Chapter 365: Sofia Is Back?

*Slurrpp*

Liam pulled on the straw and the smoothie came up cold and sweet and he barely tasted it because his mind was somewhere else entirely, back on Ashford Ground, back on the moment after he woke up and found out the man was already gone, already back in the cage, already wrapped and chained before Liam had even gotten off the bed, and Wrath standing at the door with the expression he wore when he had something to say and had decided on how to say it.

Not all battles are yours to win today, Wrath had said. This one was a lesson. You are still breathing because it was a lesson and not a fight. Learn what it was teaching you and not just let anger fuel your emotions and reasoning.

Liam’s jaw tightened.

His hand tightened around the cup.

His fingers pressed into the plastic and something gave slightly and a thin line of smoothie ran down the outside of the cup and landed on his trouser leg.

"Dude."

He blinked.

Kelvin was sitting across from him at the small cafe table, looking at him with the expression of someone watching a person malfunction in real time and not being sure which part to address first.

"What is wrong with you right now," Kelvin said.

Liam looked down at his hand on the cup. At the smoothie on his trousers. He set the cup down slowly and checked himself, confirming the damage was limited to the fabric and had not reached anything worse.

"Sorry," he said. "I was remembering something."

"Something disturbing apparently," Kelvin said, looking at the cup and then at Liam’s face. "Because you just tried to murder a smoothie."

"I was just thinking," Liam said.

"Was it Elena?" Kelvin said, leaning forward with the specific energy of someone who had found an angle they liked. "Did your sugar mummy make you mad?"

Liam looked at him. "Something like that."

Kelvin’s expression shifted, the teasing quality giving way to something more straightforward. "Wait, I was joking. Did something actually happen?"

"It’s nothing," Liam said.

"It’s clearly not nothing because you just squeezed a drink onto yourself," Kelvin said. "Tell me."

Liam looked at the table. At the cup. At the small spreading stain on his trousers that was going to have opinions later.

"I got embarrassed today," he said.

Kelvin went quiet.

It was the specific quiet of someone who had been expecting one category of answer and had received a different category entirely, the adjustment happening visibly across his face.

"By who," Kelvin said, his voice having lost its previous register entirely, genuinely asking now.

"Liam."

Both of them turned.

Kelvin turned first, looking over his shoulder, and Liam looked past him.

Sofia was standing at the counter a short distance away, already looking at him, a smile on her face that had the quality of something she had been holding ready for the moment he saw her.

Her hair was longer than he remembered, falling past her shoulders now, dark and clean in the afternoon light.

She was wearing a fitted cream top and dark shorts and she was not the Sofia from the last time he had seen her, or she was but more of it, her boobs fuller and sitting close against the fabric of the top, her whole presence more settled in itself than it had been.

She smiled wider when he looked at her.

"Sofia," Liam said.

The smile did something specific when he said her name in that tone, the surprise in it landing on her and producing something warm and slightly pleased.

"When did you get back," he said.

She laughed, short and genuine. "A little while ago." Her eyes moved across him briefly, the specific movement of someone taking inventory, and then she said, "You look good."

He looked at her.

He was about to say something about how she looked and his eyes went briefly where they went and he caught himself and redirected. "You look amazing," he said. Which was accurate and complete and did not require any elaboration about specifics.

"Thank you," she said, and she said it in the way people said thank you when they had heard something they were glad to hear.

"You getting something?" he said, nodding toward the counter.

"Yeah, I came in for a pick-up order," she said, glancing back at the counter where the person behind it was already holding a bag out toward her, order ready, waiting for her to collect it.

"Oh it’s ready," she said, and turned to get it.

And Liam and Kelvin watched her walk to the counter.

The shorts were doing the same work the top was doing, the fabric sitting across her ass with the specific faithfulness of something that had no space to be approximate about it, the full shape of it moving with each step in the unhurried way of something entirely at ease with itself.

Kelvin made a sound that was not a word.

Liam said nothing.

She collected the bag and came back and looked at him. "Walk with me?" she said. The question carrying the specific warmth of someone who already knew the answer but was asking properly anyway.

Kelvin started to stand up.

Liam pressed him back into his seat with one hand before he had gotten halfway.

Kelvin sat back down with the expression of someone receiving a verdict they had known was coming but had hoped might go differently.

Liam picked up his smoothie and stood.

’At least this will help clear everything out of my head,’ he thought, looking at Sofia waiting for him with the smile still on her face. ’Everything that happened today, the ground, the cage, coming off that floor. At least for now it can all just sit somewhere else.’

He walked over to her and they went out together.

---

They walked without any particular agenda driving the direction, just the afternoon and the street and two people catching up on time that had passed while one of them had been elsewhere.

She talked about where she had been, the program, the places she had seen, the specific things that had surprised her about being away for that long.

He listened and asked questions and she answered them and asked her own and he answered those.

They passed shops, the afternoon crowd moving around them, a market stall on one corner with fruit arranged in the specific colorful way of fruit arranged by someone who took the presentation seriously.

They walked through a section of park where two kids were doing something with a remote control car that kept going in directions neither of them had intended, and both of them laughed at it without stopping.

She was easy to talk to.

She had always been easy to talk to. That had not changed.

What had changed was that the last time he had seen her he had been a different version of himself and she had been a different version of herself and the two versions that were walking through the park now were further along than the ones from before and the conversation reflected that without either of them pointing to it directly.

She made a comment about the way he carried himself now, something small and observational, and he looked at her and she looked back at him and they left it there and kept walking.

"This is me," she said pointing a building right in front of her.

He looked at the building. "This is your place."

The building she stopped in front of was on a quiet street that got enough afternoon light to make it look better than it probably looked at other hours, three floors, a small step up to the entrance, a window box on the second floor with something green in it that someone was maintaining.

"Yeah," she said.

He looked at it for another moment and then back at her.

"Alright," he said. "I’ll see you at school then."

She reached out and grabbed the his jacket.

He just stood there looking down to her hand she had used to grab his jacket in confusion.

She looked at him with the expression that had moved from the warm hello smile of the cafe into something that said she had been thinking about this moment since she saw him sitting there with Kelvin.

"Come in," she said. "I really missed you." She held the back of his jacket loosely, not pulling, just holding the option open. "There’s a lot more catching up to do."

He looked at her.

At the dark eyes and the longer hair and the cream top and the way she was holding his jacket with the specific confidence of someone who had decided on something and was presenting it rather than requesting it.

Something in his trousers had already cast its vote on the matter.

Liam couldn’t help but smile just from the thought of the possibility alone.