Chapter 437: Catching Up With Mia

Mrs. Edith set her cup down and turned toward the stove, the evening already gathering itself back into pots and timing.

Sacha pouted, playful, exaggerated.

"Do you think Mia still likes me? With her giving Stan her Stan all the hug outside..."

Mrs. Edith laughed softly, eyes warm. "She’s always had a soft side for Stan..."

Sacha knew that. She had known it since cardboard houses and paper hundreds. She said it anyway, to put a little more air into a room that still remembered absences.

Mrs. Edith glanced toward the sofa. "Mia. Come help me finish this."

Mia’s hands tightened on her sleeve. Before she could stand, Sacha was up.

"Why does Mia need to help you when I’m here? Let the girl rest for a while. I’ll help you in the kitchen with whatever you need..."

Mrs. Edith shrugged, smiling. "Okay..."

They walked out together. At the kitchen threshold Sacha looked back and winked, quick, conspiratorial, meant for one person only.

Stan caught it and smiled to himself.

’Nice one, Sacha...’

She teased without mercy and still cleared the room for him. In a life crowded with claims and careful distances, that kind of loyalty was rare. It warmed his chest in a simple way. No ledger. No repayment in cultivation resources. Just his sister making space and trusting him to use it.

Pots resumed. A cupboard. Water running. The living room softened around the two of them. Evening light lay along the floor in a long stripe. The stew’s scent drifted in, distant now, comforting.

Stan’s gaze shifted to Mia.

She sat close enough that the cushion remembered both of them. What he did not see was the work it took her to stay that way. The hug at the door had left heat under her skin and the faint trace of him in her breathing. Old familiarity pulled at her shoulder, at her hands, at the small gap of fabric and air between hip and hip. Her body wanted to close it, lean, tuck, rest her temple where it used to belong when they were smaller and no one called it anything. She kept her hands in her lap. Her heart did not cooperate.

He turned toward her fully.

"What’s up?" Easy. Unhurried. "You look like you’re holding something in."

Mia glanced toward the kitchen, then back. "I’m not. I’m just glad you’re here." A breath. "Properly here. Not in a crowd."

"How have you been?" he asked. "Since the match. That’s the last time we actually talked. Peak and Crown. After the noise died down."

The gym came back in pieces: varnish and dust, the squeak of shoes, Peak taking the night because he had made it take the night. Velaris Crown colors in the stands. Finding her afterward at the edge of the thinning noise. A short conversation. Then the road.

"The rest of that day felt strange," Mia said. "You won. People were loud in the corridors. I walked back to campus with two girls from my year who kept asking if I knew you, and I said yes, and then I didn’t know how to add the rest without sounding like I was making a claim." She smiled, small. "I sat in my room and replayed the two minutes we had. That’s embarrassing to admit." ℯℯ𝑙.

"It isn’t."

"It is a little." Her fingers smoothed the seam of her sleeve and stopped. "After that, Crown just... continued. Lectures. Group work that never ends when it should. A friend who cries about internships in the library as if the building is a confessional. I still go to some games. Not all. When Peak is on the sheet I look, even if I’m supposed to be loyal to the wrong side." A quiet laugh. "I tell myself I’m scouting. I’m not scouting."

"And home?"

"Aunty keeps the house standing and help where I can." The joke was soft. Under it: "It’s quieter than it used to be. Not empty. Quieter. Last week when you came, the quiet changed shape for a few hours. I didn’t realize how much I had been walking around inside it until you were at the door."

Stan listened. He always had, with her. It was one of the things that made the attention feel heavier than it looked.

"Anything major change?" he asked. "Time is long when you’re in them."

Mia thought. "Nothing that would sound major to anyone else. I sleep better some days. Worse others. I cook on the nights Mom is tired, and she pretends she isn’t grateful. I think about the old street more than I say out loud." She looked at him. "You?"

"Busy," he said, and left the shape of busy packed. "School. Moving between places. Eating when Sacha reminds me." A faint dry note. "Sitting in this house again feels strange. And good. Like the furniture kept our places."

"It did." Mia’s voice thinned with something fond. "I was nervous when I opened the door. Then I wasn’t. Then Sacha was there and I was nervous again for a different reason."

"She likes you."

"She likes teasing me. That’s her dialect for liking me." Mia’s mouth curved. "I missed that dialect."

A comfortable silence opened. Kitchen sounds stitched it, Sacha asking where something lived, Mrs. Edith answering without looking. Mia’s shoulder drifted half an inch toward him and halted. Heat from his arm reached her sleeve. She did not take the last inch.

"When I saw you last week," she said, quieter, "I wanted to say I’d been fine and also that I hadn’t, and neither sentence was the whole thing. So I hugged you instead. That wasn’t a strategy. It was the only complete sentence I had."

Stan’s mouth almost smiled. "It landed."

"Good." Color touched her cheeks again. She almost set her hand on his forearm, the old reflex, the childhood one, and caught herself, fingers curling back into her palm. "Don’t tell Sacha I said any of this. She’ll put it on a banner."

"I won’t."

"You might. You have that calm face that means you’re filing things."

"I’m just listening."

"That’s worse." But she was happy when she said it.