Falling for My Best Friend's Brother의 모든 챕터: 챕터 131 - 챕터 140

Avery's POVWe worked in silence for about twenty minutes.The session had the quiet of a ceasefire rather than actual peace. The kind of quiet where everyone at the table was aware of everyone else at the table and nobody was saying anything about it. Zoey was writing something but I could tell from the pace of it and the way she kept stopping that she was not making much progress. Liam had his head down and was typing at the pace he moved when he was genuinely thinking through something rather than filling a page, which was what Liam looked like when he was actually working rather than giving the appearance of it.I made myself focus.We were on the regulatory compliance section. I had done the reading and the structure of my argument was clear in my head, so the words were coming, which helped. The problem was that sitting at this specific table with these specific two people required a certain amount of background energy just to maintain the appearance of calm, and every few parag

Avery's POVWe packed up at the same time without discussing it.Liam closed his laptop and stacked his notes and I did the same, and we moved through the end of the session without talking, which had always been one of the things about working with him that I had noticed early on. He did not fill silences because they made him uncomfortable. He just let them be what they were.Outside the library the air was cold and slightly damp, the kind that settled in your coat before you noticed it. The campus at this hour on a Saturday had the particular emptiness of a place that was built for weekdays and was only barely tolerating the weekend. The lights along the main path were on but most of the buildings behind them were dark and shut.We walked toward the car park without making a decision about it. Neither of us suggested it and neither of us peeled off in a different direction. It just happened the way things between us had started to happen, quietly, without either of us needing to sa

Avery's POVI lay in the dark with the phone on my chest after I hung up with Jade.Her last words were still going around in my head. She already knows where he stands. That part is settled for her. You are the piece she has not been able to work out yet.I stared at the ceiling for a minute and then I kept staring at it.I stared at the ceiling.The problem with what Jade had said was not that it was wrong. The problem was that it made me look directly at something I had been carefully keeping at the edge of my vision for weeks. Zoey had come to the library with a question and the question was whether Avery Nash was a real obstacle or just something she could manage.And the reason Zoey was asking that question was because she already believed she knew how Liam felt.I turned onto my side.He had feelings for Scarlett. That I had been certain about for a long time. He had come back to the club multiple times. He had told her he was not playing games. He had said I am not going to us

Avery's POVMy mum asked him about football.She knew nothing about football. She had never sat through a game voluntarily in her entire life. But she had heard me mention it at some point and she stored information about people the way she stored everything — quietly, without making a show of it, and then produced it at exactly the right moment. She asked how the season was going and whether the team was having a good year, and Liam answered her properly. He did not give her a short polite answer. He talked through it like someone who had been asked a real question and was giving a real answer. He was obviously in his comfort zone talking about football."Avery mentioned you were the team quarter back," my mum said.I looked at her. "I just mentioned it once.""You mentioned it as if it was relevant," she said. "Which it was." She looked at Liam. "She does not mention things unless she thinks they matter.""Mum.""It is a compliment," she said. "Take it."Liam was looking at me. "I w

Avery's POVHe did not explain what he meant by that straight away. He picked up his coffee instead and finished what was left of it, and I did not ask him to go further. I had learned by now that pushing Liam rarely produced anything useful. He got there on his own or he did not get there at all, and trying to rush it only made him pull back.I turned my water bottle over in my hands and waited."Tell me about Zoey," I said eventually.He glanced at me."Not in a gossip way," I said. "You don't have to if you don't want to. I'm just trying to understand the version of you that existed before this semester when you moved over here."He held the empty cup in both hands for a second, looking at the table. Then he put it down and pushed it to one side."Zoey and I were together for about two years," he said. "On and off, mostly. We were better apart than we were together, but it took me longer than it should have to figure that out." He leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling