Chapter 2: The Warning Over Cheese
The vinyl booth stuck to the backs of Cadence’s thighs. She picked at the edge of her pepperoni slice, the grease congealing into orange pools on the wax paper. Across from her, Hunt stabbed a lonely breadstick into a plastic cup of marinara, his movements uncharacteristically deliberate.
“So,” he said, not looking up. “Briley’s crying in Annie’s room. Says she’s got a stomach ache. We all know the ache is named Ryli and drives a Charger.”
Cadence set her crust down. “She seemed really into her.”
“Briley’s into the idea of her.” Hunt finally met her eyes. “The jacket. The car. The ‘I don’t give a fuck’ vibe. It’s a whole aesthetic she wants to rub up against.”
“You make it sound cheap.”
“It is cheap, Cade. It’s all on credit.” He sighed, wiping his fingers. “Look, you live in your own world sometimes. A good world. With tennis balls and study guides and your weirdly clean car. Which I love. But outside that world, there’s a rumor mill. And Ryli isn’t just a product of it; she’s the damn foreman.”
The fluorescent light above them buzzed, flickered, casting a sickly yellow pulse over Hunt’s serious face. Cadence felt a prickle of defensiveness, not for Ryli, but for the strange quiet of the movie night, the charged silence that had felt… different. “What kind of rumors?”
He leaned forward, his voice dropping even though the only other occupants were an old man reading a newspaper and a kid weeping over a spilled Sprite. “The messy kind. Last semester, she hooked up with this sophomore, Maya Fisher. Totally love-bombed her for, like, a weekend. Texts all day, showed up at her classes, the whole thing. Then Monday, ghosted. Complete radio silence. Maya saw her at a party that Thursday making out with some guy from the rugby team.”
Cadence winced. “That’s cruel.”
“Cruel is her baseline. There’s other stuff. Hearsay, mostly, but where there’s smoke…” He took a breath. “Stories about money going missing at parties she was at. A guy accused her of swiping his credit card info after a hookup. Nothing proven, but the pattern’s there. She surrounds herself with chaos and then walks away clean while everyone else is picking up the pieces.”
The warm, yeasty air of the pizzeria suddenly felt thick and difficult to breathe. Cadence thought of Ryli’s sharp, assessing eyes, the way they’d scanned the den like it was territory. “Why are you telling me this?”
Hunt’s expression softened, but the worry in his eyes remained. “Because of the way she looked at you.”
“She barely looked at me.”
“Wrong.” The word was swift, absolute. “She looked at you the entire time. When she wasn’t looking at you, she was not looking at you in a way that took effort. You were the only person in that room for her. Briley was just… background noise.”
A cold knot tightened in Cadence’s stomach. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It does,” Hunt insisted, his voice low and urgent. “Curiosity is one thing. What I saw on her face wasn’t curiosity. It was recognition. And not the good kind. Like she’d been wandering through a junk drawer and found a sharp, shiny tool she didn’t know she needed.” He reached across the sticky table, covering her hand with his. “She’s not your type, Cade. Your type is… kind. And predictable. And safe. Ryli is a walking red flag in a leather jacket.”
Cadence looked down at their hands. His was warm, grounding. Hers felt suddenly cold. She remembered the glass of water, refilled without a word. A gesture that had felt, in the moment, oddly considerate. Now it felt like marking. “What are you saying? That she’s some predator and I’m her next project?”
“I’m saying her interest has a track record. And the track record ends with people feeling used and stupid.” He squeezed her fingers. “Just be aware. That’s all. Your niceness… it’s not a weakness, but it can be a beacon for people who want to take things. People who see depth and want to throw rocks into it just to hear the splash.”
The kid at the other table wailed louder. The old man turned a page with a sharp rustle. Cadence pulled her hand back, wrapping her arms around herself. Hunt’s words painted a picture that was logically sound. It lined up with the little she’d seen, the rumors she’d half-heard. It was the sensible narrative.
So why did her mind keep returning to the moment on the porch? Not to Ryli’s later intensity, but to that first, frozen second. The vanished smirk. The speechlessness. That hadn’t looked like a predator spotting prey. It had looked like someone struck by a truth they couldn’t articulate. It had looked, improbably, like vulnerability.
“Okay,” she said finally, her voice quiet but firm. “Message received.”
Hunt studied her face, searching for more. He must have seen the doubt still residing there, the part of her that questioned his certainty. He leaned back, resignation settling over his features. “Okay.”
They paid the bill in silence, the cashier smacking her gum as she made change. Outside, the night air was cool, a relief from the pizzeria’s cloying heat. Cadence’s old Ford waited under a streetlight, its faded blue paint looking almost silver.
Hunt walked her to the driver’s side. “I’m not trying to be dramatic.”
“I know.”
“I just care about you.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “And I’ve seen Briley’s face tonight. It’s not pretty. I don’t want to see yours like that.”
She offered him a small, reassuring smile. “You won’t.”
He nodded, not quite believing her. “Text me when you’re home.”
As she drove the familiar streets, Hunt’s warnings echoed, mixing with the rumble of her car’s aging engine. She tried to slot Ryli into the box he’d built: a user, a liar, a heartbreaker. The picture fit. It was a perfect, ugly fit.
Her phone, sitting in the cupholder, lit up with a notification. She stopped at a red light and glanced down.
It was a Snapchat notification. A new friend request.
The username: r.bradford.07.
No bitmoji. The profile picture was a stark, close-up shot of the side of a black Dodge Charger’s tire, the asphalt beneath it blurred.
Cadence’s thumbprint hovered over the screen. The light turned green. A car behind her gave a short, polite tap on the horn.
She dropped the phone back into the cupholder as if it had burned her and pressed the accelerator, her heart beating a quick, hard rhythm against her ribs. She drove the rest of the way home watching the road, fiercely trying not to watch the dark, silent screen glowing faintly beside her.
She drove the rest of the way home watching the road, fiercely trying not to watch the dark, silent screen glowing faintly beside her. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. The familiar creak of the old Ford’s suspension as it climbed her apartment’s driveway was a comfort.
Inside, she dropped her keys into a ceramic bowl with a sharp clatter. The silence of her studio apartment felt different, charged. She placed her phone on the kitchen counter, screen down, and walked away.
She changed into sweatpants. She brushed her teeth. The routine did nothing to settle the low hum in her nerves. Every quiet moment was filled with the imagined buzz of a notification.
Finally, she walked back to the counter. She flipped the phone over.
The screen lit up with her reflection, then the lock screen. No new messages. The friend request notification was still there, a digital knot she hadn’t untied. r.bradford.07. She tapped the screen. The app opened to the request screen.
Add Back? r.bradford.07.
Her thumb hovered over ‘Accept’. Hunt’s voice was a steady echo in her head. A walking red flag. People who see depth and want to throw rocks into it.
She hit ‘Ignore’.
The request vanished. She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. It felt decisive. It felt safe. It felt, strangely, like a loss.
Across town, the silence in Ryli’s bedroom was a physical weight. The party sounds from Milo’s loft had been a dull throb through her phone before she’d muted it. She lay sprawled on her unmade bed, one arm thrown over her eyes.
The glow of her own phone screen illuminated the sharp planes of her face from where it rested on her stomach. She’d been staring at it for twenty minutes. At the opened chat with c.stoverrr.
It was blank. She had no unread snaps. No pending notifications.
She’d sent the request on a raw impulse after driving in chaotic circles, the Charger’s engine matching the scream in her head. It had felt like a move, the first step in a game she knew how to play. You add, they add back, you send something clever and flirty. The machinery was familiar.
Now, it just felt like she’d lobbed a stone into a deep, still well and was waiting for a splash that wouldn’t come. The inaction was torture.
Cadence’s face, from that fleeting moment on the sun-drenched porch, played on a loop behind her eyelids. It wasn’t just the blonde hair or the blue eyes, though Christ, those eyes. It was the quiet in her. The way she held the grocery bag like it was nothing, like she was utterly separate from the tense drama unfolding on the sidewalk. She was an island of calm.
Ryli had seen pretty girls. She’d been with pretty girls. This was a different taxonomy. Cadence was the prettiest, most painfully cute thing she had ever seen, a fact that hit her with the unsettling force of a discovered law. The freckles across her nose looked like a map to somewhere clean. The slight curve of her smile when she’d said “Hi” was a hook set deep in Ryli’s chest.
She wanted her. Badly. Not with the usual hungry, possessive urge that was about conquest and discard. This was a jarring, full-bodied want that felt closer to need. It was to have that calm near her. To be the reason that quiet smile appeared. To unravel the mystery of that stillness and see what was underneath.
It terrified her.
She sat up abruptly, grabbing the phone. Her fingers flew over the screen, pulling up Briley’s contact. A text would be easy. Hey, what’s Cadence’s deal? Simple. Efficient. She could mine for information, find a leverage point, a way in.
Her thumb froze over the send button. Using Briley felt gross now. Transparent. Cadence would probably hear about it, and that gentle face would tighten with disapproval. Ryli couldn’t stand the thought of being the reason that light in her eyes dimmed.
She deleted the text. She threw the phone onto the rumpled comforter. It landed with a soft thud.
She stared at the blank wall of her bedroom, at the band posters and the empty bottle of top-shelf tequila on her dresser. All her usual tools—charm, aggression, sheer audacity—felt like plastic toys. Useless. She had never not known how to get something she wanted. The not-knowing was a cage.
With a gritted sound of frustration, she snatched the phone up again. She navigated back to Cadence’s profile. No new story posts. Nothing. Just that same perfect, sun-squinted picture.
Ryli’s jaw tightened. A reckless, wild idea took shape. It was stupid. It was the opposite of smooth. It had zero game.
It was just... honest.
She opened a new chat. The blinking cursor in the snap box mocked her. Her usual openers—a sly selfie, a provocative question—felt like wearing someone else’s dirty clothes. She deleted three attempts.
Finally, she just typed words. Plain, stupid words. Her thumbs felt clumsy.
hey. it's ryli.
saw we have a mutual friend (briley)
movie night was fun. you have good taste in terrible horror.
She stared at the three lines. They were bland. They were harmless. They were, perhaps, the most terrifying thing she’d ever sent because they contained nothing of her usual armor. She hit send before she could choke.
The 'delivered' notification felt like a verdict.
Cadence was lying in bed, the glow of her laptop illuminating textbooks she hadn’t read. Her phone, face-up on the pillow, vibrated. The screen flashed with the Snapchat icon and a preview.
‘hey. it's ryli…’
Her breath caught. She’d ignored the request. She’d made a choice. Yet here it was, a message. The app had allowed it. She must have… had she accidentally added her back? Her fingers fumbled, opening the app.
There it was. r.bradford.07 was now in her friends list. She had no memory of clicking ‘Accept’. A slip of the thumb, a moment of distracted weakness. Panic, hot and sharp, spliced with a thread of undeniable thrill.
The three messages waited. They were simple. They were… nice. They mentioned Briley, which felt transparent, but the tone was gentle. This wasn’t the hungry predator Hunt described. This was someone who’d remembered she liked the bad movie.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She’s not your type, Cade. Hunt’s voice was a gavel. But this, just words on a screen, felt like a separate universe from the rumors.
Hesitantly, she tapped the text box.
Hey. Yeah, the mutual friend thing. she wrote, acknowledging the awkwardness.
And I have no taste in horror, I just have a high tolerance for nonsense.
She paused, then added: The cat was the best actor.
She sent it. The sound of the whoosh was deafening in her quiet room.
Across town, Ryli’s phone chimed. The sound made her flinch. She snatched it up, her palms suddenly damp. She read the replies. The tension in her shoulders, which had been wound like coiled wire, loosened a fraction.
Cadence had added her back. She’d responded. She’d made a joke.
A real, uncalculated smile touched Ryli’s lips. It felt foreign on her face.
She typed back, her movements slow and careful, as if handling something fragile.
The cat deserved an award. We were robbed.
A silent protest next time.
Just sit there in solidarity.
She sent it, then immediately worried it was too much. She was proposing a ‘next time’. That was bold. Stupid.
Cadence read the new messages. The proposal hung in the digital air between them. A silent protest. She imagined it, sitting in Briley’s den with Ryli, not watching the screen. The idea was so peculiarly intimate it made her face warm.
She didn’t address it directly. She couldn’t.
Solidarity is important, she wrote instead, playing it safe.
Thanks for the water refill, by the way. It was… surprisingly thoughtful.
Ryli read that line five times. Surprisingly thoughtful. The qualifier cut, but the acknowledgment itself was a gift. She’d been seen, and not as a disruption. As a person who could perform a small, decent act.
She lay back on her bed, the phone held aloft over her face. The glow was the only light. For the first time all night, the restless, gnawing energy in her chest softened into something else. Something quiet.
You looked thirsty, she replied, which was the simple truth.
And it gave me something to do with my hands besides steal the remote.
Cadence’s laugh was a soft puff of air in the dark. This person on the screen, with her dry, self-deprecating honesty, didn’t match the villain in Hunt’s story. Not at all.
A public service, then, Cadence typed.
Briley would have picked a rom-com.
Disaster averted, Ryli fired back. We have a responsibility to uphold cinematic integrity.
They continued like that, a slow, gentle volley. They talked about the predictability of movie tropes. They complained about their respective Monday classes. They avoided mentioning Briley again. They avoided anything heavy. The conversation was a flat, sun-drenched plain—no cliffs, no traps.
It was effortless. It was calm.
As Cadence’s eyes grew heavy, she typed one last message.
Well, this has been… unexpectedly nice.
She fell asleep before seeing the reply.
Ryli stared at the words. Unexpectedly nice. She knew what that meant. She knew what people said about her. Cadence had likely heard it. Yet she’d still said this was nice.
Ryli’s throat tightened. She typed her final message, erasing three versions before settling.
Yeah. It really was.
Sleep well, Cadence.
She didn’t add a winking emoji. She didn’t add a heart. She just let the words sit, clean and plain in the dark, a tiny raft of gentleness in a sea of her own making.
The message thread became a living thing.
It pulsed quietly throughout the following week, a parallel world existing in the palms of their hands. Cadence’s initial wariness, a brittle shell forged by Hunt’s warnings, began to fracture under a consistent, gentle pressure. Not the pressure of pursuit, but of presence.
Ryli texted in the mornings. Not just “good morning,” but observations. Saw a guy trip over absolutely nothing on the quad. You made my day.
During Cadence’s boring economics lecture, her phone would dimly light up. Professor’s tie has a stain that looks like a tiny map of Italy. You’re missing high art.
Cadence found herself smiling at her screen in quiet corners of the library, the heavy air smelling of old paper and dust. She’d type back, Is it a topographic map or political? This is critical. Ryli would respond immediately, Definitely a wine stain. Chianti, maybe. Class just got cultured.
It was easy. Shockingly, disarmingly easy. The cadence of their conversation felt like a rhythm she’d always known.
The sweetness was what undid her. It was in the details Ryli remembered, the ones Cadence had mentioned only once in passing. She’d complained about the broken vending machine in the tennis center that ate her dollar. Two days later, Ryli sent a photo of a different, functioning machine across campus. Machine B, corner of Dalton Hall. Takes wrinkled bills. Your sanctuary.
Another time, Cadence mentioned hating the specific, bitter brand of coffee served in the campus commons. The next afternoon, Ryli’s message popped up: Pop-up cart near the history building. Peruvian roast. They have that vanilla sugar you like.
How did you know I like vanilla sugar? Cadence had asked, her fingers pausing over the screen.
The reply came slower than usual. You had a packet of it on your dashboard that day. On Briley’s porch. I noticed.
Cadence had sat back in her desk chair, the mundane fact landing with profound weight. Ryli had been cataloging her. Not in a predatory way, but with a startling, focused attention. She remembered the grocery bag, the glass of water, the specific brand of sugar placed squarely in the center of a cup holder. It was a type of noticing Cadence had never experienced. It felt like being studied, and found fascinating.
This was the profound dissonance. The girl who memorized her coffee preference was the same one Hunt described leaving a trail of shattered feelings. The girl who sent silly photos of cloud shapes was the one accused of creating chaos and walking away. Cadence couldn’t reconcile the two images. The person in her phone was thoughtful, witty in a dry, unforced way, and possessed a hesitant honesty that seemed to cost her something.
One evening, the text thread turned a corner.
Cadence was describing a lost match, not with bitterness but with analytical clarity. My second serve just vanished. Like it packed its bags and left town.
Ryli’s response took a minute. You’re left-handed. On the ad side, you probably slice it wide to pull them off the court. When you’re nervous, you overthink the toss. It goes long.
Cadence stared. She hadn’t mentioned being left-handed. She certainly hadn’t given a technical breakdown of her serve.
How do you know that? she typed, her heart thumping oddly.
Three dancing dots appeared. Disappeared. Reappeared. Watched your match last Tuesday. Against State.
Cadence’s breath caught. She had played State. It had been a public match, but sparsely attended. The idea of Ryli there, unnoticed, watching her with that analytical intensity, sent a shiver through her that wasn’t entirely fear.
You didn’t say hi, Cadence sent.
Wasn’t there to say hi.
Why were you there?
The pause this time was long. The answer, when it came, was a bare string of words. I wanted to see you in your element. Where you’re in control.
The raw honesty of it stripped away the last of Cadence’s defenses. This wasn’t a line. It was an admission. Ryli had sought her out, silently, and simply watched. The vulnerability in that gesture outweighed a hundred charming texts.
It’s quieter here, Ryli added later that night, the conversation having drifted to music. When I’m talking to you. The noise in my head just… stops.
Cadence believed her. She lay in bed, phone glowing against the pillow, and believed her completely. The portrait Hunt had painted was accurate, she knew, but it was also incomplete. It showed the storm, not the strange, becalmed eye at its center. And she, inexplicably, was that eye.
Friday afternoon found her pushing a cart through a grocery aisle, mentally debating pasta shapes. Her phone buzzed. Not a text. An actual call. Ryli’s name flashed on the screen.
Her pulse jumped. They had never called. This was new territory.
She answered, bringing the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“Hey.” Ryli’s voice was slightly deeper over the phone, textured with a faint rasp. In the background, Cadence could hear the muffled roar of the Charger’s engine, then the sudden silencing of it. “Are you… shopping? I hear Muzak.”
“It’s a sophisticated ambiance,” Cadence said, a smile in her voice. She stopped her cart by the tomatoes. “What’s up?”
A beat of silence. A long, steady exhale. “I’m outside your apartment.”
Cadence’s hand stilled on a packet of basil. The casual world of text vanished, replaced by the immediate, physical reality of Ryli’s presence just beyond her door. The air in the grocery store felt thin.
“Why?”
“I was driving. And then I was here.” Another pause. The words that followed were deliberate, quietly desperate. “I need you to see me. Not through a screen. Can I come up?”
Hunt’s final warning echoed, but it was distant, muffled. The person on the phone was the one who remembered the vanilla sugar. The one who knew her serve. The one who said it was quieter here.
Cadence looked down at her half-filled cart. The domestic normalcy of it felt galaxies away.
“I’m not home,” she said softly. “I’m at Fresh Mart on Grant.”
“Okay.” There was no hesitation. The engine roared back to life, a visceral sound through the receiver. “Stay there.”
The line went dead. Cadence stood frozen, the phone pressed to her ear, listening to the dial tone mix with the store’s cheerful, inane soundtrack. The careful digital bubble they’d built over the past week had just been popped by the sharp reality of asphalt and engine noise.
She abandoned her cart in the middle of the aisle.
She walked outside into the brittle autumn sunlight, the air cool and smelling of distant leaf smoke. She leaned against the sun-warmed brick facade of the market, her arms crossed, and waited.
Five minutes later, the black Charger slid into the lot. It didn’t prowl. It simply parked. The door opened, and Ryli unfolded herself from the driver’s seat.
She wore a simple gray hoodie and jeans, no leather jacket, no performed edge. Her dark hair was partly pulled back, a few strands escaping. She looked, for the first time, marginally unsure. She spotted Cadence and stopped, several feet of parking lot asphalt between them.
They looked at each other. No screen, no filter, no convenient distance.
“Hi,” Ryli said. The word was almost lost in the space between them.
“You drove here,” Cadence stated, her voice calm despite the riot inside her chest.
“I did.”
“Just to be seen.”
“Yes.”
Cadence studied her—the taut line of her shoulders, the searching darkness of her eyes. She saw the girl from the porch, the one stunned into silence. She saw the attentive texter, the silent spectator at the tennis match. She also saw the ghost of the other girl, the one from the stories, a faint shadow clinging to her like old perfume. They were all true, every version.
Ryli took a single step forward, then stopped, as if an invisible boundary held her. Her hands were shoved deep in her hoodie pockets. “Do you see it?” she asked, her voice low. “The difference?”
Cadence understood. The difference between the rumor and the reality. The chaos and the quiet. She nodded slowly. “I see you.”
The admission hung in the crisp air. Ryli’s shoulders dropped a fraction, a release of profound tension. A faint, real smile touched her lips, fragile and unguarded. “Okay.”
Cadence pushed off from the wall. She walked across the asphalt, closing the gap herself until she was an arm’s length away. She could smell a hint of detergent on Ryli’s hoodie, and beneath it, the clean, cold scent of the outside air. “You could have just asked me to get coffee.”
“This was faster,” Ryli said, her eyes never leaving Cadence’s face, tracing her features as if confirming a memory.
“Impatient.”
“Terribly.”
They stood there in the mundane grocery store parking lot, cars passing on the street, the fluorescent glow of the market sign clicking on above them as the day began to fade. The digital raft of gentleness they’d built was now grounded here, in the real, gritty world. It felt perilous. It felt solid.
“I still need groceries,” Cadence said finally, tilting her head back toward the store.
Ryli nodded, her hands still buried. “I’ll wait.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” Ryli leaned back against the Charger, her posture softening into something approaching ease. “I want to. I like… waiting for you.”
Cadence felt a flush of warmth that had nothing to do with the setting sun. She turned and walked back into the store, leaving Ryli in the cooling twilight. Every step felt charged, hyper-aware. When she retrieved her abandoned cart and glanced through the large glass window, Ryli was still there, a still, watching figure against the black car, her gaze fixed on the doors.
For the first time, Cadence wasn’t just texting a sweet, different girl. She was being met. She was being chosen, with a focused, patient intensity that shut out every other sound. The narrative was writing itself in real time, and she was no longer just reading the words. She was stepping into them.