Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 22

Lunch again.

Everyone was too busy. Matt with the sportsfest, barking orders like a soldier on a mission, clipboard in hand like a shield. Tim and Inez hovered near the stage, arguing about bunting colors. Corey and Drake disappeared somewhere near the back gate, booth layouts, probably.

That left us: just me and Betty. The quietest lunch table in a cafeteria pulsing with activity.

Part of me wanted to thank the heavens, this moment, this quiet. Not because I wanted her alone, but because I knew fewer people meant fewer eyes, fewer distractions. No one else would notice the things I saw. The sleeves. Always long. Always buttoned even though the sun beat down with scorching heat and the air stuck to your skin like guilt. Her fingers grazed her wrist again. Absentminded. Reflexive. Like she was checking if a wound was still there.

She didn’t roll up her sleeves. Never did.

And I didn’t ask.

She was talking, words about eggs or her dad burning the rice again, but I was barely listening. Not because I didn’t care. Because I did, too much. I watched her mouth move, her eyes fixed on the distance. And I knew she wasn’t really here. Not fully. Her body sat across from me, taking up space. But her mind was elsewhere. Zoning out like she had somewhere deeper to be.

I studied her like scripture.

The curve of her lip, that faint downturned pull on the left side when she thought too hard. The spot under her eye where her concealer creased when she was tired. Her lashes fluttered fast when she caught herself mid-thought, like a tape being rewound. If I had cloth, I would’ve pressed it to her face like Saint Veronica, captured her in this moment, holy, but not really, because I didn’t trust memory to hold her fully.

I ache for her.

And maybe it’s wrong. Maybe it’s cowardice, but I never say the things I think. I never ask if she’s okay. Because I don’t know what I’d do if she said no. I wouldn’t know how to save her. I'm not even sure I know how to save myself.

So I stay. I sit across from her. I carry her bag. I laugh at the right times. I brush the hair away from her eyes and act like I don’t feel the storm hiding behind them. I don't say the truth that's sitting between us like a third chair no one talks about.

Maybe it’s not love that saves people.

Maybe it’s just presence. Staying. Witnessing.

So that’s what I do.

I let her talk, and I listen. I look at her like she's still here and not slipping through the cracks of something I can't name. And maybe, just maybe, in my silence she’ll feel a steadiness she can lean on.

Even if she never asks me to.

She was halfway through telling me about her dad putting hot sauce on scrambled eggs again, how he claimed it added “drama to breakfast”, when she paused.

Just for a second. Like a thread snapped in her head.

Then she looked up at me.

Not through me. At me.

And said, “James… do you think people like us ever really get better?”

Her voice was calm. Too calm. Like she’d rehearsed it or maybe swallowed it a dozen times before finally letting it crawl out. The sound didn’t match the question—too casual for something that heavy.

I blinked. I think I forgot how to chew.

“Like… what do you mean?” I asked, even though I knew exactly what she meant.