Chapter 72: Turnabout

Undefined Conviction

Chapter 72: Turnabout

School had gone back to feeling almost ordinary, which was its own kind of miracle after everything, and Cole had nearly forgotten what an uneventful Tuesday even looked like until Priya's friend Sasha cornered him by the vending machines with a directness that suggested she'd been building up to it for a while.

"You're Category Zero," she said, like it was a conversation opener rather than a statement of obvious fact.

"Last I checked."

"That's so interesting. I've been reading everything about you online. The gala thing, the parking garage thing." She leaned against the machine, entirely unbothered by the mythology she was apparently constructing in real time. "You're way more interesting than people give you credit for."

"I contain multitudes."

"I love that. Is that, like, your thing? Your catchphrase?"

"Everyone keeps calling it that. I'm starting to believe them."

Vesper, arriving mid-conversation with her notebook tucked under one arm, stopped dead about ten feet away, taking in the scene with an expression that shifted through several stages faster than she probably meant to let show.

"There you are," she said, voice bright in a way that fooled nobody currently standing within earshot.

"Hey," Cole said, easy, oblivious the way he'd become his whole personality lately whenever this exact dynamic came up.

Sasha glanced between them, read the room with considerably more speed than Cole had managed, and offered a polite excuse about needing to find her next class before making a graceful, efficient exit.

"Nice meeting you," she called back, already gone.

Vesper watched her go with an expression that had settled into something carefully, deliberately neutral.

"Who was that," she said.

"Sasha. Priya's friend, I think. Wanted to talk about the whole Category Zero thing."

"That's nice."

"You okay?"

"I'm fine." The word came out flat, clipped, and Cole — who had spent months learning to read exactly this kind of flatness in other people — felt the slow-dawning realization arrive several beats too late to be useful.

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Reeve, appearing from around the corner with the precise comedic timing of someone who'd clearly been watching the whole exchange from a safe distance, could not have looked more delighted if he'd tried.

"Oh, this is incredible," he said. "This is genuinely the best thing that's happened to me all week."

"What are you talking about?"

"You," Reeve said, pointing at Vesper. "You're doing the exact thing you did to him a month ago. The face. The voice. All of it. Poetic justice doesn't usually arrive this cleanly."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Vesper said, in a tone that confirmed, beyond any doubt, that she knew exactly what he was talking about.

Mia materialized from somewhere, phone already out, thumbs moving with the urgency of someone documenting history in real time. "This is the best day of my entire academic career. I'm framing this."

"There's nothing to frame."

"There's absolutely something to frame. You're jealous, Vesper. It's happening right now, in real time, and it's the funniest thing I've witnessed since the Theo incident."

"I am not jealous."

"You're radiating something considerably less calm than jealous," Reeve said, delighted. "That's basically the same speech you gave Cole a month ago. Word for word, almost."

Cole, finally catching up to the conversation everyone else had apparently finished having without him, felt something warm and stupidly pleased settle behind his ribs. "You're jealous."

"I am not."

"You absolutely are. This is genuinely the best thing that's happened to me all week, and considering my week's included a haunted forest and a reunited sister, that's saying something."

Vesper's careful composure finally cracked, color rising in her cheeks despite her best efforts. "Fine. Maybe I didn't love watching some stranger flirt with you by the vending machines. Is that a crime now?"

"Not a crime. Considerably flattering, actually."

"Don't get smug about it."

"Too late. Already smug. Extremely smug." Cole let the grin spread slow and genuine, the devilish edge softened by something warmer underneath it. "For what it's worth. I wasn't interested. Wasn't paying enough attention to even register it as flirting until you showed up radiating whatever that was."

"I wasn't radiating anything."

"You were radiating a lot of things. Reeve's got a whole vocabulary list ready if you need help naming them."

"I really do," Reeve confirmed, entirely too pleased with himself.

Vesper huffed, arms crossing, though the corner of her mouth had already started fighting a losing battle against a smile. "I hate all of you."

"You don't," Mia said, still recording. "You really, really don't."

She didn't argue that either, which told everyone present everything they needed to know.

They walked home together that afternoon, the teasing finally settling into something quieter, and Cole bumped Vesper's shoulder gently as they crossed the last block before the apartment.

"For the record," he said, "I liked watching you be bad at hiding it. Makes me feel less alone in the whole obvious-to-everyone-except-myself category."

"You were exceptionally bad at hiding it, for the record. Considerably worse than me."

"Debatable."

"Not debatable. There's video evidence, apparently, courtesy of your sister's phone."

"Multitudes," Cole said, weakly. "I contain them. Some more embarrassing than others."

Vesper laughed, real and warm, and reached over to steal his hand instead of just his shoulder this time, fingers lacing through his with an easy confidence that hadn't existed between them a month ago and now felt like it had always belonged there.

Neither of them mentioned it out loud. Neither of them needed to.

[End of Chapter 72]