips together, her fingers curling slightly against her sleeve as if she could physically contain the moment.
She sounds like she's scheduling a meeting,
she thought, a helpless, almost hysterical edge to the observation.
There was a small pause, and then Adam again, softer, apologetic even in refusal, explaining about studying, about finals, about being sorry in a way that made the apology feel real.
Abigail's chest eased a fraction, the tension she had been carrying loosening in a way she had expected to feel like relief.
It didn't.
That's not relief,
she realized, the awareness slipping in quietly.
That's… something else. What?
"Sunday," Anissa said, undeterred. "You go out every Sunday. We could go then."
Abigail's eyes opened again, her gaze fixed on the edge of the corridor as if she could see through it.
You cannot just, oh my god, you cannot just say that out loud,
she thought, horror and a strange, involuntary amusement tangling together.
Adam's reaction came, a small, careful correction, church instead of "going out," the explanation delivered without accusation, just a gentle redirect of a misunderstanding.
He mentioned the snow, the impracticality, and then, as if searching for something to give instead of something to deny, he offered the library.
Abigail felt that one differently.
It was in the way he said it, the easy inclusion, the assumption that time spent together could be simple and shared without needing to be anything more than that, and something in her chest warmed in a way that was both new and immediately recognizable.
That's kind of him,
she thought, the word settling with weight.
Her mind, traitor that it was, reached for something familiar to map the feeling onto, and pages flickered through her memory, scenes she had read late at night, characters she had watched fall for exactly this sort of thing.
They always write it like this,
she realized, almost wonderingly.
Like it's rare.
The fictional men she had cataloged, all those carefully constructed gestures and dramatic declarations, felt suddenly overworked in comparison to this, to the simple, unforced decency of someone offering to study together so no one felt rejected.
They're not better than this,
she thought, a quiet, decisive shift in her internal scale.
They're trying to be this.
The conversation down the hall faltered, Anissa's final "I'll revisit" landing with the faintest edge of something Abigail knew well, that refusal to categorize a loss as final.
She's going to try again, Abigail noted, the thought automatic.
She told herself she didn't need to move, that the outcome was already clear, that the situation would resolve on its own without her involvement.
She stayed exactly where she was, her back still against the wall, her attention still fixed down the corridor.
You should leave,
she thought, the instruction reasonable and completely ignored.
There's nothing left to—
The thought didn't finish, because the feeling underneath it was louder, quieter in volume but stronger in insistence, a pull that had nothing to do with strategy or the mission or anything she could justify in those terms.
I don't want to leave him here with her,
she realized, the clarity of it almost startling in its simplicity.
She went still for a fraction of a second, the words settling into place.
Is this—
she started, the question forming with a kind of careful curiosity.
Is this jealousy?
The answer didn't arrive as a clean yes or no, but as a recognition that felt close enough to one that the distinction didn't matter.
She pushed off the wall before she could think about it any longer and stepped around the corner.
"Sorry," Abigail said as she approached, her tone soft and genuinely polite, her gaze flicking to Anissa for a brief second. "Is it okay if i borrow him for a sec? There's something kinda private we need to discuss."
Anissa's eyes met hers, and in that single look there was an entire conversation, a sharp, silent exchange that promised continuation rather than conclusion.
This is not over,
the look said, clean as a blade.
Abigail held it for just a fraction of a second, then let it go, her attention shifting back to Adam as Anissa stepped past her without another word.
The space Anissa left felt different immediately, the air less structured, less tense in a way Abigail hadn't realized it had been.
Adam turned fully toward her, curiosity plain on his face, his shoulders relaxed despite the interruption.
"What's up," he asked, his voice easy, the question open in that way that invited an answer without demanding one.
Abigail looked up at him, and the difference in their height became something she was suddenly, acutely aware of, the angle of her gaze, the way his honey-brown eyes met hers directly without hesitation, warm and steady in a way that felt like being seen without being examined.
Say the thing. You had a thing,
she told herself, reaching for the prepared explanation she had constructed earlier, something about a class, a question, an excuse that would justify the interruption.
The space in her mind where that explanation had been stored was empty.
Not hidden, not misplaced, just gone, as if it had never been there to begin with.
Heat rushed up her neck and into her face, a flush she could feel as much as she could imagine he could see, and the awareness of it made everything worse, her thoughts tangling over themselves in a way that was both foreign and deeply, embarrassingly familiar from the books she had always read at a safe distance.
"I— I just—" she started, the words tripping as soon as they left her, her voice losing shape halfway through the sentence. "There was— I thought—"
No, that's not... say it properly, just say...
she tried, the internal voice fracturing into incomplete pieces that refused to assemble into anything coherent.
She stopped, the sentence collapsing entirely, and for a second she could only look at him, acutely aware of everything at once, the corridor, the noise, the way her heart was still not behaving in any acceptable manner.
"Yo Adam!," a voice called from further down the hall, and Adam glanced past her, lifting a hand in acknowledgment.
Brandon jogged closer, a grin already forming as he took in the scene. "You coming to lunch, man, or are you getting recruited for something?"
"Almost," Adam said, his attention flicking back to Abigail without losing its focus. "Hold on, I want to hear what she was saying."
The offer hung there, patient and genuine, a small extension of time he was willing to give without question.
Abigail seized the exit like it was something tangible.
"I forgot," she said quickly, the words rushing out now that they had a direction to go. "It's nothing, it can wait, you should go eat."
She lifted a hand in a small, dismissive wave, stepping back half a pace as if to physically remove herself from the obligation she had just created.
Adam hesitated for a fraction of a second, then nodded, accepting her answer at face value.
"Okay," he said. "We can talk later."
He fell into step with Brandon, the two of them moving down the corridor toward the cafeteria doors, their voices blending into the general noise as they went.
"Dude," Brandon said, not nearly as quietly as he probably thought he was being. "She was absolutely blushing and gawking at you. Your game must be crazy."
Adam's laugh was soft, genuinely confused. "I didn't even say anything."
They disappeared into the flow of students, the conversation swallowed by the larger noise of lunch break.
Abigail stayed where she was.
The corridor felt different now, the energy shifted as a group passed by, someone bumping her shoulder lightly without really noticing, the moment already moving on for everyone else.
Her heart was still going, not as fast as before but not anywhere close to normal, and her thoughts were catching up in uneven pieces, replaying the last minute in fragments that made her want to laugh and hide at the same time.
That was… not effective, she assessed, the understatement almost funny in its precision.
She leaned back against the wall again, the same spot she had occupied before, but everything about it felt altered, like she had stepped into a slightly different version of the same scene.
This is objectively a problem, she thought, the analytical part of her surfacing just enough to name it.
Her ability to form sentences had abandoned her, her decision-making had defaulted to impulse, and her body had reacted in ways she had always considered theoretical until now.
She waited for the follow-up, for the part of herself that would usually move to correct, to fix, to adjust behavior and avoid repetition of the same mistake.
It didn't arrive.
Instead, there was a quiet, unexpected acceptance settling in, a small, steady warmth that didn't feel like something she wanted to eliminate.
I like it,
she realized, the admission soft and a little surprised.
Even the stammering, even the heat in her face, even the way her thoughts had scattered the moment he looked at her, all of it felt less like a failure and more like something she had been reading about for years finally stepping off the page and into her life.
A title surfaced in her mind, familiar and oddly fitting.
"The Fault in Our Stars," she murmured under her breath, the name of the book slipping out easily.
Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters, she thought, the characters aligning in her memory with a clarity that felt newly relevant.
"I get it now," she added quietly, the words meant for no one but herself, "I get how you felt for him now."
The corridor continued around her, students moving, voices rising and falling, the snow still soft against the windows, and Abigail Thorne stood in the middle of it all with her heart still not entirely under control and no real desire to change that.