The Dining Hall

POV: Silver Preston

Sleep is impossible again.

Every time I close my eyes my brain pulls me back to Ingalls. The sound of Eli's edges on the ice. The way the arena felt when his gaze lifted from the ice and found me in the stands without any effort at all.

I tell myself it means nothing.

I tell myself Americus is being dramatic, that there is absolutely no reason to think Eli Hayes has any idea who I am beyond the girl who nearly fell on him in the Branford courtyard and was rude to him on a plane.

The doubt does not care what I tell myself.

It just sits there.

By lunch the next day, Americus has made an executive decision about my trajectory.

"We are going to the dining hall," she announces, already applying what appears to be her third coat of glitter lip gloss in the narrow mirror. "Hiding in here with protein bars is not a long term strategy, Silver. It is not even a short term one."

"I am not hiding."

"You are absolutely hiding."

Riley looks up from her composition notebook with the expression of someone who has already decided not to get involved in this particular debate.

"I heard there are curly fries today," she offers.

Americus points at her.

"See. Riley understands priorities."

Branford's dining hall stops me for a second when we walk through the doors.

I have seen photos of it online but photos do not capture the scale of it. Soaring wooden beam ceilings that belong in a cathedral. Tall windows filled with actual stained glass that throw colored light in shifting patterns across the stone floors. Long tables that could have seated medieval royalty without any modifications.

The noise hits immediately after the architecture does.

Plates clattering. Silverware. Dozens of overlapping conversations ranging from heated academic debate to someone loudly recounting a weekend story that keeps getting interrupted by laughter.

I grab a tray mostly for the illusion of normalcy and let Americus steer me through the food line.

"The salad bar looks like it predates the current administration," she says, evaluating it with genuine concern. "But those fries are non-negotiable."

She loads my plate before I can object.

"Carbohydrates are fuel for the soul. It is basically science."

I accept the fries and follow her toward a table tucked into the back corner of the hall, as far from the central noise as possible.

Then my feet stop.

Across the dining hall, surrounded by navy and white Yale Hockey jackets and the easy, carrying laughter of people who have already settled into each other, sits Eli Hayes.

He is not hard to find in a room.

That is the thing I am realizing about him. He does not do anything to command space. He just occupies it differently than other people do. Leaning back in his chair with one arm over the backrest, jaw set, dark hair catching the colored light coming through the stained glass above the windows.

He is saying something to the teammate beside him, and the guy laughs, and Eli almost smiles.

Almost.

Then his gaze moves across the dining hall the way it moved across the Ingalls stands.

Systematic. Unhurried.

It finds me in about two seconds.

The noise of the dining hall keeps going around us. Hundreds of conversations, clattering dishes, chairs scraping stone. All of it continues exactly as before.

But something in my chest locks up completely.

I cannot move.

Cannot look away.

Cannot do anything except stand at the edge of the dining hall with a tray of curly fries I no longer want and hold his gaze across a room full of people who have no idea this is happening.

His expression does not change.

No nod. No acknowledgment. No smile.

Just that same unreadable quality I have been collecting from him since the jet bridge at Bradley International, each instance slightly more unsettling than the last.

Americus's elbow connects with my ribs.

"Silver. You are doing the statue thing. It is noticeable."

The contact breaks whatever had hold of me.

I pull my gaze away and make myself walk toward the corner table, setting my tray down with hands that are not entirely steady.

The fries smell fine. I have no interest in them.

"He is still looking," Americus says, sliding in beside me with the gleeful energy of someone watching something unfold in real time. "Like, actively, deliberately still looking. That is not normal cafeteria behavior."

"Americus." Riley's voice carries a warning note as she settles across from us.

"What? I am just reporting what I observe. My observation is that the hockey player has not moved his eyes since we walked in."

"Leave her alone."

"I am being supportive."

"You are narrating. There is a difference."

I risk one more glance toward Eli's table.

He is still watching.

No smile. No expression that I can read from this distance or probably from any distance. Just that steady, direct attention that feels less like interest and more like assessment, like he is filing information away for a purpose I cannot identify.

Heat crawls up the back of my neck.

I cannot do this.

Cannot sit here in the middle of Branford's dining hall with stained glass throwing colored light across everything and Eli Hayes watching me from forty feet away while Americus provides live commentary and other students move around us completely unaware that I am one prolonged moment of eye contact away from coming apart at the seams.

My chair scrapes back against the stone floor.

"Silver." Riley's voice is careful.

"I just need some air."

I am already moving.

Past the food stations. Past tables of students absorbed in their own conversations and dramas and completely normal college lunches. Past the stained glass windows painting everything gold and blue and red.

Through the heavy wooden doors.

Out into the Gothic corridor where the stone is cool and the noise drops immediately and the only witnesses are the carved details in the archways above me that have been watching Yale students fall apart in various ways for a very long time.

I lean against the wall and breathe.

Americus is right about one thing.

Fleeing has become my most practiced move.

And I am getting disturbingly good at it.