Chapter 109: Chapter 109
Amara stared at the blinking cursor on her laptop screen, the way some people stared at clocks in boring meetings, hoping the hands would move faster.
She had been typing, deleting, typing again, and then... sighing at herself. Her draft looked like a graveyard of half-sentences.
The sunlight itself wasn’t helping. It streamed in through her half-drawn curtains like it had personal beef with her retinas. Her tea had gone cold an hour ago.
Her phone buzzed.
At first, she thought it was just another useless notification. However, no. It wasn’t a group chat meme. It wasn’t a spam email pretending to be urgent.
It was Elias. Elias was calling her again. Why?
Her heart did the weird little stumble thing again, the one she pretended never happened. The one she firmly told herself was nothing but nerves.
However, who gets nervous about a man whose laugh still lingered in her head longer than it had any right to? Definitely not her.
She let it ring twice because immediately picking up would make her look too available. And then she swiped to answer, doing her best to sound and act casual.
"Hello?"
"Amara." His voice slipped through the line, calm and warm, carrying just the right edge of tease. "You sound like you were either deep in thought or deep in a nap."
She sat straighter in her chair, glaring at her blank word document as though it had betrayed her by letting him be right. "I was working."
"Working." His tone lifted, playful. "On that book? The one you’re pretending doesn’t exist because you don’t want to talk to me about it?"
She scoffed, though her cheeks heated. "It’s not pretending if I don’t want to talk about it."
"You mean the same way people don’t want to talk about their celebrity crushes?"
She could practically hear his smile. The nerve of him!
"Elias." Her voice took on that sharp, warning edge she used whenever she wanted to regain control of the conversation. It usually worked on other people. Elias, however, treated it like background music.
"I’ll take that as a yes," he said easily. Then, like he hadn’t just completely dismantled her peace of mind, he added, "What are you doing for lunch?"
Amara blinked. Her gaze darted to the clock at the corner of her screen. Lunch. It was past noon already? Time had slipped away, and was quickly swallowed whole by her staring contest with the cursor.
She shifted in her chair. "Why?"
"Because," he said, with that calm, deliberate patience that made everything he said sound both obvious and impossible to argue with, "I thought we could have it together."
Her lips parted, then closed. Her brain needed a second to catch up. She blinked, almost smiling.
"Lunch," she repeated, cautious.
"Yes."
"You mean..." She hesitated, her voice carrying that unsure laugh she hated giving away. "Like a date?"
The line went quiet for the briefest heartbeat. She could hear her own pulse louder than the silence.
Elias broke the silence. His voice dropped, playful, warm, and decisive all at once. "Yes."
Her breath caught. Just that one word shifted the air in her apartment. She wanted to roll her eyes, and wanted to say something clever, but instead she sat there with her heart sprinting like it had been training for a marathon.
She should say no. Or at least something non-committal. She should remind herself that she didn’t have time for distractions, not with deadlines looming over her head, and her thoughts already tangled.
Instead, she found herself giving the tiniest, breathless laugh. "Fine. Yes."
"Yes?" His voice tilted, satisfaction laced in it. Once again, she could hear him smile.
"Yes." She leaned back in her chair, trying to sound more confident than she felt. "Lunch. Not marriage vows. Don’t look so smug."
He chuckled, low and warm, and something in her chest tightened.
"I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes," he said. Then, after a pause meant purely to test her, "Or an hour, if you need more time."
Her eyebrows lifted. "You’ll pick me up?"
Her ex didn’t do that for her.
"Of course." His tone was maddeningly casual. "I know a place."
And just like that, the call ended, leaving her staring at her reflection in the blackened screen of her laptop.
She was wide-eyed and flushed like someone had just dared her to jump into the deep end of a pool she wasn’t sure she knew how to swim in.
The moment the call ended, Amara dropped her head into her hands, groaning into her palms. What had she just agreed to?
A date.
With Elias.
No, lunch. She corrected herself immediately. Lunch. That was all. However the word date had already slipped out of her mouth, and worse, he had claimed it with that playful, deliberate yes.
She pushed back from her desk and paced her apartment. Her apartment, suddenly felt both too small and too messy. Her couch cushions weren’t arranged. There was a mug on the counter she hadn’t rinsed. A sweater thrown over a chair. She was spiraling, and she knew it.
"Focus, Amara." She mumured to herself. "It’s just Elias and no, you don’t like him,"
Thirty minutes. Or maybe an hour. He’d given her an out, but knowing him, he’d be here in thirty.
She darted to her closet, pulling open the doors with the desperation of someone about to be judged by the fashion police. What did one wear for a maybe-date that had snuck in under the innocent name of "lunch"?
Her hands hovered between dresses and jeans. She moved her hands between blouses and sweaters.
Finally, she settled on a soft top and jeans. A very simple wear, but the kind of simple that could be passed off as effortlessly put-together. She paired it with light earrings and spent too long debating between two shades of lipstick, before wiping both off entirely and settling for gloss.
By the time she caught her reflection again, her pulse was still racing.
This was insane. This was reckless. This was—
A spark of inspiration jolted her brain.
She paused, as she weaved a web. The conversation. The call. The entire ridiculous, unexpected way her afternoon had flipped upside down was perfect.
Wait, it was a erfect material. Exactly the kind of scene her fictional characters would live through, except this time, she wasn’t writing it. She was living it.
She darted back to her desk, typing furiously for a few minutes, capturing the memory before it slipped away.
Then she stopped, checked the clock again, and whispered to herself, "You said yes."
She shut her laptop, her heart racing as she decided her story with Elias would be worth writing about. From scratch.