Between you and me

Wellsy was fifteen minutes late. She'd left her dorm with enough time, technically if you didn't count the ten minutes she'd spent deciding between two nearly identical cardigans, or the detour she made because she thought she'd forgotten her water bottle and then found it in her bag the whole time, exactly where she'd put it.

Her tote kept sliding off her shoulder while she walked fast, not quite running. She'd packed three notebooks she wasn't going to open and a granola bar she'd already eaten half of and then put back anyway, like it still counted as a snack she had. She yanked the strap up again and told herself first meetings never actually start on time.

They probably did though, she just didn't want to think about that part.

The student union looked like it used to be a gym, maybe from the way the ceilings were too high for the rooms underneath them.

She found the stairs and took them two at a time, and by the time she spotted the paper sign taped crooked to a door on the second floor, KALEIDOSCOPE CLUB, WELCOME!, she'd basically stopped caring how she walked in.

She opened the door, "Sorry," she said, to the room in general, since she hadn't picked anyone specific to apologize to yet,

"Sorry.... I got so lost, there's like four staircases in this building and they don't agree with each other at all....."

"It's fine , don't worry about it , come sit " said a girl near the front, not annoyed exactly , just quick about it like she'd said the same thing five times already that hour.

She had a clipboard and a bob cut so sharp it looked intentional in a way Wellsy's hair had never once been, then the girl said, "We're doing intros."

Wellsy took the closest open seat, which put her at a slightly wrong angle to the rest of the circle. She thought about turning her chair but then she decided against it, so for the whole meeting she sat half-twisted toward everyone else, like someone recovering from whiplash, which felt about right.

It was the kind of club , other clubs always are in week one mismatched chairs pulled from somewhere else, somebody's already put up string lights along the back wall with more excitement than the room had earned yet.

Maybe there were twenty people and half on their phones, a guy by the door was still catching his breath like he'd run here too, and that helped her a little, at least she wasn't the only late one!

She'd stopped actually listening to people explaining their majors and about themselves out loud and all start to sound the same by the third person when she noticed him.

Three seats down, leaning slightly toward whoever was talking and actually paying attention, which for some reason she clocked immediately, before she'd even clocked his face properly.

Light brown hair that looked like it had given up arguing with gravity that morning, he laughed at something someone said, he genuinely laughed and it made her want to know what the joke was, even though she clearly wasn't going to find out.

She sat up a little straighter, she hadn't decided to It just happened.

"Okay " she thought, " okay wow , now don't be weird about this"

She knew this was a predictable thing to feel. Boy is objectively good-looking, girl notices not exactly a personality trait. She filed the thought away to be embarrassed about later, probably around one in the morning, probably out loud to Nora.

Right now she was just watching him nod along to whatever the girl with the clipboard was saying and thinking, with the total unearned certainty of someone who had never once been proven wrong about anything.

She didn't know his name yet and that felt like a small problem, most problems did before you actually had to solve them.

".....if you're just joining us, welcome, I'm Vanessa, running point on the club this year," the clipboard girl was saying, and Wellsy tuned back in just in time to catch the end of it,

"We do exhibitions, small campus stuff, and then the big one in spring, so if you like being busy, this is the place."

Wellsy, who did not particularly like being busy, who had spent most of high school actively avoiding it, nodded like this was thrilling news, her face just did that sometimes without asking her first.

Introductions kept going around the circle, A tall and rumpled guy near the door said his name was Deacon and that he was "historically bad at being on time, so manage your expectations," which got an actual laugh out of half the room.

A girl in the back with glasses didn't look up from whatever she was sketching and said something that might have been "Piper," and went right back to it.

Then it reached the boy with the light brown hair!

"Miles," he said it calmly like the word cost him nothing at all, "Sports management, I play a little pickup ball, apparently I'm helping plan events now too, so we'll see how that goes."

A few people laughed at this , Wellsy laughed a half-second late, because she'd been busy deciding that Miles was a good name. A solid one! The kind she could picture herself saying out loud eventually, in some context she wasn't going to think too hard about yet.

Then she caught herself having a whole opinion about a stranger's name and felt a little insane.

She was still stuck on that when it moved one seat over, to the guy sitting next to him.

He didn't even look up, he was on his phone.

Well.... not the quick and guilty half-glance everyone else kept doing ,but actually on his phone, his thumb moving and one earbud in even though she hadn't heard a single note leak out of it the entire meeting.

Dark hair fell into his eyes in a way that looked less like a choice and more like something he'd just stopped fighting, He was wearing a black jacket. Black , even though the room wasn't that cold and a small silver stud caught the light once, when he tilted his head slightly to read something.

"Theo," he said without looking up. "Computer science."

That was it, that was the whole introduction.

Vanessa didn't even blink at it, which meant this was clearly not new information to her, some bit that had already happened before Wellsy walked in fifteen minutes late, but Wellsy blinked, she felt a small, dumb flash of annoyance on Vanessa's behalf or the room's behalf...or if she was honest, probably just her own because things were supposed to be done properly and this very obviously wasn't that.

"Then why even join a club", she thought," if you're just going to sit there on your phone, what a rude person."

It wasn't fair, she didn't know him. Maybe there was a reason, maybe his grandma was sick and he was texting her right now, this exact second, while Wellsy sat there silently judging him for it.

She decided that was unlikely, she decided her first impression anyway, the way you do with strangers within about four seconds of meeting them, and then somehow never fully talk yourself out of again.

He didn't look up for the rest of the meeting. he didn't for the fall calendar, not when Deacon knocked his own chair over reaching for a granola bar and had to apologize to three different people about it and not even when Miles leaned over and said something too quiet for the rest of the room to hear, Theo answered without lifting his eyes from the screen. Some shorthand between them, the kind two people only have after knowing each other so long they don't need to actually look at each other to talk. she noticed this one specifically, for reasons she didn't examine too closely.

"Hmm.... best friends probably," she thought, "Poor Miles."

She had no evidence for that, she believed it completely anyway, because that's mostly what a first impression is a guess wearing a very convincing outfit.

By the time Vanessa was wrapping up.

"okay, that's basically it, sign-up sheet's going around, we've got a real planning session next week, and if anyone's free Thursday we could use help hanging flyers, no pressure, just if you want to be useful....."

Wellsy's hand went up before her brain caught up with the rest of her. It did that sometimes. Her hand had opinions of its own,

"I can do Thursday," she said.

Vanessa looked relieved in the specific way of someone who's just handed off a piece of their own to-do list,

"Amazing. Wellsy, right? I'll add you to the group chat."

"Yep. That's me.", she sat back down and only then started actually doing the math, Thursday, she had a reading due but she could move it to Wednesday night probably, it was one afternoon, it wasn't a big deal.

It never was, that was sort of the whole problem with it, though she wasn't thinking about that part yet either.

The sign-up sheet made its way around. She wrote her name on three separate lists before it left her hands - flyers, general committee, something called Logistics Support that she didn't fully understand but figured nobody else would want, which felt like reason enough on its own.

She looked over at Miles once more before people started packing up, half-hoping to catch his eye, already rehearsing something casual she might say if she happened to end up near him by the door.

He was laughing again at something Deacon had said, loud and unguarded, and her stomach did the same dumb thing it had done the first time.

Beside him, Theo was putting his phone away, sliding it into his jacket pocket with the kind of unhurried motion of someone who'd already decided the meeting was over ten minutes ago. He didn't look at her, he didn't look at anyone, slung his bag over one shoulder, said something short to Miles, and the two of them headed for the door Miles loud and easy, already a sentence ahead of himself, Theo was a step behind, one earbud still in for a song that as far as she could tell, wasn't playing anything at all, she watched them go.

Wellsy was still congratulating herself on a clean exit , without tripping and no spilled bag a personal record for her when her phone buzzed in her pocket, she figured it was Nora, demanding a full report before she'd even made it down the stairs but It wasn't Nora.

It was the club group chat , a dozen messages deep before she'd even left the building. She scrolled up mostly out of habit and then stopped.

Vanessa: ok logistics support people : looks like it's just you two for now. Vanessa added Wellsy and Theo to Logistics Support

She read it twice, then a third time, like the names might rearrange themselves into something less annoying if she just gave them a second chance, but they didn't.

Behind her, somewhere back up the stairwell, a door swung shut and a calm and unhurried voice said something she couldn't quite make out to someone who laughed at it.

She didn't need to turn around to know whose voice that was, she thought "Great Just great."