I stood up.
He looked up at the same moment, which meant we were looking at each other before I'd quite decided how to begin, which was not the composed opening I'd rehearsed.
"I'd like to say something," I said. More formal than intended, but it was out.
"Go ahead." He leaned back in the chair, arms loose, watching me with attention that was entirely calm and somehow more unsettling for it.
"I don't know what this is" A gesture between us, which was not what I'd planned, "the texts, the call, the..." Another gesture, this time at the general space where his face had been six inches from mine forty minutes ago, which was also not planned but at least honest. "Whatever this is. I'd like it to stop."
He looked at me for a moment.
"Why?" he said.
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
"Because I'm asking you to," I said, which was not the argument I had ready.
"That's not a reason."
"It's a good one."
"Is it?" He picked up the pen, turned it once between those long fingers, a reflex, something to do with his hands while his voice did the work and set it back down. "You've been in this class twice. Both times you've sat next to me. You didn't have to, either time."
"There were no other seats."
"There was one. Third row, left side."
Third row, left side.
I hadn't looked that far. The admission settled somewhere quietly inconvenient, and I kept it off my face, though from the faint shift at the corner of his mouth I suspected I wasn't entirely successful.
"I didn't notice that seat," I said. Which was true. Technically.
"Okay," he said.
Just that. No follow-through, no pressing the point, no visible interest in what the admission might mean. Just okay, dropped down and left there, taking up almost no space.
I stood with it for a second, waiting for whatever came next.
Nothing came next.
"So you'll stop," I said, steering us back toward the original direction.
"Stop what?"
"The texts"
"I sent two texts."
"The call"
"One call." He paused. "You could have not answered."
This was technically accurate. It was also, I decided, completely beside the point.
"I'm asking you to leave me alone," I said, and this time I made it flat and clean, stripped of the back-and-forth that had somehow accumulated around it like sediment.
He looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted behind his eyes, not quite anything I could name. He reached down, picked up his bag, and stood.
He was taller than I registered when we were both seated. My brain noticing this at a time when I had no use for it whatsoever.
"Alright," he said.
And then he walked out.
I stood beside the empty chair and waited for the satisfaction of having said the clear thing and gotten the clear result.
It didn't arrive the way I'd expected.
There was no argument to have won. No pushback to have held my ground against. Just one word, spoken without weight, and then the door and then nothing, anticlimactic silence of getting exactly what you asked for and finding it somehow less complete than it was supposed to be.
I picked up my bag and left.
Charlie was outside the building, leaning against the wall with her phone, and looked up when I pushed through the door.
"How was class?"
"Fine."
She studied my face when she suspected the word fine was doing more work than it should. "You okay?"
"Yes." I started walking and she fell into step beside me without being asked. "Completely fine."
She was quiet for approximately ten seconds. A personal record.
"Did something happen?"
"No."
"Eve."
"Charlie."
The look appeared that meant she didn't believe me and was deciding whether to push now or bank it. She banked it, which meant later was coming. Just not yet.
We walked to the café. I finished the now-cold remnants of my earlier coffee.
Alright.
One word. No argument. No backward glance. The clean, unceremonious acceptance of what I'd asked for, offered without expression and walked away from without a moment's hesitation.
It was what I wanted.
Obviously it was what I wanted. It was what I'd walked into that classroom intending to achieve, and I had achieved it, and that was the end of it.
"You're doing the thing," Charlie said.
I looked at her. "What thing?"
"The staring-at-nothing-while-pretending-you're-fine thing."
She wrapped both hands around her cup. "You don't have to tell me. I'm just saying I notice."
I looked at her , the careful way she was not pushing and felt the familiar, slightly uncomfortable warmth.
"It's nothing," I said. "Really."
She nodded, slowly "Okay."
We sat there for a while longer. The café moved around us, orders called, chairs scraping, the ordinary noise.Outside, clouds had rolled in over and the light had gone flat and grey.
Alright.
I turned the word over one more time and then put it down.
He'd said what I asked him to say. He'd left when I asked him to leave. That was what I'd wanted and there was nothing left to examine.
I told myself this with conviction.