Chapter 21: The Night of the Storm
"That sounds like a guy who's never going to get work done," Alyssa said.
"He didn't. We spent the first two hours gossiping about people we know. Nothing important, just, you know, the usual stuff. Who's hooking up with who. Who got weirdly intense about a group project. The kind of nonsense you talk about when you've known someone long enough that you don't have to impress them anymore."
"Known him long enough," Cassie echoed, filing the detail away. "So he's not a new friend. This is someone you've got history with."
"Years of history," Mia said, and she felt something soften in her chest as she said it. "We've been friends since freshman year. He's the guy I call when I need help moving my couch, or when I'm fighting with my mom, or when I can't figure out how to work my new TV remote and I'm too proud to Google it. He's just... he's my person. He's been my person for a long time."
"Mia," Joanna said softly, "girl. That's how you end up in love."
"I know that now."
The girls exchanged loaded glances, but nobody interrupted. The locker room felt smaller somehow, more intimate, like they were all leaning in to catch a secret.
"So we're sitting there," Mia continued. "And somehow we get on the topic of relationships. Like, past relationships. Failed ones. And we're going back and forth, telling each other horror stories about the people we've dated. He's telling me about this girl he took to a formal a couple years ago. She was pretty, funny, the whole package. And they had a good time, but he said he felt like he was performing the whole night. Like he was playing a part instead of actually being with someone."
"That's sad," Rachel said quietly.
"It is," Mia agreed. "And I'm sitting there listening to him talk about it, and I realize I've got my own version of the same story. I dated this guy junior year, the kind of guy my mom loved. Good grades, good family, went to church on Sundays. And every time we were together, I felt like I was checking a box. Like I was dating him because it made sense, not because I actually wanted him."
"Did you ever want him?" Alyssa asked.
"Nope." The word came out flat and honest. "Not once. And I didn't realize how much that was missing until I was sitting there with my friend, listening to him describe the exact same emptiness. We spent, like, two hours unpacking all of it. All the people we'd tried to make fit, all the ways we'd twisted ourselves into shapes that weren't ours. And neither of us had ever said any of it out loud before."
"Wow," Cassie said, and her voice had lost its teasing edge. "That's, uh, that's a lot more emotional than I was expecting from the story that leads to those bruises."
"Yeah, well. That's the thing." Mia picked at the trail mix bag, watching the peanuts shift. "It wasn't just sex. It was... it was the first time in my life I ever felt like someone was actually seeing me. Like, the real me. Not the cheer captain, not the girl who's good at parties, not the one everybody expects to have her life together. Just Mia. And he liked her. He actually liked her."
Rachel handed her the water bottle without a word. Mia took a sip, letting the cool water settle in her throat.
"So the snow started," she said slowly, picking her way through the memory. "Just light flakes at first, pretty, the kind you watch from a window with a hot drink. He looked out and made a joke about how I should probably head out before it got bad. And I said yeah, probably. And neither of us moved."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we just sat there. On his couch. Watching the snow fall. And I kept thinking about how I didn't want to leave. Not because I was afraid of the weather, but because I hadn't felt that comfortable in, like, forever. And I think he felt the same way, because he kept starting sentences with 'you should probably' and then just... trailing off."
"He didn't want you to go either," Joanna said softly.
"No," Mia said, and the smile that crept onto her face was real. "He didn't. But we were both too chickenshit to say anything. So we just sat there, watching the snow pile up, pretending we weren't both thinking the same thing."
"So what happened?" Alyssa asked.
"The snow got worse. Fast. We went from 'a light dusting' to 'can't see the car across the street' in about an hour. And he finally stood up and said 'okay, we need to get you home before this gets really bad.' And I said 'yeah, you're right.' And we put on our coats and walked out to my car."
Mia paused, the memory sharp and immediate. The cold biting her cheeks, the wind cutting through her jacket, the way the world had gone white and silent. She remembered the exact feeling of her boots slipping on the ice.
"I fell," she said. "We were barely ten feet from his front door. There was a patch of black ice on the walkway, and down I went. And he caught me. Grabbed my arm and hauled me back up before I hit the ground. And we just stood there for a second, both of us breathing hard, faces inches apart, and I could see the snowflakes landing in his hair and melting."
"He caught you," Cassie said.
"He caught me," Mia confirmed. "And when he looked at me, I knew. I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. We weren't going anywhere."
"So you went back inside?"
"We went back inside." Mia laughed, shaking her head. "He looked at me and he said 'well, this is a problem,' and I said 'yeah, it really is,' and then he said 'I guess you're stuck here' and I said 'I guess I am' and we both just, like, stared at each other. I said 'i guess we're having a sleepover.'"
The locker room was quiet for a moment.
"That's adorable," Joanna breathed.
"It was. It was so, so cute. And then the night just... kept going."
"'Kept going' how?" Alyssa leaned forward. "Because I need you to elaborate. This is the part we actually care about."
"Yeah," Cassie said, her grin spreading. "I'm glad you two had your cute little moment, but now I need to know how we get from cute lil-friends to you showing up looking like you wrestled a mountain lion?"
Mia looked at the eager faces surrounding her, the trail mix bag crinkling in her grip. She could feel the story building in her chest, the memory of that first night still so vivid it made her skin prickle.
"In due time, ladies," she said, a sly smile playing at her lips. "You want the whole journey? You're going to get it. But you have to let me tell it my way."
"You're killing us," Cassie groaned, but she settled back anyway, the gleam in her eye undimmed.
"We'd been stuck at his place for about an hour when a pattern started to emerge," Mia said, picking through the trail mix with a detached air. "The heater was fine, the power was fine, and we'd already exhausted the gossip. He'd made coffee, I'd nuked some leftover pizza, and we were sitting there on his couch with our laptops open, neither of us actually working."
"Classic," Rachel murmured.
"At some point, he got up and came back with a bottle of brandy. Old, dusty, clearly something his dad had given him that he'd never opened. He said the occasion felt right. I said it felt like Tuesday. He said 'exactly.'" Mia laughed, the sound soft with affection. "We poured it into chipped mugs and pretended we were sophisticated. It was terrible. It was also exactly what we needed."
"First drink ever?" Joanna asked.
"No. But the first one we'd ever shared." Mia's fingers tightened on the bag. "And maybe that mattered more than I understood at the time."
"So you got drunk?" Alyssa pressed.
"Tipsy. We're not animals. But tipsy enough that the evening started to spiral somewhere new. He, very casually, suggested we play Truth or Dare. He was insistent on the truth part. Said he'd never wanted to do the dares. That we'd regret them in the morning. I think he was afraid of what he'd dare me to do."
"Smart man," Rachel said.
"He was, or still is. We started with safe questions. The kind you ask when you're testing the water. Who was your worst kiss? What's the most embarrassing thing you've done in public? Stuff like that. And I was laughing, feeling warm and happy and comfortable. Then he asked me something that stopped the laughter cold."
Mia paused, letting the silence stretch. The girls were motionless, hanging on her words.
"He asked what my most intense sexual experience was."
"Whoa," Cassie breathed.
"And you said?" Alyssa was leaning so far forward she was practically in Mia's lap.
"At the time, I didn't have an answer that lived up to the question. I'd had sex before, obviously. The guy from junior year I told you about. A couple of others, casual, nothing that stuck. But intense? The word didn't fit any of them. They were fine. They were fine and they were forgettable and I'd never once in my life felt like I was being completely consumed by a moment." Mia shook her head. "So I turned it back on him. Asked him the same question. And he went quiet for a long time before he told me about the night after the championship game."
"The championship game," Joanna repeated, eyes wide. "Wait. Is he a sports guy?"
Mia bit the inside of her cheek. She'd let that slip on purpose, tested the waters. "He's... athletic. Very athletic. And that night after the championship..."
"Athletic," Cassie repeated, drawing the word out like she was tasting it. "Okay. Noted. A sport guy."
"Don't read into it," Mia said, but the damage was done. She could see the gears turning behind their eyes, cataloging, cross-referencing, building a list of suspects.
"Continue," Alyssa said. "The championship game. What did he say?"
Mia blew out a breath. "He said he'd been wound so tight that night he thought he might vibrate out of his skin. The game had been everything, the win, the crowd, the rush. But when it was over, there was all this energy left over with nowhere to go. He went to a party, drank too much, and ended up back at some girl's place. He said it was good sex. Energetic, even. But he couldn't remember her name the next morning, and the whole thing felt hollow."
"That's so sad," Joanna said, her hand pressed to her chest.
"It is. And I think that was the moment I realized how lonely he'd been. This big, confident, talented guy who everyone looked up to, and he was sitting there on his couch with a chipped mug of terrible brandy, telling me that he'd never once felt like someone was actually there with him. Not in bed, not in life. Always performing, always playing a part."
"So what did you say?" Alyssa asked.
"I told him that sounded like a waste. That someone like him should be with someone who actually saw him." Mia paused, the memory of the words still burning in her throat. "And then I asked him what he actually wanted. Not the generic stuff, not what he thought he should want. What he really wanted."