EROS CASHBACK SYSTEM: You Can't Fake the Interest

Chapter 20: Chapter 20: Two Invitations

Garrett got to campus Thursday morning thinking about her before he’d even meant to.

It wasn’t complicated. He wanted to see her. He didn’t build a plan around it, didn’t rehearse anything, just decided somewhere between his front door and the bus stop that he’d go find her, the way you’d decide to grab a coffee, not agonised over, just wanted.

He spotted her in her class, and stopped short of actually reaching her.

She wasn’t alone. The usual crowd, a few of her usual circle, Brian easy and laughing at something, Raymond a step to the side with his arms folded, half a dozen others orbiting the group the way people always orbited her. She looked completely at home in it, laughing at whatever Brian had just said.

---

Garrett’s first instinct was to turn around.

Too many eyes. Too many phones ready, even folded away in pockets for now, all of them one glance from being pulled back out. Brian right there, Raymond also. Every version of this that played out in his head ended with him being the story again, not the conversation.

The thought came, ’I’d rather just find her later, when it’s just her.’

He’d taken two steps back before it occurred to him that "later" was starting to sound less like patience and more like an excuse with better manners.

He was still nervous. That hadn’t gone anywhere. His stomach hadn’t got the memo that this was supposed to be easier now.

He turned back round and walked toward the group anyway.

Brian saw him coming first, a flicker of something crossing his face, curious rather than hostile, gone almost as fast as it arrived.

Raymond saw him a half-second later. His jaw set the same way it had in the corridor weeks ago. Neither of them moved, they didnt need to. Garrett felt them the whole rest of the walk, the way you feel a draught from a door you can’t see.

---

Emiliana clocked him last, mid-laugh at something, the laugh trailing off slightly as she registered who was actually walking toward her group.

Surprise, unmistakably, in the half-second before she got it under control. Not the surprise of him existing. The surprise of him having come to find her, on purpose, in front of all of this.

"Can I talk to you?" he asked, once he’d actually reached her, no acknowledgment of the other people now watching this happen.

He heard a phone unlock somewhere behind him. Felt the old, familiar panic try to climb back up his throat, every eye, every screen, the whole thing about to become a story with his name in it again.

He stayed anyway.

"Sure," Emiliana said, already stepping out of the circle. No question about why, no performance for the audience. She just went with him.

Nobody stopped either of them. Nobody needed to say anything for the moment to register.

Brian watched them go, arms loosely crossed, expression unreadable. Raymond watched too, stiller than Brian, the msucles of his hands already working before he made himself stop.

Neither followed.

---

They found a bench two buildings over, away from the noise, close enough to hear a bell somewhere and nothing else.

"You could’ve just texted," Emiliana said, sitting.

They had already exchanged contacts during their last interaction. Garrett had asked for her number with the excuse that he might need to reach her later, probably if something came up involving Daniel. It had been a convenient reason, simple enough that she hadn’t questioned it.

"Could have."

"But you walked into a crowd instead, Bold move."

"Had to change things up."

"You really do need new material."

"You looked like you were about to be sick," she said, studying him. "Back there. Before you actually walked over."

"I wasn’t."

"You absolutely were. You had a face like you were doing mental maths."

"I don’t do mental maths under pressure. I just stand there."

"That’s not better."

"I never claimed it was better."

She laughed at that, short and real, and didn’t push it further, mostly, he suspected, because she’d already won and knew it.

"So why," she said eventually, "did you come finding me, and In front of an audience."

He didn’t dress it up. "I wanted to talk to you."

That was the whole answer. She looked at him a bit longer than the sentence needed, like she’d been braced for something more complicated and hadn’t gotten one.

"Can we hang out...let’s say...tomorrow?" Garrett said, easy about it, no weight attached that he could hear in his own voice.

He had no idea what the question actually cost her to hear.

She didn’t answer straight away.

Garrett noticed the pause, filed it the way he filed most things, without pressing.

Friday.

Somewhere underneath the easy expression she kept for exactly these moments, something rearranged itself. Brian! Seven o’clock! The place on the high street everyone had been going on about. She had already said yes to that.

She hadn’t expected to need a second answer this week.

---

Brian was familiar. That counted for something, whatever it counted for, they understood each other in the specific, load-bearing way that made things simple, made nothing need explaining afterward. Saying yes to Brian had never once required a decision. It was just the shape the week took.

She could see the whole evening from here if she said yes to him instead. Predictable, comfortable, over by nine, no one asking questions.

---

Garrett was watching her think, not pushing, which was somehow the exact opposite of what made her want to say yes to Brian without a second thought.

He didn’t care what her surname did to a room. He hadn’t asked to hang out because of who her father was, hadn’t performed anything for her, hadn’t once treated the conversation like something he needed to win. He’d just walked into a crowd because he wanted to talk to her, said so when she asked, and was currently sitting there letting her take as long as she needed to answer a question that shouldn’t have taken this long.

She asked herself, honestly, just for a second, not who she was supposed to want to spend Friday with, just who she actually wanted to.

The answer arrived faster than she expected, and without much of a fight behind it.

Garrett.

---

"Tomorrow works," she said, out loud, before she’d let herself think about it any further. "I’ll figure out the details."

"Alright."

She stood before the conversation could go anywhere near the reason that answer had taken as long as it had.

"I’ve got somewhere to be," she said. "I’ll message you."

"Fine by me."

She left without looking back, phone already half out of her pocket, already scrolling to a name she was going to have to call before the evening got any later.

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