Not usually my thing but the way they're both deliberately ending up in the same place every day without either one admitting it got me.
We May Try 'Love'
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by Rehan Azam
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Not usually my thing but the way they're both deliberately ending up in the same place every day without either one admitting it got me.
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We May Try 'Love'
by Rehan Azam
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Dylan Marsh had a talent for being a jackass, and everybody at Lincoln High knew it. Riley Chase had a talent for not taking anybody's crap, and everybody knew that too. So when the two of them ended up in the same orbit, nobody was surprised it went off like a car alarm.
It started with a locker.
"Move," Dylan said, shoulder-checking past her to get to his own locker, which happened to be two down from hers.
"There's a whole hallway, genius." Riley didn't budge. "Use it."
"You're standing in the part I need."
"Tragic. Truly a national crisis."
He slammed his locker shut harder than he needed to, more for effect than anything. "You're annoying, you know that?"
"You're the one who talks to me every single day and then acts shocked I'm still here." She slung her bag over her shoulder. "Get a new bit, Marsh."
That was basically their whole relationship for the first two months. He'd say something dumb. She'd shred it. He'd come back with something dumber. She'd shred that too. Half the school thought they hated each other. The other half had started a betting pool, which Riley found out about in October and was furious for exactly one day before she stopped bringing it up.
"You heard about the bet?" her friend Maya asked at lunch, poking at a tray of fries like they'd personally wronged her.
"I heard." Riley didn't look up from her phone.
"You're not mad?"
"I'm mad they think there's something to bet on."
Maya raised an eyebrow. "Uh huh."
"There isn't."
"Uh huh."
Across the cafeteria, Dylan was getting a similar interrogation from his friend Marcus, who leaned back in his chair like he had all the time in the world to be annoying about it.
"You walked her home Tuesday," Marcus said.
"I walk that way anyway."
"You live on Delancey. She lives on Ash. That's not the same way, man, that's the opposite way."
"I was walking. She happened to be there."
"She happens to be there every day."
Dylan shoved a chip in his mouth so he wouldn't have to answer that.
The truth, if he was being honest with himself, which he mostly avoided, was that he didn't actually know why he kept ending up near her. It wasn't on purpose. Except it kind of was. He'd catch himself timing his walk home to when he knew she'd be leaving the library. He'd catch himself picking a lunch table close enough that he could hear her arguing with somebody about a test grade. He told himself it was because riling her up was the most entertaining part of his day, and that was true, but it wasn't the whole truth, and some nagging part of his brain kept pointing that out at inconvenient times.
Riley had her own version of the same problem. She hated how she'd started listening for his voice before she even turned the corner into a room. She hated that she knew the sound of his footsteps, dumb heavy things, always a little too fast like he was trying to catch up to something. She hated, most of all, that when he wasn't around to bug her, the day felt weirdly flat, like somebody had turned the color down.
"He's not even that funny," she told Maya one Thursday, apropos of nothing, staring at her lunch.
"Nobody said he was."
"I'm just saying."
"You've been just saying a lot lately."
Riley shoved a fry in her mouth so she wouldn't have to answer that either.
Things came to a head in November, the way things always do, over something stupid. There was a group project. Of course there was. Mr. Delgado paired them up for a history presentation on the Cold War, and the entire class turned to look at the two of them like they'd just been sentenced.
"Oh, hell no," Dylan said.
"Agreed," Riley said. "Mr. Delgado, this is a war crime."
"It's a class assignment, Ms. Chase, not the Geneva Convention. You'll survive." Mr. Delgado didn't even look up from his roll sheet.
So they were stuck. Three weeks of forced group study sessions in the library, at her kitchen table, once disastrously at his house where his little sister kept walking through the living room to stare at them like they were a nature documentary.
The first session was a disaster. They argued about the thesis, argued about who'd do the slides, argued about whether the Cuban Missile Crisis deserved its own slide or could be lumped in with "other tensions," which Riley called lazy and Dylan called efficient.
"You're impossible to work with," she snapped, halfway through session two, slamming her laptop a little too hard.
"You're bossy," he snapped back. "There's a difference between having opinions and needing to control literally every sentence in the outline."
"Somebody has to keep this from being a disaster."
"It's a school project, Riley, not your senior thesis."
She stopped. He stopped. It was the first time he'd used her first name instead of "Chase" or "you" or whatever insult was loaded and ready. It landed weird in the air between them, quiet in a way their fights never were.
"Don't," she said, but it came out softer than she meant it to.
"Don't what?"
"Nothing." She looked back at the laptop. "Let's just finish the outline."
They didn't talk about it. But session three, he called her Riley again, like a test, and she didn't correct him, and something in the rhythm of their arguing changed after that. The insults got lazier, less like weapons and more like habit, like a joke only the two of them were in on. He started saving her a seat at the group table without saying anything about it. She started bringing an extra snack "by accident" that always somehow ended up being the exact thing he liked.
"You're being weird," Maya said, watching this unfold with the focus of someone studying a crime scene.
"I'm not being weird."
"You brought him sour gummies. On purpose. You hate sour gummies."
"He mentioned once that he liked them."
"Once. Three weeks ago. And you remembered."
Riley didn't have an answer for that, so she didn't give one.
The project ended up going fine, actually, which annoyed both of them a little, like they'd been hoping for a bigger disaster to justify how weird the last three weeks had felt. They got a B plus. Mr. Delgado said their conclusion "lacked confidence," which Riley took personally and Dylan found hilarious.
"We got a B plus and you're mad about the adjective," he said, walking her home that afternoon, no longer pretending it was on his way.
"I don't like being told I lack confidence. I have plenty of confidence."
"You have too much confidence. There's a difference."
"Is that an insult?"
"I don't know yet. Ask me later."
She looked at him sideways. He looked at her sideways. Neither one of them said anything for almost a full block, which for the two of them was basically a record.
"Can I ask you something," Dylan said finally, hands shoved in his jacket pockets like he needed somewhere to put the nervous energy.
"Depends on the something."
"Why do we always end up like this. Same table. Same walk home. Same everything. We've spent, what, four months acting like we can't stand each other, and somehow I know your schedule better than I know my own."
Riley kept her eyes on the sidewalk. "I don't know."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got." She kicked a rock off the curb, watched it skitter into the gutter. "I keep telling myself it's a coincidence. That we just happen to run into each other a lot. But four months is a long time for a coincidence."
"Yeah."
"I don't even like you," she added, quieter, like the sentence had lost most of its teeth.
"I know. I don't like you either." He said it the same way, no bite left in it at all.
"So what is this."
Dylan stopped walking. She stopped a few steps ahead, turned around to look at him, arms crossed, waiting like she actually expected him to have the answer.
"I think," he said slowly, like he was working it out in real time, "we keep ending up here because we keep choosing to. Not because it's an accident. I don't walk this way because it's convenient. I walk this way because you're on it."
"That's..." Riley didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have a comeback ready, which almost never happened, and the silence stretched out long enough that it started to feel like its own kind of answer.
"I'm not saying I'm good at this," Dylan said. "I've spent four months being a jerk to you specifically because I didn't know what else to do with whatever this is. That's a pretty messed up way to handle liking somebody, I'm aware."
"You could've just said something."
"Yeah, well. You weren't exactly handing out compliments either."
"Fair." She almost smiled. Almost. "I called you a jackass in September and meant it as a compliment, in my head, and I didn't examine that very hard because it scared me."
"That's insane."
"I know."
They stood there on the sidewalk, streetlight buzzing on above them, neither one running out of things to argue about for once, just quiet, the kind of quiet that didn't feel like it needed fixing.
"I'm not saying we start dating tomorrow and it's perfect," Riley said. "I'm not that person. I'll still think you're annoying half the time."
"I'd be worried if you didn't."
"I'm just saying. Maybe we don't have to keep pretending this is nothing."
Dylan looked at her for a second too long, the way he'd been avoiding doing since the locker in September. "So what, we just try it? See what happens?"
"I guess. If you're not scared."
"I didn't say I was scared."
"You look scared."
"I look thoughtful. There's a difference."
"Sure you do." But she was smiling now, actually smiling, and he was smiling back, and it was the first time in four months that neither of them felt the need to turn it into a fight.
"We may try," he said, like it was a joke, except it wasn't, not really.
"Don't make it weird."
"I'm not making it weird. You're the one who brought me sour gummies for three weeks straight."
"I will end this conversation right now."
"See, this is the kind of confidence Delgado was talking about."
"I'm going to hit you."
"Worth it."
She didn't hit him. They kept walking, the same route they'd been walking for weeks without either one admitting why, and for the first time it didn't feel like two people circling each other. It just felt like two people finally walking the same way on purpose.
THE END
A Short story by Rehan Azam.
Thoughts
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When she says a day felt flat, like somebody had turned the color down. Do you remember when one person first made a day do that for you?
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Not usually my thing but the way they're both deliberately ending up in the same place every day without either one admitting it got me.
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Riley getting scared and not letting herself think about it. That's so real. The way we convince ourselves things aren't happening when they absolutely are.
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When he told her he walks that way because she's on it, how long do you think he actually knew that about himself before saying it?
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The way they both call it coincidence for months. I see this all the time with people I work with, two people choosing each other over and over and pretending it's accidental. It never fools anyone but them.
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they decided to stop arguing and just walk the same way and im ready 😭
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Dylan lives on Delancey, she lives on Ash, and somehow 'I walk that way anyway' is the worst lie ever told
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That moment when Dylan realized he'd been timing his walks on purpose. Do you remember when you first caught yourself doing something you couldn't explain away?