Chapter 4: The Space Between

Chapter 4: Chapter 4: The Space Between

Nearly two hours later, the arena exploded.

"FALCONS!"

"FALCONS!"

"FALCONS!"

The final buzzer ricocheted through the stadium as Emerald Heights clinched the win. Confetti burst from cannons near the rafters.

Vanessa shot up. "Oh my God! They did it!"

Students poured onto their feet to cheer for their victory. Cheerleaders swarmed the court. Photographers barked rapid-fire instructions. Jason’s teammates tackled him in celebration near center court.

"He did it!" Iris laughed, breathless.

Zoey squeezed Iris’s shoulders. "Your boyfriend is officially campus royalty now."

Iris couldn’t stop smiling. Pride flooded her chest as Jason vanished under a mountain of jerseys and joy. "I need to congratulate him."

"You and about three thousand other people," Zoey said, grinning. "You won’t get to him. And he’s not scanning the crowd for you like he does before tip-off."

"Zoey," Iris warned, soft but pointed.

"I know, I know. I’ll behave." Zoey put her hands up.

"I’ll wait to congratulate him then," Iris said, setting her jaw.

"You’ll be waiting till tomorrow," Zoey replied.

"I don’t mind."

Together, the three girls made their way toward the lower level. But unfortunately...so had everyone else.

Students flooded the court, cheerleaders surrounded the players. Even Photographers barked instructions.

University officials hurried over to shake hands. Jason was smiling as people congratulated him one after another. It was a sea of people.

Twice, Iris thought she’d caught his attention. Twice, someone else stepped between them. She lifted a hand to wave but he never saw her.

A member of the coaching staff ushered the players toward the tunnel leading to the locker rooms.

And within seconds...Jason was gone.

Iris lowered her hand slowly, crestfallen about not having gotten his attention. Vanessa noticed her down cast mood immediately and tried to cheer her up.

"He probably got dragged away for the interviews."

Zoey nodded. "And judging by that crowd, they’re not letting him leave anytime soon."

Iris forced a smile. "I know. I wonder if he’ll be able to make it to our anniversary."

She reached for her phone almost instinctively to check for the message she sent him earlier in the morning. The message she’d sent earlier still sat there.

It was delivered, but he hasn’t read it yet nor replied. Iris sighed and slipped the phone back into her purse before either of her friends could notice.

"Come on," Vanessa said, looping an arm through hers. "Let’s go to Copper Bean before every student on campus has the same idea."

Zoey grinned. "And I desperately need fries after screaming for two hours."

Iris laughed. "I thought you said you didn’t care about basketball."

"I don’t." Zoey shrugged innocently. "I only care about winning."

The three friends disappeared into the bustling crowd, laughing together as they left the arena.

*******

The bell over The Copper Bean Diner’s door gave a tinny chime, almost swallowed by the post-game lull. Iris slid into a cracked red booth and smoothed her skirt with unsteady hands. The game had ended thirty minutes ago, but her skin still prickled with leftover stadium heat.

Across from her, Zoey and Vanessa sat, easy and fluid.

Zoey signaled the waitress with a flick of her hand before pulling a tablet from her bag, her expression already shifting into that focused, analytical mode that usually meant she was debugging code or dissecting a theory. Vanessa, conversely, was beaming, her eyes bright with the lingering adrenaline of the Falcon’s win.

"He played so well, Iris," Vanessa said, breathless. She leaned forward, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial hum. "That game-winning shot? The way he scanned the court? It’s like he was playing just for you. You could see it in his focus."

Iris forced a tight, brittle smile, looking down at her menu without really seeing the text. "He was definitely in the zone today. I just... I haven’t really talked to him much since Tuesday. Everything feels so, I don’t know, scheduled."

Zoey clicked her tongue, a sharp sound that stopped Iris mid-sentence. "Scheduled? That’s a generous word. He’s been ghosting you for forty-eight hours, Iris. Don’t dress it up in fancy adjectives."

"He’s the point guard, Zoey. The pressure is insane," Vanessa interjected, ever the shield. "He needs space to recharge. That doesn’t mean he’s not still invested. Iris is planning the anniversary dinner....that’s the ’reset’ they need. A nice meal, some wine, a chance to actually look at each other instead of staring at playbooks."

Iris took a shaky breath, and lifted her eyes to the humming lights. She felt exposed "I’m scared, okay? Is that what you want to hear?" Her voice shook.

" I’m scared that if I don’t pull this off perfectly, there’s nothing left to save in our relationship."

She reached out, tracing the fraying seam of the table. "It’s not just the silence. It’s the... the physical wall. Every time I get close, every time I try to bridge that gap between us, he’s just gone. Not physically, but he’s somewhere else. And I keep thinking, if we just spend this one night together, really together, maybe he’ll remember why he picked me in the first place."

Zoey’s gaze was unblinking. She set the tablet down and leaned in, her voice dropping to a low, intense register.

"Iris, look at me. You are trying to build a bridge to a man who’s already busy burning the map. You keep talking about ’bridging the gap’ like this is a chemistry problem you can solve if you just add the right catalyst. It’s not. It’s a person. And if he wanted to be close to you, he’d make the effort to be in the same room without his phone in his hand or his head in the clouds."

"He’s not malicious, Zoey. He’s just busy," Vanessa countered, though her voice lacked its usual conviction. She reached across the table, covering Iris’s hand with her own.

"You’re overthinking the ’intimacy’ thing. It happens in its own time. You’re a catch, Iris. You think he doesn’t know that? The Golden Boy isn’t blind."

"He might not be blind, but he’s certainly distracted," Zoey muttered, tapping her fingers against the formica table.

"Iris, you told me he forgot your date because of a ’team meeting.’ That wasn’t a schedule conflict. That was a choice. A choice to prioritize anything over you. And you’re sitting here worrying about how to fix your ’intimacy issues’ when the real issue is that he’s not even giving you the basic respect of being present."

Iris felt the familiar weight of insecurity knotting in her stomach. It was the same ache she’d felt at the game, watching the crowd roar for him, for a man she’d loved for three years who felt, lately, like a stranger walking her on a short leash.

"I just need one night," Iris whispered, her voice barely audible over the clatter of silverware from the diner. "If I can just show him that I’m worth the effort—that we’re worth the effort—maybe it’ll stop. Maybe he’ll stop looking for excuses to be away from me. And things might go back to how it was before.....when it was just the two of us."

"And if he doesn’t?" Zoey asked, her voice dangerously calm. "If you put on that dress, go to the restaurant and wait for him, then he shows up and you both proceed to the hotel and you have sex with him and after....he still treats you like a secondary character in his own life? What’s the move then? Where does that leave you iris?"

"She won’t have to worry about that," Vanessa insisted, though she flicked an anxious look toward the diner entrance. "The dinner will be different. It’s their anniversary. It’s symbolic. Men like Jason care about symbols."

"Fuck the symbols." Zoey snapped. "She should just break it off with him. With his actions....it clearly shows that he’s cheating on her." Zoey said.

"Zoey!" Vanessa’s voice spiked. "Don’t say that."

Iris looked at them both...Zoey, the mirror reflecting the hard, ugly truths she tried to ignore, and Vanessa, the soft cushion she used to break her fall. She felt like she was standing on a precipice, the dinner reservation acting as a fragile plank of wood extending out into the dark.

"I don’t think that he’s cheating on me. It’s just that i’ve spent so much time being the girl he expects me to be," Iris said, her voice growing firmer, though her hands were still trembling. "The ’supportive’ girlfriend. The one who doesn’t demand, who doesn’t complain, who waits. Maybe... maybe I need to stop waiting."

"Then don’t go," Zoey said instantly. "Cancel it. Tell him you’re busy. See how he reacts. Watch him scramble for once instead of you."

"I can’t," Iris said, a flash of something dark and desperate crossing her face. "I already paid the deposit. I’ve already planned the menu. I’ve told him the time. If I cancel now, it’s over. I just want to know, once and for all, if I’m fighting for a memory or a person."

The waitress approached with a notepad, but Zoey waved her away. The tension in the booth was thickening, a tangible force that made it hard to breathe.

Iris felt her chest tighten, the pressure of the upcoming night looming like a storm front. She wanted to believe Vanessa, wanted to believe that the right words, the right wine, the right touch could turn the clock back to when Jason looked at her like she was the only person in his orbit.

But deep down, in the cold, quiet part of her brain that Zoey had been poking at for months, she knew the truth. She was trying to resuscitate a relationship that had stopped breathing long ago.

Vanessa rubbed her thumb over Iris’s knuckles. "Then use the night," she said gently. "Not to convince him...just to see him. See where he is in this relationship."

Iris nodded once. The decision clicked into place like a seatbelt. "I’m going" Iris said, pulling her hand away from Vanessa’s grasp. "I’m going to the dinner. I’m going to look him in the eye, and I’m going to ask him what he wants. And if he can’t give me an answer, then..."

She stopped. She didn’t want to finish the sentence. The thought of a life without Jason felt like a terrifying, blank space, a landscape she didn’t know how to navigate.

"Good," Zoey said, though her eyes were narrowed. "But while you’re prepping for your grand interrogation, remember that facts are facts. And lately, the facts point to him being a massive disappointment."

"Stop," Vanessa pleaded, though her eyes shifted to the window, watching the rain start to streak against the glass. "Let’s just get some fries. We’re supposed to be celebrating her birthday."

Iris forced a smile, though it felt heavy on her face. "Yeah. Let’s get some fries."