HONESTY IS RARE. IT'S VALUABLE

Chapter 5

Aurelia

I waved goodbye and headed to my dorm room.

Once inside, I collapsed on my bed and pulled out my phone, I had a text from my mother asking how my first week went.

I sent back a simple "Fine" because I didn't know how to explain that I'd made a friend and had a conversation with a beautiful stranger and survived five days of classes.

I opened my Kindle app and pulled up The Stand, reading the section the stranger and I had been discussing. His words kept echoing in my head.

"Why do you hide?"

I'd been hiding for so long I didn't know how to do anything else. But for those twenty minutes in the library, I hadn't been hiding. I'd been present.

I'd been real and it had felt good.

Terrifying, but good.

I fell asleep that night thinking about grey eyes and wondering if I'd ever see him again.

.....

The weekend passed quietly. Sienna texted me approximately seven hundred times trying to convince me to go to a party with her Saturday night. I refused every time.

Sienna: Come on! It'll be fun!

Me: Your definition of fun and my definition of fun are very different.

Sienna: My definition involves actual human interaction and maybe some bad decisions. What's yours?

Me: Reading in bed with snacks and no people.

Sienna: You're twenty-one, not eighty-one. Live a little!

Me: I'm living. Just quietly.

Sienna: Fine. But next semester, you're coming to at least ONE party. I'm making it my mission.

Me: Good luck with that.

I spent Saturday reading, doing homework, and pretending I wasn't thinking about blue eyes and deep voices talking about Stephen King. I spent Sunday doing the same thing.

By Monday morning, I'd almost convinced myself that the library conversation had been a fluke. A strange, wonderful fluke that would never happen again.

I met Sienna at The Grind as usual. She was wearing a vintage Nirvana t-shirt and had added a new piercing to her left ear.

"New piercing?" I asked as we waited in line for coffee.

"Got it Saturday night after the party you didn't come to. It was either a piercing or a tattoo, and I figured a piercing was less permanent." Sienna touched the small silver hoop. "What did you do this weekend?"

"Read. Studied. The usual."

"Boring." Sienna ordered her black coffee and I ordered my vanilla latte. "We need to expand your comfort zone."

"My comfort zone is fine where it is."

"Your comfort zone is the size of a shoebox." Sienna grabbed our drinks and we headed toward the humanities building. "Baby steps. This weekend, we're going shopping. You need new clothes."

"I like my clothes."

"You like hiding in your clothes. There's a difference." Sienna held the door open for me. "I'm not saying you need to dress like an I*******m model. But maybe one outfit that actually fits? As a treat?"

I wanted to argue, but part of me, a very small part, was curious. What would I look like in clothes that actually fit? Would I feel different? Would I still be able to disappear?

"Maybe," I said finally.

Sienna's eyes widened. "Did you just say maybe? You never say maybe. You always say no immediately."

"I said maybe, not yes."

"Maybe is the gateway drug to yes. I'm counting this as a win." Sienna practically bounced into our classroom. "This is amazing. Mystery library guy really did a number on you."

"He did not do a number on me," I protested, following her to our usual seats in the back.

"Whatever you need to tell yourself."

Literature class was the usual mix of boring and tolerable, Professor Chen lectured about narrative structure while I took detailed notes.

Sienna doodled in her notebook and occasionally sent me memes on her phone that made me smile despite myself.

After class, Sienna had to run to a Computer Science club meeting, so I headed to the library alone. I told myself I was going to study, not hoping to run into the stranger from Friday.

I took the elevator to the fifth floor and found my usual carrel. The floor was empty except for one other student in the far corner with headphones in. Perfect.

I pulled out my psychology homework and tried to focus. I really did. But my eyes kept drifting to the elevator every time I heard it ding.

An hour passed. Then two. No blue-eyed stranger appeared.

I felt stupid for hoping he would. He'd probably forgotten about our conversation five minutes after walking away.

He was probably some popular guy who talked to random girls in libraries all the time, it hadn't meant anything to him.

It had meant something to me, though. That was the problem.

I was packing up my things around four PM when I heard footsteps behind me.

"Aurelia."

I spun around and found him standing there. Same dark hair, same blue eyes, same leather jacket. He was holding two coffee cups.

"Hi," I managed to say.

"I wasn't sure if you'd be here," he said, walking closer. "But I thought I'd check, I brought coffee. I remembered you had a vanilla latte at The Grind this morning, so I got you one. Unless that's creepy. Is that creepy? That might be creepy."

I stared at him. He'd been at The Grind this morning? He'd seen me and remembered my coffee order?

"That's not creepy," I said, taking the offered cup with shaking hands. "That's really nice actually. Thank you."

He smiled, looking relieved. "I wanted to apologize for Friday. I kind of ambushed you with personal questions. The hiding thing, that was rude."

"It's okay," I said quietly.

"It's not, actually. I have this bad habit of being too direct, my friends are always telling me I need to learn subtlety." He sat down in the chair across from my carrel without asking, just making himself comfortable. "Can I try again?"

"Try what again?"

"Talking to you, without being invasive." He took a sip of his coffee. "Did you finish your psychology reading?"

I sat back down, still processing that he'd brought me coffee and wanted to talk to me again. "Yeah. Moved on to developmental psychology now."

"What's developmental psychology?"

"How people change and grow throughout their lifespan. Childhood to old age. It's actually kind of interesting."

"Tell me about it," he said, leaning forward with genuine interest.

And just like that, we were talking again. About psychology theories, about nature versus nurture, about whether people could really change or if they were fundamentally the same person their whole lives.

"I think people can change," I said. "But it takes a lot of work, and you have to really want it."

"What if you want to change but don't know how?" he asked.

"Then you find help. Therapy, friends, books. Whatever works." I paused. "Are you trying to change something about yourself?"

He was quiet for a moment. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm just trying to figure out who I actually am underneath all the expectations."

"That's heavy for a Monday afternoon," I said without thinking.

He laughed. "Yeah, sorry. I told you I'm too direct. Let's talk about something lighter. Have you started any new books?"

"I'm reading The Shining now. Wanted to stay on the Stephen King train."

"The Shining is terrifying," he said. "I read it in high school and couldn't sleep for a week."

"Really? You don't seem like someone who scares easily."

"Everyone scares easily if you hit the right fear." He tilted his head, studying me. "What scares you, Aurelia?"

"Everything," I admitted before I could stop myself.

His expression softened. "That sounds exhausting."

"It really is." I looked down at my coffee cup. "Sorry. That was too honest."

"No such thing as too honest," he said gently. "Honesty is rare. It's valuable."