Chapter 7: Talk
The morning light through Svet’s blinds felt accusatory. She’d slept in fits, the dream clinging to her like a second skin, leaving her body humming with a residual awareness that coffee alone wouldn’t fix. She’d just managed to pull on a pair of soft, worn sweats and tie her hair into a chaotic knot when a rapid-fire knocking shattered the apartment’s quiet.
“Svet! Open up, I come bearing caffeine and baked goods! I know you’re in there, your car is downstairs!”
Alexa. Of course.
Svet opened the door, squinting. Her best friend stood there, a vision of coordinated leisure in athleisure wear, holding two steaming to-go cups and a pink bakery box. Her eyes, sharp and knowing, scanned Svet from head to toe.
“Rough night?” Alexa chirped, brushing past her and heading straight for the kitchen. “You look like you wrestled a conscience and lost.”
“I slept fine,” Svet mumbled, the lie tasting like dust. The phantom sensation of calloused hands on her waist flared, absurd and vivid. She followed Alexa, accepting the proffered coffee. The first bitter sip was a anchor to reality.
Alexa popped the box open, revealing two perfect chocolate croissants. “So. The mall.”
“The mall,” Svet echoed, leaning against the counter, avoiding eye contact.
“Yeah. You and Joe disappeared. Mark looked like he’d swallowed a bug. Diego was pouting. It was fantastic theater.” Alexa took a delicate bite, her gaze unwavering. “Then you two came back, and the air was… different. Thicker. Joe did his silent mountain routine and Mark evaporated. Explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain. Mark got pushy. Joe reminded him not to be. End of story.”
“Pushy how?”
Svet sighed, relenting. “He grabbed my arm. Just for a second.”
Alexa’s playful demeanor solidified into something harder. “He what?”
“It was nothing. Joe was there. He handled it.”
“By ‘handled it,’ you mean he used his mere existence as a deterrent, which is frankly the most Joe way to handle anything.” Alexa studied her. “But that’s not the ‘different air’ part. The ‘different air’ part happened before that, when you two were MIA. What happened in the alcove?”
Svet’s face warmed. She took a long drag of coffee, burning her tongue. “We talked.”
“About?”
“Things. Life. The crushing weight of existing.” She deflected with a weak joke, but it fell flat.
“You talked about the crushing weight with my brother,” Alexa said slowly, putting her croissant down. “Joe. Who communicates in grunts and nods. And it made him step between you and a guy. Voluntarily. In public.” A slow, dazzling smile spread across Alexa’s face. “Oh my god. You like him.”
“I do not—”
“You do! You’re all flustered and morning-after weird, and not in your usual ‘I hate men’ way. In a new, specific, ‘I dreamt about my best friend’s gigantic brother’ way.”
Svet nearly choked. The accuracy was terrifying. “You’re insane.”
“I’m observant! This is perfect. I’ve been saying for months you two would be—”
“Don’t,” Svet cut in, a flare of genuine panic cutting through the haze. “Alexa, don’t even start. He’s your brother. He’s… him. It’s not a thing. It was a weird day.”
Alexa held up her hands in surrender, but the gleam in her eyes was undimmed. “Fine, fine. I’ll drop the interrogation. For now.” She snapped the bakery box shut. “But we’re still going to the game room. I need to practice my bank shots, and you need to be around people who aren’t me trying to psychoanalyze you.”
“I don’t want to—”
“Too bad. You’re dressed. Let’s go.”
The walk across campus was a study in contrasts. The sun was warm, the paths buzzing with students shrugging off the week’s stress. Alexa talked about a professor’s new awful haircut, a seamless stream of gossip that required only minimal responses. Svet was grateful for the noise. It filled the space where her own thoughts screamed.
The familiar scent of the game room hit her first—stale popcorn, ancient carpet, a hint of citrus cleaner battling lost causes. The clack of pool balls was a steady, comforting rhythm. Neon from the soda machine cast a sickly glow on worn Formica tables. A few guys from the soccer team acknowledged them with chin lifts from a nearby booth.
And then she saw him.
Joe was already at a corner table, practicing alone. He was bent over a difficult shot, his focus absolute. The fluorescent light gleamed off the short, dark hair at the nape of his neck. His t-shirt stretched across his shoulders, the fabric pulling tight with the controlled motion of his cue. He wasn’t just big; he was precise. The powerful geometry of him aligning with the table was mesmerizing.
Her breath caught. The dream surged back, a tidal wave of inappropriate sensory memory—the imagined feel of those shoulders under her hands, the weight of him. Her palms felt damp.
He sank the shot, a clean thwock, and straightened up. As if sensing her stare, he turned. His eyes found hers across the crowded room. For a second, there was no one else. The chatter faded to a distant hum.
He gave her a single, slow nod. Not a smile. An acknowledgment. A secret passed between them in a crowded room.
Then Alexa, blissfully oblivious to the seismic shift, waved wildly. “Joe! Over here!”
The spell broke. Joe’s expression smoothed into its usual quiet neutrality, but his gaze lingered on Svet for a half-second too long as they approached. He was setting up the rack for a new game.
“Hey,” he said, his voice a low rumble that Svet felt in her bones.
“Look who I dragged out of her cave,” Alexa announced, claiming a stool. “We’re here to school you, big brother. Loser buys dinner.”
Joe’s lips twitched. He finished racking the triangles with expert, efficient clicks. “You’re on.” He looked at Svet. “You breaking?”
Her fingers itched for the cool weight of a cue, for the distraction of geometry and force. “Yeah,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt. She selected a house cue, chalked it with more concentration than the task required.
As she bent to line up the break, she was hyper-aware of him leaning against the wall nearby, watching. The memory of last night—both last nights, the real and the dream—collided. Her break was clean, powerful, scattering the balls with a satisfying crash. Two solids dropped.
“Still got it,” Alexa crowed.
Svet circled the table, planning her run. The game was a welcome script. Here, she knew her lines. She sank three more shots before facing a tricky cluster. She studied the angles, her mind calming, focusing on the pure, solvable problem in front of her.
She felt him move closer, not to watch the shot, but to retrieve his abandoned drink from the ledge near her hip. His arm brushed against her back, a fleeting, solid warmth. It was an accident. It wasn’t.
A jolt, clean and sharp, went through her. She missed the shot by a mile, the cue ball scratching pathetically into a corner pocket.
“Whoa,” Alexa laughed. “Choke artist!”
Svet straightened, heat flooding her cheeks. Joe’s expression was unreadable as he moved to the table for his turn. “Lucky for me,” he said, his tone mild.
But as he passed her to take his position, his voice dropped, for her ears only, a soft murmur that was almost swallowed by the jukebox switching to a new song. “You okay?”
Two words. They held everything—the mall, the alcove, Mark, the fragile truce, the unspoken current that had her missing easy shots. She met his eyes. The brown was deep, warm, asking a real question.
She nodded, unable to trust her voice.
He held her gaze for another heartbeat, then turned to the table. He ran five balls before missing a difficult cut, leaving her a wide open table. A gift. An invitation.
Her turn again. She played, her nerves settling into a different kind of focus. It was no longer just about the game. It was a conversation. He’d move to survey a shot, and his shoulder would be a broad plane inches from her arm. She’d lean over the table, and she could feel the heat of him standing behind her, not touching, but present. The air between them crackled with a thousand unsaid things.
Alexa prattled on, commentating, completely missing the silent dialogue unfolding over the green felt. Svet won the game. Joe simply nodded, a faint smile touching his eyes. “Told you she was good,” he said to his sister.
“Best I’ve seen,” Alexa agreed, then hopped up. “I’m getting popcorn. You two want anything?”
They shook their heads. Alexa bustled off toward the concession counter.
And they were alone, in the middle of the crowded, noisy room. The silence between them was vast and charged. Joe chalking his cue. Svet tracing the grain of the wood on hers.
He broke the quiet, his voice pitched low. “About last night. What you said. About the performance.” He hesitated, a rare show of uncertainty. “I get it.”
“Do you?” The question came out sharper than she intended.
He met her gaze. “The world expects a version of you. It’s easier sometimes to just… give it to them.”
Her heart thumped hard against her ribs. He did understand. Not just the words, but the cost of them.
“It’s exhausting,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
Alexa returned then, a giant bag of popcorn in hand, breaking the moment. But the connection held, a live wire humming between them. The game room’s chaos faded to a blur. All Svet could see was the quiet understanding in his eyes, the slight, almost imperceptible nod he gave her, a secret shared and kept. The next move was unclear, the rules unwritten, but the board was set. And for the first time, she wasn't thinking about running the table. She was thinking about who was standing on the other side of it.
The fragile understanding was still settling between them when the main doors swung open, flooding their corner with a shaft of harsh hallway light. Diego Silva strode in, his eyes scanning the room like a searchlight before locking onto their table. A familiar, performative smile spread across his face.
He swaggered over, the scent of too much body spray cutting through the stale popcorn air. “Well, look who it is,” he announced, as if he’d discovered them. His gaze slid over Alexa, dismissed Joe with a barely perceptible once-over, and landed on Svet. “The dream team. Practicing for the pros?”
“Just a friendly game,” Svet said, her voice flat. She busied herself with re-racking the balls, the solid clack of resin a satisfying punctuation.
Diego leaned against the table, deliberately invading her space. “You looked good running the table before. But you seem a little… off your game today.” His tone was all false concern. “Everything okay after yesterday? That was some drama.”
He was digging, fishing for a reaction, for a way back in. Svet felt Joe go still beside her, a statue of withheld commentary.
“Everything’s fine,” she said, not looking at him. “Your shot, Joe.”
Joe moved to the table, his presence causing Diego to reluctantly straighten up and take a half-step back. Joe lined up his break, his form a study in controlled power. The crack of the break was thunderous, balls scattering violently. He sank a stripe, then another.
As he circled the table for his next shot, Svet was in his path. Instead of saying “excuse me,” he simply moved. His hand, large and warm, settled lightly on the small of her back to guide her aside. It was a fleeting touch, lasting less than a second, but the contact was deliberate, his fingers pressing just enough to feel through the thin cotton of her sweatshirt.
A current shot straight up her spine. He’d never touched her like that before. It wasn’t brotherly. It was possessive.
He took his shot, missing intentionally on a difficult combination. “Your turn,” he said, his voice even. But his eyes held a challenge, a question.
Diego, oblivious, jumped in. “Tough luck, man. Let me give you some tips, Svet. This angle here is tricky.” He reached around her, his arm brushing against hers as he pretended to point out a shot.
She sidestepped him cleanly. “I’ve got it, Diego.”
She studied the table, her blood humming. Joe’s touch had been a spark. Now she felt reckless, emboldened. It was her shot, a cut into the side pocket with Joe standing directly behind the line. She bent low, lining up the cue. As she drew her arm back for the stroke, she shifted her stance, just a little. The back of her hand grazed the denim of his thigh.
It was the barest contact, skin on rough fabric. She felt the solid muscle beneath, the heat. She didn’t look up. She executed the shot perfectly, the ball dropping with a definitive clunk. Only then did she stand, meeting his gaze.
His expression was unreadable, but a faint flush had crept up his neck. He’d felt it. He knew.
Diego, meanwhile, was a buzzing fly. “Nice shot! See, I knew you had it in you. You just need the right… encouragement.” He winked.
Svet ignored him, her entire world narrowed to the green felt and the massive, quiet man pretending to study the rack. The game became a secret language. Joe would reach for the chalk on the rail beside her hip, his knuckles brushing her waist. She’d move around him to survey a bank shot, letting her shoulder drag against his arm.
Each touch was a stolen confession, a silent answer to the question hanging in the alcove air. They were speaking in braille, telling a story Diego was too dense to read.
Alexa, watching from her stool with a slowly dawning smirk, read every chapter. She said nothing, just nibbled her popcorn, her eyes flicking between them like she was watching a riveting tennis match.
“So, Svet,” Diego said, leaning in again during a lull, his voice dropping to what he thought was a conspiratorial level. “A bunch of us are hitting that new rooftop bar on Colorado tomorrow night. You should come. Be a good chance to unwind, forget all the… weirdness.”
Joe was bending for a shot. As he rose, he stepped back, his broad back making solid, unmistakable contact with Svet’s front. He didn’t apologize. He just paused, letting her feel the full, solid weight of him against her for one suspended second before moving aside.
“Thanks, Diego,” Svet said, her voice a little breathless. She looked right at Joe as she said it. “But I think I’m done with crowded bars for a minute.”
Diego’s smile finally faltered. The rejection, coupled with his complete inability to parse the silent conversation happening right in front of him, curdled his confidence. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. Okay. Cool. Well, the offer stands.” He lingered for another awkward moment before mumbling something about meeting other friends and slinking away.
The air around their table cleared, the toxic cloud of his cologne and ambition dissipating. Alexa finally broke her silence. “Well,” she said, dragging the word out. “That was educational.”
Svet and Joe both looked at her, then at each other. A thread of understanding, taut and electric, pulled between them. The game was forgotten. The pretense of accident was gone.
Joe placed his cue on the table with a soft finality. “Walk you back?” he asked Svet, his voice low.
She simply nodded, the words stuck somewhere beneath the phantom memory of his back against her chest, the deliberate slide of her hand against his leg. This was no longer a hypothetical. The line had been crossed, touch by deliberate touch, and neither of them looked inclined to step back.