Chapter 9
Thursday, they finished tutoring early again.
Oren looked at the papers stacked between them, solved and ready to turn in tomorrow. Outside, the light had thinned toward evening, the day breathing its last breath.
Ayara closed her notebook and set it aside.
“So,” she said, lightly. “Did you look up anything else after I left?”
Oren glanced at her, then down at the table. “Yeah,“ he said. “I probably shouldn’t have, but yeah.”
She smiled. “Same.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Different searches. Same nothing.”
“Sounds about right.”
They sat with it for a moment. The admission felt oddly intimate, like agreeing you’d both done something mildly embarrassing and deciding not to dwell on it.
“I kept thinking I was missing something obvious,” he said. “And if I just worded it differently, the right thing would come up.”
She nodded. “I did that for like an hour. Then I realized I was just scrolling without actually reading anymore.”
He exhaled through his nose. “Yeah. I know the feeling.“
They laughed. It didn’t fix anything, but it took the edge off enough to keep the conversation moving.
He had the sense she was taking stock of him, not critically, just carefully.
“Have you always lived here?“ she asked. “This house, I mean.“
Oren paused. He knew she was aking about Wallow Bend without asking about it. “We moved here about four years ago. Before that, Maple Grove.“
She was quiet for a second. He could see her doing the math. Only two hours away.
She glanced around the living room, then toward the window, the yard stretching back toward the shed. “So you’ve never left the state?”
“Not really,“ he said. “Vacations here and there.”
“That’s kind of rare.”
“Is it?“ He tilted his head. “I guess I never thought about it.“
She nodded.
“What about you?“ he asked. “You move around a lot?”
She shook her head. “Here except for undergrad. I was gone for four years.”
“So how’d you end up back here?”
“I was engaged,” she said. “It ended.”
The way she said it made him look up. Not because of the words, but because of how matter-of-fact they sounded.
“Living alone didn’t make sense financially after that. Plus, I’d kind of outgrown the roommate thing by then.”
“That sucks,” he said.
She shrugged. “Nothing bad happened. We were just… done.”
He nodded. He liked that she didn’t seem to need anything from him in response.
“You?” she asked. “Ever get close to that? Engaged, I mean.”
“Not really,” he said. “I date sometimes. I just don’t seem to get very far with anyone.”
“Why not?“
Oren thought about it. He’d gone out with people, slept with some of them, liked a few well enough. Interest moved unevenly, rising on one side while the other stayed flat. It always resolved itself by fading.
“I never felt especially invested,” he answered honestly.
She smiled. “Fair.“
The conversation drifted from there. It felt easy, the way it did when neither person was trying to impress the other.
She asked what he’d been like growing up. Shy or outgoing? Whether he liked school. Oren answered easily. Quiet. Smart enough when he paid attention. Easily distracted. Those were the words teachers and parents always used at least. They fit together without effort, the way they always had.
“I think my earliest memory is a classroom,“ Ayara said. “Sitting on the floor during story time. I remember the carpet more than anything. So scratchy it gave me a rash.”
She laughed quietly. “That and being impatient.”
She looked at him. “What’s the earliest thing you remember?”
The question landed softly.
Oren opened his mouth, then closed it.
His mind went to dates. To facts. To things he knew were true without being able to picture them.
“I remember school,” he said. “I think, like… a classroom. Desks.”
She nodded, listening.
“That’s all?“ she asked.
He tried again. Nothing came. No image. No sound. No sense of being small or somewhere for the first time.
“I don’t know,” he said, and the honesty of it surprised him. “My memory’s kinda fuzzy back then. I just don’t remember it well.”
She didn’t push. She looked at the clock, startled a little, then reached for her bag.
“We should probably wrap up,“ she said. “I don’t want to keep you up too late.“
“Yeah,” he said.
____________________________________________
Ayara stood and he walked her to the door. At the threshold, she paused, turning back toward him. The porch light caught her face at an angle that made her look briefly familiar, like someone he might have met years ago and lost touch with.
“Thanks,” she said. “For telling me. About the dreams and everything.”
“Thanks for not thinking I’m losing it.”
“I didn’t say that.” Her mouth curved slightly. “I just said I believed something was happening.”
That should have been the end of it. He could feel the moment closing, the way moments usually did. Instead, she hesitated.
“Do you want to change anything?” she asked. “About the sessions?”
He frowned. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. The time, maybe. Or the frequency. If you’re not sleeping well, evening sessions might be making it worse.”
“No,“ he said too quickly. He caught himself and tried again. “The sessions are fine. The time is fine.”
She nodded. “Good. I’m glad they’re helpful.”
“It’s not just that they’re helpful.” He paused, deciding how much to say. “They’re the best part of my week.”
The words sat there between them. He watched her face change, surprise first, then something less readable. For a second, he wondered if he’d misjudged it completely.
“Mine too,” she said.
His breath caught. He couldn’t tell if she meant the same thing he did or something safer, something easier to walk back later. The not knowing made it worse, not better.
“I have to go,” she said, suddenly.
“Okay.”
She turned and walked to her car. He stayed where he was, watching her hands fumble briefly with her keys. When she got in, she didn’t look at him. The engine started. The car pulled away.
He stood there longer than necessary, the quiet settling in around him.
Best part of her week.
He replayed it, tasting the weight of it, trying to decide what it had cost her to say that. Trying to decide what it had just cost him to hear it.
He turned back inside. The folder of worksheets waited where she had left it, edges squared, pencil marks neat and decisive. He touched the top page like it might tell him whether he had crossed a line or finally reached one.