Chapter 5: Fries or chips
The walk to the café was a quiet one, punctuated only by the squelch of their wet shoes on the pavement and the occasional drip from their hair. The high from the lake—the kiss, the cold, the silent understanding—had faded into a palpable, vibrating tension that walked between them like a third person. They didn’t touch. They didn’t speak. The air was thick with everything unsaid.
The café was a dim, warm cave after the bright afternoon. It smelled of burnt coffee beans, toasted bread, and the faint, sweet decay of old paper from a shelf of forgotten novels. Mismatched armchairs hugged small round tables, and in the corner, a vinyl record crackled out a low, slow jazz trumpet. Hardin held the door for her, his hand brushing the small of her back as she passed, a contact so fleeting she might have imagined it.
They took a table in the back, tucked into a shadowy corner away from the few other patrons. The amber light from a filament bulb above them cast long, dramatic shadows across his face, highlighting the sharp angles of his cheekbones and the dark ink peeking from the collar of his still-damp t-shirt. Tessa tugged self-consciously at the oversized shirt of his she wore, now clinging to her in uncomfortable damp patches.
A waitress with tired eyes brought them laminated menus. “You two get caught in the storm?” she asked, her voice scratchy from cigarettes.
Hardin didn’t look up from his menu. “Something like that.”
They ordered burgers and chips. Two Cokes. Tessa asked for extra pickles.
When the food arrived, steaming on chipped plates, the ordinary act of eating felt surreal. Here they were, two people who had been underwater in each other’s arms minutes ago, now navigating salt shakers and paper napkins. Tessa watched as Hardin meticulously salted his chips, his long fingers precise in their movements.
“Why do you call them fries?” he asked suddenly, not looking up from his task.
Tessa blinked, pulled from her thoughts. “What?”
He nodded at her plate. “On the menu. You said chips. But everyone here calls them fries. You said ‘chips’.”
She shrugged, picking one up. “Because they’re fried. They’re fried potatoes. Chips.”
A faint smirk touched his lips. He finally looked at her, his ocean-blue eyes catching the low light. “They’re not French.”
She rolled her eyes, a genuine smile breaking through her nervousness. Without thinking, she reached across the small table and snatched a chip from the edge of his plate.
He stared at her hand as she popped it into her mouth. Then he laughed, a short, surprised sound that softened his entire face. He pointed a finger at her own full plate. “You’ve got plenty there.”
“Yours looked better,” she said, her mouth full.
They both laughed then, a release of the coiled tension. It was easy. It was normal. For a moment, they were just two people sharing a meal. The laughter faded into a comfortable silence, broken only by the soft jazz and the clink of cutlery. They ate. He stole one of her pickles. She stole another of his chips. A silent, silly trade.
When the plates were half-empty, she wiped her hands on a napkin and looked at him. He was watching her, his gaze intense but unreadable. The ease of moments before had condensed back into that heavy, familiar focus.
“So,” Tessa said, her voice softer than she intended. “What’s your story, then?”
Hardin’s eyes dropped to his plate. He pushed a lone chip through a smear of ketchup. “My story?”
“Yeah. Like, your family. How you ended up here. All that.”
He shook his head slowly, still not looking at her. “I’ll pass.”
The rejection was flat, a door slammed shut. She felt a prick of frustration, mixed with a deeper curiosity. “Why?”
He finally looked up, and the storm was back in his eyes, defensive and dark. “I just don’t think asking a bunch of arbitrary questions about someone’s past is really gonna tell you who they are.” He leaned back in his chair, the wooden legs creaking. “I can find out who you are by sitting here. Spending time with you. Watching you steal my food even though you have your own. Seeing how you stack your pickles on the side of your bun. The way you’re sitting on your feet right now because this chair is too tall for you.” A slight, almost imperceptible shrug. “That tells me more than any bullshit origin story.”
Tessa processed this, the rawness of his words. She nodded slowly, not in agreement, but in acceptance. She placed her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm, her eyes fixed on him.
Hardin raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”
A small smile played on her lips. “I’m just waiting.”
“For what?”
“For you to reveal your true self to me. By just sitting here. And spending time with you.”
For a long second, he just stared at her. Then his lips twitched. A real smile, one that reached his eyes, breaking through like sunlight through a crack in a storm cloud. He let out a small, breathy laugh, shaking his head as he looked down at the table. “Fair enough,” he murmured.
He took a long drink of his Coke, the ice clinking in the glass.
The fragile comfort of their laughter had settled into something else, a charged quiet where every glance felt heavy. Tessa traced the water ring her glass left on the wooden tabletop, her mind circling back to his bedroom, to the shelf full of well-worn paperbacks with clinching couples on the covers.
“One question.” Hardin Said.
She looked at him. “Okay,” she began, her voice casual but firm. “Why do you have all those romance novels if you don’t believe in love?”
Hardin’s eyes snapped up to hers, a spark of something—amusement, challenge—flashing in their blue depths. He leaned back, the chair groaning softly. “Who says I don’t believe in love?”
“You did.” Tessa held his gaze, refusing to blink. “In class.”
A slow, wicked smile spread across his face, a memory clearly playing behind his eyes. “True,” he conceded, the word a lazy admission. He leaned forward again, his voice dropping, intimate. “Maybe don’t believe everything I say.”
The implication hung between them, thick and sweet as the syrup in their drinks. Before she could dissect it, a shadow fell over their table. The scent of cheap perfume cut through the smell of coffee.
“Well, look who it is.” Molly’s voice was a sugar-coated blade.
Tessa looked up to see Molly smiling a tight, polished smile, Noah hovering awkwardly behind her. Molly slid into the empty chair next to Hardin without invitation, her body angling toward him. Noah gave Tessa a small, apologetic shrug and took the seat beside her.
“What were you two doing?” Molly asked, her eyes darting between them, landing on Tessa’s borrowed shirt.
Tessa opened her mouth. “We were just—”
“We were just getting some food,” Hardin cut her off, his tone flat. He didn’t look at Molly.
Molly’s hand came to rest on Hardin’s shoulder, her fingers stroking the fabric of his t-shirt. He immediately shrugged her off, a sharp, dismissive jerk of his body. “We’re leaving,” he announced, his gaze fixed on Tessa.
“Perfect,” Molly chirped, undeterred. “I need a ride.”
Hardin finally turned his head toward her, his expression cold. “It’s not a good time. You can ask Noah for a ride.” He stood up, the movement sudden, his height casting a long shadow over the table.
“Excuse me?” Molly’s smile vanished.
She didn’t move from her chair. Hardin dug into his pocket and pulled out his keychain. He extended his hand across the table, the keys dangling from his finger, directly to Tessa. The metal glinted in the low light.
She stared at them. “Really?” she asked, looking up at his face.
He nodded, once. “Yes. I won’t be long.”
Her fingers closed around the cold metal. The weight of the keys, of the trust or the test, was startling in her palm. Hardin didn’t wait for another word.
An oppressive silence clamped down on the table. Molly’s eyes were narrowed slits, first on the empty space where Hardin had been, then burning into the side of Tessa’s face. Noah studied the menu as if it contained ancient secrets. The jazz record scratched to its end, leaving only the hum of the refrigerator and the terrible quiet.
Molly slowly turned her venomous attention fully on Tessa.
Molly’s lips twisted into something between a smirk and a snarl. “So,” she said, her voice dripping a false, sugary concern. “You’re the new distraction.”
Tessa forced herself to meet Molly’s gaze, the keys biting into her palm. “I’m not a distraction.”
“Sure.” Molly leaned back, appraising her like a specimen.
Before Tessa could form a retort, a shadow fell over the table. Hardin stood there, his body ridged. His eyes were fixed on Molly, a cold, flat calm in them that was more frightening than any anger.
“Outside. Now,” he said, his voice low and final, directed at Tessa.
He didn’t wait. He simply turned and walked towards the door. Molly opened her mouth, a protest forming on her lips.
Hardin didn’t let Molly get another word in. He was already holding the café door open, his impatience a physical force. Tessa stood, the legs of her chair screeching against the floor. She didn’t look back at Molly or Noah. She walked, feeling their stares on her back like hot pins, and stepped out into the cooling evening air.
The door swung shut behind her, cutting off the café’s warmth and the jazz. Hardin was already several paces ahead, his strides long and angry towards his black car parked under a flickering streetlight.
“What was that?” she asked, hurrying to catch up.
“What was what?” he said, not slowing.
“Were you, like, embarrassed that they saw us together?”
He stopped abruptly at the driver’s side door, making her pull up short. He shook his head, a sharp, frustrated motion. “No,” he stated, yanking the door open. He slid into the seat without another word.
Tessa got in on the passenger side, the silence in the car immediate and thick. He started the engine, the roar cutting through the quiet night. He didn’t look at her as he pulled out onto the empty street.
The drive back to campus was utterly silent. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and the hiss of tires on asphalt. Streetlights strobed across his face, illuminating a clenched jaw, eyes fixed on some distant point ahead. He drove with a grim focus, one hand tight on the wheel, the other resting on the gear shift. Tessa watched the darkened shops and houses blur past, her mind replaying Molly’s words, the coldness in Hardin’s eyes, the startling warmth of his skin under the lake’s surface.
He parked with a jerk in the nearly empty campus lot, the headlights illuminating a brick wall before he killed the engine. The sudden darkness felt deeper. He got out, slammed his door, and started walking towards his dorm without looking back.
Tessa scrambled out after him. “Hardin.”
He kept walking, his back to her. “Night, Tessa,” he threw over his shoulder, the words a clear dismissal.
He pushed through the heavy door to his building and let it swing shut behind him. She stood there in the lonely pool of a yellow security light, the cool metal of his car key still in her hand. She watched the door, half-expecting him to come back out. He didn’t.
Tessa turned and walked slowly towards her own dorm, every step heavy. The conflict churned inside her, a turbulent mix of lingering warmth from the lake and the icy shrapnel from the café. She thought about the water, the weightlessness, his hands on her skin. She thought about his laugh over the chips, so surprisingly light. Then she thought about the way he’d shut down, the door slamming closed behind his eyes as surely as the one he’d just walked through. The two versions of him refused to reconcile, leaving her stranded somewhere in the middle, holding a key that felt too heavy for her pocket.
Back in her sterile dorm room, the silence was a physical weight. She dropped her key onto her desk with a sharp clack. The sound echoed. She peeled off his damp shirt, the scent of lake water and him clinging to the cotton, and pulled on soft sleep shorts and a thin tank. The day’s chill had seeped into her bones, a deep cold the shower’s hot water couldn’t touch. She climbed into bed, the sheets unbearably crisp and clean against her skin.
Her mind replayed it all on a relentless loop: the freezing water, his hands on her hips, the warm drift of his laugh in the café, then the sudden arctic freeze in his eyes. The whiplash left her aching. She stared at the textured ceiling, tracing the cracks until her eyes grew heavy, the images blurring into the dark.
A subtle shift in the air, a presence, pulled her from the shallow edge of sleep. She opened her eyes. Hardin was sitting on the edge of her bed, shirtless in the low light filtering from the hallway. The dead tree spanning his torso was a dark shadow against his skin. He was just a silhouette, watching her.
“You’re here,” she murmured, her voice thick with sleep, believing it was a dream.
His hand came to her cheek, his touch calloused and warm. Her hand rose sleepily to cup his, her fingers curling over his knuckles, over the “K” and “Q” inked there. He said nothing. His thumb stroked her cheekbone, a slow, possessive rhythm. Then his hand began to travel, sliding down the column of her neck, over her sternum. Her breath hitched. This felt different from the lake—more deliberate, more claiming.
His palm smoothed down her stomach, the heat of it bleeding through her thin tank. She didn’t move, suspended. His fingertips hooked under the elastic waistband of her shorts, dipping beneath. A jolt shot through her, electric and sharp. Her breathing grew louder, filling the quiet room.
“What’re you dreaming about?” His voice was a low rasp, close to her ear.
The question, the specific texture of his voice, the exact pressure of his hand—it shattered the dream’s veneer. Reality crashed in. She gasped, her eyes flying wide open, yanking herself back from his touch.
She was alone. The room was empty. The space beside her on the narrow bed was cold and undisturbed. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drum in the silence. She scrambled upright, pulling her knees to her chest, and scanned every shadowy corner. Nothing. The door was closed.
But the ghost of his touch still burned on her skin.