Chapter 6: Real
The alcove’s silence felt like a physical thing, a bubble they’d both agreed not to pop. Svet’s forehead remained against Joe’s chest for a moment longer, the steady thump of his heart a grounding rhythm against the chaos in her head. When she finally leaned back, the world seemed both sharper and softer. His arm fell from her shoulders.
“We should…” she started, her voice hoarse.
“Yeah,” he finished. He didn’t smile, but the tightness around his eyes had eased. He pushed off the wall, a massive figure unfolding in the cramped space. “Alexa’s probably bought out the entire Bath & Body Works by now.”
They walked back into the main thoroughfare side-by-side, but the distance between them had changed. It wasn’t empty space anymore; it was charged, humming with a newfound, fragile understanding. The noise of the mall washed over them—squealing kids, the tinny beat of pop music from a storefront, the rumble of a nearby escalator.
They found the group right where they’d left them, by the fountain. Brittany and her friends were gone, thankfully. Alexa was holding a large shopping bag, looking triumphant. Diego and Mark stood a few feet apart, an island of strained male silence in the bustling courtyard.
“There you are!” Alexa chirped, though her eyes flickered between them, missing little. “We thought you got lost. Or escaped.”
“Just needed a minute,” Svet said, and her voice didn’t sound like the decoy’s. It sounded like hers, tired but clear.
Mark’s gaze locked onto her. It was a hungry, aggrieved look. Diego, sensing competition dissolving now that Joe was back, sidled up to Svet. “Everything okay?” he asked, proprietary.
“Fine,” she said, not looking at him.
It was Mark who made the move. As the group loosely organized itself to leave—Alexa suggesting frozen yogurt—he fell into step beside Svet, deliberately cutting her off from the others. Joe, walking just ahead with Alexa, glanced back, his pace slowing.
“So, that was weird,” Mark said, his tone pretending to be light. It wasn’t.
“What was?”
“You just running off like that. With him.” Mark nodded toward Joe’s broad back. “We were in the middle of a conversation.”
Svet took a breath. The old script, the placating one, rose to her lips. She felt its familiar, sickly-sweet shape. I’m sorry, it was nothing, don’t be upset. She bit it back. The taste of truth in the alcove was still too sharp, too clean.
“We weren’t in a conversation, Mark,” she said, keeping her eyes on the colorful storefronts they passed. “You were talking at me.”
He blinked, his smile freezing. “Okay. Wow. Someone’s defensive.” He leaned a little closer, his voice dropping. “Is this because of last semester? Because I thought we cleared the air. You apologized.”
The mention of the apology, her own coerced surrender in the garage, sent a spike of cold anger through her. She stopped walking, forcing him to stop with her. The others drifted a few paces ahead.
“I apologized to make you go away,” she said, each word deliberate. “It was a tactical maneuver. It wasn’t genuine.”
His face darkened, the friendly pretense evaporating. “A tactical maneuver? What am I, the enemy? Jesus, Svetlanna, you really do have a fucking superiority complex, you know that? You flirt with everything that moves, then act like guys are gross for taking the bait.”
The words were meant to wound, to corner her back into the role of the tease. For years, they would have worked. She felt the old panic, the urge to deflect and mollify, to ensure he didn’t leave angry.
But then she saw Joe.
He hadn’t kept walking. He’d stopped, just ten feet away, fully turned to face them. He wasn’t storming over. He wasn’t saying a word. He was just… there. A monument of silent witness. His arms were crossed, his expression unreadable, but his presence was an anchor. He was watching her, not Mark. Believing her, not him.
She didn’t need a savior. She needed a witness.
She turned her full attention back to Mark, her voice low and steady. “I’m not flirting with you now. I’m not interested. That’s not a negotiation. It’s a fact. We’re done with this conversation.”
She started to walk away, toward Joe and Alexa, her legs feeling only slightly unsteady.
Mark’s hand shot out, not to grab her, but to grip her forearm. It was a quick, frustrated motion. “Just hold on a damn second—”
That was all.
Joe moved. It wasn’t a sprint or a charge. It was a single, decisive stride that covered the distance between them. He didn’t touch Mark. He didn’t shove or yell. He simply inserted his body into the space between Mark’s hand and Svet, his own arm coming down in a casual-looking motion that broke Mark’s grip without any apparent effort.
The difference in their size was almost comical. Mark had to tilt his head back to look up at him, his anger flickering into instinctual alarm.
“She said the conversation was done,” Joe stated. His voice was quiet, flat, carrying absolute finality. He wasn’t asking. He wasn’t threatening. He was simply relaying information, as one would state the time or the weather. His sheer physical reality made the statement incontrovertible.
Mark’s mouth opened, then closed. He looked from Joe’s impassive face to Svet’s, his cheeks flushing with impotent humiliation. He muttered something under his breath—“whatever, man, this is pathetic”—then turned and stalked off, quickly dissolving into the mall crowd.
The silence he left behind was swallowed by the ambient noise. Diego stared, slack-jawed. Alexa’s eyes were wide, her constantly chatting mind seemingly short-circuited by the quiet intensity of the exchange.
Joe turned to Svet. His eyes searched hers. “You okay?”
She nodded, a real, slow nod. Her forearm where Mark had grabbed her throbbed faintly. “Yeah. I am.”
He accepted this, then looked past her at Diego and his sister. “Yogurt still happening?”
The normalcy of the question broke the spell. Alexa exhaled loudly. “Uh, yes. Definitely. I need chocolate fudge swirl to process… whatever that was.” She looped her arm through Svet’s, pulling her gently forward, chattering again, a nervous release. Diego followed, uncharacteristically quiet.
Joe fell into step beside Svet, a solid, silent barrier on her other side.
At the yogurt place, perched on a sticky stool at a high table, the dynamic had shifted irrevocably. Diego’s attempts at charm seemed hollow and transparent now, and he gave up quickly, scrolling through his phone. Alexa’s chatter was a buffer, but her looks to Svet and Joe were more curious than ever.
Svet ate her tart frozen yogurt, the cold a shock to her system. She felt drained, but clean. Like she’d shed a skin.
When they finally parted ways in the parking lot—Diego with a stiff nod, Alexa with a tight, knowing hug—Svet was left standing by her car with Joe. The late afternoon sun was slanted and hot, painting the asphalt in long shadows.
“Thanks,” she said finally. “For… being there.”
“You didn’t need me to do anything,” he replied, leaning against his massive truck. “You had it. I just made sure he remembered the ‘done’ part.”
She smiled, a small, real thing. “It helped. Knowing you were seeing it. Not the decoy. The… me.”
He nodded, looking out across the sea of cars. The vulnerability from the alcove was still there, but it was quieter now, settled. “So,” he said, after a moment. “The next time some guy at the game room tries to challenge you to pool for your number… what happens?”
She met his gaze, a flicker of the old fire returning to her eyes. “I’ll run the table on him,” she said. “And then I’ll tell him his shot was pathetic and to buy his own damn drink.”
A real smile broke across Joe’s face then, transforming it completely. It was like watching the sun come out from behind a mountain. “Good,” he said.
He pushed off his truck. “Drive safe, Svet.”
“You too, Joe.”
She got in her car, watching his taillights disappear. The ghost of Mark’s grip on her arm was fading. In its place was the memory of Joe’s quiet, unwavering presence, and the echo of her own voice, finally saying exactly what she meant. The road home felt different. Lighter. The armor was still in the trunk, but for the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel the immediate need to put it on.
The armor was still in the trunk, but for the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel the immediate need to put it on. Her apartment was quiet, a stark contrast to the mall’s sensory barrage. She clicked on a single lamp, its glow soft against the descending twilight. The silence felt like a reward, not a threat.
She made tea, the ritual calming. The mug was warm against her palms. Her mind replayed the day on a loop—the crush of the crowd, Mark’s grasping hand, the dim alcove’s confession. Joe’s solid back as he faced Mark down. The calm, unshakable finality in his voice. She said the conversation was done.
A shower washed the mall smell from her skin. The hot water pounded the lingering tension from her shoulders. She replayed his smile by his truck, the way it had transformed his entire face, and a different kind of warmth spread through her chest.
She slid into bed, the sheets cool. Exhaustion pulled at her, but her thoughts were vivid, electric. She replayed the feeling of her forehead against his chest, the solid, reliable beat of his heart. The memory was a physical pressure, a sweet ache beneath her sternum. Sleep came slowly, pulling her down into a deep, velvet dark.
Then, the dream.
It wasn’t abstract. It was hyper-real. She was back in the mall’s service alcove, the fern’s leaves brushing her arms. But the space was smaller, hotter, the air thick and still. Joe was there, his back against the same cool tile wall. She could see every detail: the faint stubble along his jaw, the small scar through his eyebrow, the warm brown of his eyes watching her.
No one spoke. The silence was a living thing.
In the dream, she reached out. Her fingertips traced the line of his jaw, feeling the rough texture shift to the softness of his lower lip. He didn’t move, but his eyes darkened, his breath leaving him in a slow, controlled sigh. The sound seemed to travel through her own bones.
His hand came up, covering hers, pressing her palm flat against the heat of his chest. She could feel the fierce, rapid drumming of his heart, a wild counter-rhythm to his still expression. His other hand found the curve of her waist, his touch immeasurably gentle yet containing a latent, devastating strength. It was a question.
She leaned in, closing the last inch of space. Their lips met, and the dream exploded into sensation. It wasn’t tentative. It was deep, searching, an admission of everything they hadn’t said. The taste of him was clean, like rain and something uniquely male. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her flush against him, and she was surrounded by him—the scent, the heat, the sheer scale of him.
Her hands slid up, fingers tangling in the short, soft hair at the nape of his neck. A low sound vibrated in his throat, almost a groan, and the kiss deepened, turned urgent. His hands moved, one splaying against the small of her back, the other cupping the side of her neck, his thumb stroking her jaw. Every point of contact was a small, electric shock.
The dream had a texture, a weight. The rough tile against her knuckles as she braced herself. The delicious drag of his cotton shirt under her palms as she fisted it, pulling him closer. The intimate, dizzying friction of his body against hers. A feeling of rightness, of homecoming, so profound it felt like vertigo. It was visceral and pure, stripped of all performance, a raw convergence of want and trust.
She woke with a gasp.
The dark of her bedroom was absolute. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic echo of the dream-pulse under her hand. The sheets were tangled around her legs, her skin feverish and sensitive. The phantom sensations clung to her—the pressure of his mouth, the cradle of his hands, the overwhelming heat.
She lay perfectly still, breathing hard. The quiet hum of her refrigerator sounded miles away. A deep, slow throb of longing settled low in her abdomen, unfamiliar and insistent.
“Oh,” she whispered to the empty room.
The sound was small, lost in the dark. She pushed her hands into her hair, staring at the ceiling she couldn’t see. The decoy was nowhere to be found. That had been entirely, devastatingly her. A confession her conscious mind hadn't yet dared to make.
Sleep was impossible. The memory of the dream was more real than the room around her. She blinked, seeing the afterimage of his face in the shadows. The cool, empty space next to her in the bed felt suddenly, unbearably vast.
The cool, empty space next to her in the bed felt suddenly, unbearably vast. The dream’s fire had banked to a persistent, smoldering heat. It pooled low in her belly, a tight, restless clench that pulsed in time with her heartbeat. She shifted against the sheets. The cotton felt abrasive.
Every thought snapped back to the alcove. To the weight of his hand on her shoulder. The quiet, ragged admittance of his own loneliness. Her skin remembered it all. The decoy was useless here, in the dark. There was no audience to perform for, no script to soften the raw edges of this wanting.
She pressed her thighs together. The friction was a sharp, fleeting echo that only deepened the ache. A slow breath hissed out between her teeth. This was ridiculous. He was her best friend’s brother. He was a planet-sized professional athlete. He was quiet in a way that felt like depth, not absence. Stop.
But her hand was already moving. It slid down her own stomach, a path of goosebumps rising in its wake. This wasn’t about him, not really. It was about the ache. It was about control, about reclaiming the sensations the dream had ignited and making them hers alone. That’s what she told herself.
Her fingertips dipped lower, through the damp heat, and her whole body jerked. A choked sound, half-surprise, half-relief, escaped her. She pressed the heel of her hand hard against herself, eyes squeezed shut. Behind her lids, his face materialized. Not the public Joe, but the private one from the coffee shop lot, smiling like he’d found something.
The memory unlocked a sharper need. Her fingers began to move in slow, deliberate circles. The rhythm was jagged at first. She thought of his voice in the mall corridor. ‘You just shut down.’ The pressure built, a growing wave. She thought of his back as he stepped between her and Mark, an immovable wall. Her breaths came faster, shallow.
She let the images come. The imagined scrape of his stubble against her neck. The hypothetical feel of those massive, careful hands spanning her ribs. The sheer, impossible warmth of him surrounding her. It wasn’t gentle fantasy; it was desperate, hungry. A direct counterpoint to every hollow interaction, every tactical smile she’d ever had to force.
Her back arched off the mattress. A single, bitten-off syllable—his name—fractured in the silent room. The release wasn’t a gentle unwind. It was a seismic shunt, a sudden, violent leap into white static that wiped every other thought clean. It left her body thrumming, nerve endings singing a fading anthem.
Silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
She lay there, spent, the sheets cool now against her heated skin. The vast space beside her seemed to yawn even wider. A hollow, shaky feeling crept into the space the heat had vacated. This changed the wiring. The fantasy had been too specific, too tied to the real man with the quiet eyes and the devastating smile.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She flinched. The screen glowed: a text from Alexa. So. Mall was wild. You and my brother are being WEIRD. Details tomorrow. Coffee?
Svet stared at the message. A laugh, brittle and small, bubbled up. She typed back, her fingers unsteady. Weird how? And yes. Coffee. Bring pastries. She hit send.
She put the phone down face-first. The ghost of his touch was gone from her skin, replaced by a deeper, more complicated tremor. The problem was no longer the warmth between her thighs. It was the one now firmly lodged behind her sternum, patient and glowing, with no easy way to put it out.