Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 8

I found our table by the window and took my seat. The sun poured in, soft and amber, stretching itself across the wooden table like a golden sigh. Dust floated in the light like tiny stars, aimless, suspended. I opened a book. Didn’t even bother to check which one. My fingers moved on their own, flipping to the chapters she mentioned last week.

And I read.

For the first time, I actually read. Words didn’t swim anymore. They settled. They pressed into my brain, quiet and sharp. My pen started moving across the page like it had waited its whole life for this, underlining, circling, scribbling arrows and questions. I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath until I exhaled slowly through my nose.

Then the air shifted.

It was subtle, like the pressure in the room had changed. My heart tugged. I glanced up, and that’s when I saw her.

Betty.

I swear, something shivered in my chest.

She stood by the door like time itself had paused to let her through. Her hair was tucked behind her ear, the rest of it cascading in loose waves that shimmered slightly under the light. Each step she took felt like it echoed through the floor straight into me. Her sundress, white, delicate, soft moved with her body like a whisper, wrapping around her waist and dancing around her knees.

And her skin, God, her skin looked like it held light under it. Like she was glowing from the inside out. Her lips were flushed pink and slightly parted like she had just said something sweet to the wind. Her eyes scanned the room, and for a moment, I forgot how to breathe.

My stomach clenched, not in a painful way, but like it was folding in on itself from awe. My fingers stilled on the page. My lips parted. Something in my throat tightened. She looked like every quiet dream I never admitted out loud.

She was just walking. That’s all. But I couldn’t stop staring.

Then she was in front of me, and my entire body went still. Like she’d frozen time.

She tilted her head, studying me. Her eyes danced across my shirt, yellow, I remembered suddenly, her mom’s favorite color, and then up to my face, her gaze curious, amused, familiar. Then she smiled.

Not the small polite one she gave to strangers. No. That smile. The one that tugged at the left corner of her mouth a little more than the right. The one that made my knees feel like they might give out even while sitting.

“You look… fresh,” she said, and I swear her voice swept through me like a breeze through curtains. “Almost didn’t recognize you.”

My skin burned. My ears. My neck. The back of my arms. I didn’t know I could blush, not like this, not this deep. I laughed nervously, instinctively rubbing the back of my neck, where I had sprayed the extra spritz of cologne this morning just in case.

“I, uh… just thought I’d try something new.”

She raised an eyebrow, the corners of her lips twitching. “You mean try ''effort'?”

I chuckled, helplessly, hopelessly, and nodded. “Maybe.”

She slid into her seat like the universe always meant her to be there, across from me, filling up that space with her light.

And for the first time in a long time, I felt full. Like I’d been hungry without realizing it.

Like something had returned to me.

The yellow of my shirt caught a gleam of sun. I caught her looking at it and then quickly away, like she recognized the reference, but wouldn’t say it out loud. That small, silent knowing made something bloom in my chest, slow and aching.