Between the Quiet Moments

The heavy bass from the living room speakers vibrated through the kitchen floor, sending a steady rhythmic shudder through the wooden stool beneath Lana. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes for a few seconds, trying to ignore the dryness behind them as another burst of laughter rose above the music. When she looked down again, the same paragraph on cellular replication was waiting for her, and she had absolutely no memory of the last three sentences.

It was Tuesday night, exactly three weeks into the autumn semester, and Lana was beginning to question every practical argument that had convinced her that moving in with her older brother was a good idea.

On paper, the arrangement had been almost perfect.

Their parents had loved the idea of Nick and Lana looking out for each other in an unfamiliar city. The rent was considerably cheaper than anything she could have afforded alone, and the science building was less than a ten-minute walk away. More importantly, living with Nick had seemed familiar. Safe, even. She had known his habits her entire life and had genuinely believed that meant she knew what she was signing up for.

What she had failed to account for was that the university version of her brother apparently considered Tuesday a perfectly reasonable night to invite half the campus into their apartment.

From her place at the kitchen island, Lana could see through the wide doorway into the living room, where colored lights swept across a crowd of students packed between the furniture. The air carried the unmistakable smell of stale beer, cheap gin, and someone’s overly sweet perfume. At the center of it all was Nick, completely in his element, standing on a low wooden stool with a red plastic cup raised in one hand while he told what was almost certainly an exaggerated story to a group of laughing students.

Lana watched him for several seconds before returning to her textbook.

She loved her brother, and most of the time she even found his impossible social energy entertaining. Nick had always been like that. Where Lana preferred a few people she knew well, Nick could walk into a room full of strangers and leave an hour later with ten new friends. Growing up, she had admired that quality in him almost as much as it exhausted her.

Tonight, however, she wanted to throw one of his speakers out the window. Her exam was at eight the next morning, and this one mattered. A bad semester could hurt her chances of getting into the research program she wanted next year. The program wasn’t simply something that sounded impressive. She wanted the work itself—the long hours in a lab, the questions that didn’t have obvious answers, the frustrating process of testing something repeatedly until the results finally began to make sense. She had spent most of high school being told she was good at science, but university had quickly taught her that being good at something wasn’t the same as being exceptional at it. Here, everyone seemed talented. Everyone had ambitions, and most of them had worked just as hard to earn their place. So if Lana wanted a future in research, she would have to earn hers too.

She lowered her eyes to the diagram in front of her and tried again, tracing the process with the tip of her pen as she quietly repeated the terms to herself. She managed half a paragraph before someone in the living room shouted Nick’s name and another round of laughter exploded through the apartment. Lana dropped her pen onto the notebook.

“He’s making a ridiculous amount of noise for a Tuesday night, isn’t he?”

The voice came from much closer than the party, low enough that Lana nearly missed it beneath the music. She looked up, startled, and found Jake leaning against the kitchen counter near the sink with a half-empty glass of ice water in one hand.

She knew Jake, of course. It would have been difficult not to. He and Nick had been friends since childhood, and during the past two years they had become something of a permanent pair around campus. If Nick was at a party, Jake was usually somewhere nearby. They knew everyone, were invited everywhere, and seemed to move through university life with the irritating ease of people who never seemed particularly worried about deadlines, grades, or what they were supposed to be doing five years from now.

Lana had never disliked Jake. She simply hadn’t given him much thought beyond his connection to her brother. To her, he belonged to the same noisy social world Nick did—a world she could tolerate in small doses but had no desire to join.

“You noticed?” she asked.

Jake glanced toward the living room, where Nick had apparently launched into another story. “I think the people two floors down noticed.”

Despite herself, Lana smiled. “I have an exam at eight tomorrow morning. Apparently, that information did not affect his planning.”

“You told him?”

“Twice.”

“And he still invited everyone?”

“According to Nick, it was only supposed to be a few people.”

Jake looked through the doorway at the crowded living room. “Right. Very intimate.”

That earned a quiet laugh from her, and Lana felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders. He gestured toward the empty stool opposite her. “Do you mind if I sit for a minute? The living room has reached the stage where everyone is shouting even though they’re standing two feet apart.”

“Go ahead.”

Jake pulled the chair out carefully enough that its legs barely scraped against the floor before sitting down. Lana noticed the small gesture mostly because Nick would have dragged it loudly across the kitchen without thinking twice.

“I thought you liked this kind of thing,” she said. “Aren’t you usually the one helping Nick set up the speakers?”

“Usually.”

“So what happened?”

Jake turned the glass slowly between his hands. “Nothing dramatic. I still like going out. I’m just starting to think doing the exact same thing three nights a week isn’t quite as exciting as we used to think it was.”

Lana raised an eyebrow. “The great Jake is getting tired of campus nightlife?”

“Don’t sound so shocked.”

“I’ve heard stories.”

“Nick tells them?”

“Most of them.”

“That explains the criminal lack of context.”

She laughed. “Are you saying they’re not true?”

“I didn’t say that.”

His expression remained amused, but Lana noticed that he didn’t immediately dismiss what she’d said about the parties. When he glanced toward the living room again, there was something close to restlessness in his face. “I don’t know,” he continued. “Maybe I’m just tired. Between classes, training, assignments, and Nick deciding every free night needs an audience, I’m starting to appreciate silence.”

“Training?”

“Mostly the gym. Running when I can.” He shrugged. “It keeps my head clear, especially when everything else gets busy.”

That was more ordinary than Lana had expected, and somehow more interesting because of it. She realized she had never really considered what Jake did when Nick wasn’t around. In her mind, the two of them had always existed as a unit, which probably wasn’t any fairer than people assuming she was simply Nick’s quieter younger sister.

“So you do have a life outside parties.”

“Occasionally.”

“I’ll alert the university newspaper.”

“Please don’t. I have a reputation to protect.”

The teasing felt surprisingly easy, but Lana was conscious of the textbook still open between them. She glanced at the clock and reached for her pen again.

Jake noticed. “Big exam?”

“Unfortunately.”

“What makes this one so important?”

Lana hesitated. Talking about her ambitions sometimes made them feel strangely fragile, as though saying them aloud gave other people the opportunity to measure how far she still had to go. “I’m hoping to apply for a research program next year,” she explained. “They look at grades, recommendations, practical experience—basically everything. One exam isn’t going to decide my entire future, but I’d rather not start giving myself reasons to worry.”

“What kind of research?”

The question surprised her enough that she looked up. “Cellular genetics, ideally. There are several labs involved, so I wouldn’t know exactly where I’d end up, but one of the professors is doing work on gene regulation that I’d really like to be part of.”

Jake’s expression became more thoughtful. “Nick told me you were serious about school. I didn’t realize you already knew what direction you wanted to go in.”

“I know the direction. Getting there is the difficult part.”

“At least you have something you’re aiming for.”

Something in his tone made Lana pause, and then she asked, “You don’t?”

Jake rested his glass on the counter. “Not exactly. I’m keeping up with classes, and I have things I care about, but when people start asking what I’m doing after graduation, my answer gets less convincing every time.”

Lana studied him for a moment. There was no self-pity in his voice, only an uncertainty she understood better than he probably realized. Her own plans might have been more specific, but that didn’t mean she never questioned whether she was capable of reaching them. “Maybe not knowing yet isn’t the same as having no direction.”

“That sounds suspiciously optimistic.”

“I’m trying something new.”

“Does it work?”

“Ask me after my exam.”

Lana tried to read again, but after barely a minute, it was obvious she couldn’t concentrate. Jake seemed to reach the same conclusion. He stood and crossed to the counter, where a dark gym bag was slung over one of the stools. After searching through it, he returned with a matte-black case and placed it on the table.

“Try these.”

Lana opened the case and stared at the noise-canceling headphones inside.

“Jake, these look expensive.”

Jake smiled and pushed the case a little closer. “Use them. They’ll block out most of the music, and I’m not planning to go anywhere that requires headphones tonight.”

Lana studied him for a second before lifting them carefully from the case. “Are you sure?”

“Completely.”

She placed the headphones over her ears and activated the noise cancellation. Almost immediately, the heavy bass softened into a distant vibration and the voices from the living room faded until they sounded as though they belonged to another apartment.

Relief spread across her face before she could hide it.

“Oh my God.”

Jake said something she couldn’t hear. Lana laughed and pulled one ear cup aside. “Sorry. What?”

“I asked if they work.”

“They’re incredible.”

“Then keep them until you’re finished.”

“You may have just saved my grade.”

“I think the hours you’ve spent studying deserve more credit than my headphones.”

“Tonight, I’m giving the headphones at least thirty percent.”

“Generous.”

She adjusted the headband and looked at him again. “Seriously. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

The simplicity of his answer made the gesture easier to accept. He wasn’t hovering or waiting for praise, and when Lana lowered the headphones again, he returned to his water rather than trying to reclaim her attention. She managed nearly two pages before curiosity finally won. Lana pulled one side of the headphones away. “Can I ask you something?”

Jake looked up from his phone. “Sure.”

“Why are you being so nice?”

He blinked, then laughed. “That’s a concerning question.”

“You know what I mean. Nick makes it sound like the two of you spend your lives creating chaos together.”

“I saw you trying to study in the middle of all this, and I had something that could help. It didn’t need to be more complicated than that.”

She had expected a joke, maybe one of the effortless lines Nick claimed Jake could produce whenever he wanted someone to like him. Instead, he had simply helped. “Fair enough,” she said.

For the next several minutes, they sat together without feeling the need to talk. Lana returned to cellular replication, highlighting only the points she still needed to review, while Jake checked something on his phone and occasionally glanced toward the party. The silence between them wasn’t intimate so much as unexpectedly comfortable, and Lana appreciated that he seemed perfectly capable of letting her work.

Maybe she had judged him too quickly because of Nick’s stories. Or perhaps Jake was simply more complicated than the version of himself he showed at parties. Either way, she didn’t need to decide tonight. She had an exam to pass, a research program to work toward, and a future she was determined to build on her own terms.