Bree pulled her notebook out first, setting it precisely in the center of the table like she needed the ritual of it to actually settle into the room.
Jason did the same, more out of habit than any real plan, and for a second neither of them said anything, the silence sitting a little heavier than it had two days ago with a full table of noise around them.
"So what do we do without Nadia’s evil question system," Jason said finally.
"I don’t know. Feels wrong to just skip it." Bree tapped her pen against the table, considering. "She’d probably want us to keep the format going even without her here to enforce it."
"You could write the trap questions. You’re clearly better at it than the rest of us anyway."
"I’m really not."
"You stumped yourself on your own question last time. That’s a specific kind of skill."
Bree’s mouth twitched, the flush from earlier finally settling back to normal. "That was an accident."
"Sure it was."
"It was. I got ambitious." She flipped open her notebook, scanning back through her notes with the same unhurried focus she brought to everything. "Fine. I’ll write a few. You answer them cold, I’ll tell you if you’re wrong."
"That’s a very one-sided arrangement."
"You’re the one who’s failing, remember. I’m doing you a favor."
"Fair point." He leaned back slightly, watching her write, the careful, deliberate way her pen moved across the page, nothing rushed about it, like even a practice question deserved the same attention she gave everything else.
She slid the first card across the table a minute later, and Jason read it, worked through it out loud, and got it wrong in a way that made her actually laugh, a real one this time, not the small careful smile she usually gave.
"You said the opposite of the right answer with complete confidence," she said, still grinning. "That’s almost impressive."
"I was testing your reaction time."
"My reaction time is fine. Yours is the problem." She slid a second card over, and this one he got right, and she nodded slowly, genuine approval this time instead of teasing. "Okay. That one was actually good."
"See, I contain multitudes, hehe"
"You’ve said that before. Actually, I think Vivian says that."
"We share a brain occasionally."
Bree laughed again, shorter this time, and reached for a third card, and somewhere in the exchange the room stopped feeling like it was missing two people and started feeling like it had exactly the right number in it.
They kept going like that for a while, trading questions back and forth, Jason deliberately wrong once just to watch her expression shift into that same delighted disbelief, and Bree occasionally slipping in a comment sharp enough that he had to pause and actually reconsider whatever he’d been about to say.
She was quicker than she let on in the full group, he realized, her usual quiet more a matter of choosing her moments than any actual shortage of things to say.
"You’re different one-on-one," he said, testing it out loud.
"Different how."
"Louder. Not literally. Just, more of you shows up when there’s fewer people to filter it through."
She considered that seriously, the way she considered everything, tapping her pen against the table again. "I don’t like competing for space in a conversation. If there’s four people talking, I usually just let three of them do it."
"That’s a very specific strategy."
"It’s not a strategy. It’s just easier." She glanced up at him, something more direct in her expression now than the usual careful reading she did of everyone. "You don’t do that, though. You take up exactly as much space as you want to, whether the room’s full or empty."
"Is that an observation or a complaint."
"Observation. For now." A small, deliberate pause, the corner of her mouth curving slightly. "I reserve the right to upgrade it to a complaint later."
"Noted." He held her gaze a beat longer than the exchange technically required, watching the flush start to creep back up along her cheeks, slower this time, and decided to let the moment breathe instead of chasing it, the same restraint he’d used at her corner two days ago right before she’d bolted. *No need to push. Let her come to it herself.*
She looked away first, back down at her notes, though the small smile stayed. "Anyway. Your turn to write one."
"I don’t have Nadia’s flair for cruelty."
"You don’t need flair. Just pick something we both actually might get wrong."
He thought about it for a second, then wrote something out, sliding it across, and Bree read it, frowned slightly, actually leaned back in her chair to think it through properly instead of answering off the cuff.
"Okay, that’s actually hard," she admitted.
"I have my moments."
"Rare moments." She said it exactly the way Ben had, exactly the way Marcus had, and Jason huffed a short laugh at the coincidence, wondering idly if it was just something everyone eventually landed on independently or if the phrase had somehow made its way around his entire social circle without his noticing.
They worked through it together this time, actually collaborating instead of testing each other, Bree talking through her reasoning out loud in a way she hadn’t done with the group present, and Jason found himself genuinely enjoying it, the quiet, focused rhythm of two people actually thinking rather than performing for an audience.
An hour passed like that, faster than he expected, the empty chairs on either side of them barely registering anymore, and eventually Bree set her pen down, stretching slightly, glancing at the clock on her phone.
"We’ve actually gotten more done than the last two sessions combined," she said, sounding faintly surprised by her own observation.
"Don’t tell Nadia. She’ll take credit for the system even though she wasn’t here."
"She’ll take credit regardless of whether she was here." Bree smiled, closing her notebook, and then didn’t move to pack anything else away, sitting there instead with a stillness that felt different from her usual calm, like she was working up to something the way Sarah had worked up to something on the chair beside his bed days ago.
"Can I ask you something," she said finally. "Not study related."
"Go for it."
She hesitated, turning her pen over once in her fingers before setting it down flat on the table, deliberate. "The thing you said. The other day. At the corner."
Ah.
Jason kept his expression even, though something in his chest sharpened slightly with interest. "Which part specifically."
"You know which part." She wasn’t looking at him now, focused instead on the pen, straightening it against the edge of the table with more precision than the task required. "You said you were reading me back. That you liked what you found."
"I remember."
"I’ve been thinking about it. More than I probably should." She finally looked up, and there was none of her usual careful composure left in her expression, just something open and a little uncertain, the reading-everyone-fast version of Bree apparently having no defense prepared for being read herself. "I don’t usually let people get past the first layer. I’m good at making sure of that. I don’t know how you got past it in one conversation."
Jason held her gaze, letting the silence sit for a second before answering, not rushing it the way he hadn’t rushed the moment at her corner either. "Maybe you didn’t let me. Maybe I just paid attention."
"That’s not really an answer."
"It’s the honest one." He leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, close enough now that the empty chairs on either side of them felt even more irrelevant than they had an hour ago.
"You spend so much time reading everyone else that I don’t think anyone’s actually bothered reading you back properly. That’s not the same as you letting your guard down. That’s just someone finally doing the work."
Bree’s breath caught slightly, visible even in the small motion of her shoulders, the flush climbing fast now, no slow build to it this time.
She opened her mouth like she had something ready to say back, some careful, measured response the way she always had one, and for the first time since he’d met her, nothing came out.
"There it is," Jason said quietly, watching her, something warm and a little amused in his voice, though he didn’t push any further than that, letting the moment sit exactly where it was instead of chasing it any closer.
Bree looked down at her notebook again, quick, like she needed somewhere else to put her eyes, and when she finally spoke her voice had lost some of its usual steadiness.
"I think," she said slowly, "there’s something I actually want to tell you. About why I write those notes. Why I read people the way I do."
She stopped there, the sentence hanging unfinished in the quiet room, and Jason waited, patient, watching her gather whatever courage the next part was going to require.
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