CHAPTER 28: CHAPTER-28. (OUR SPOT).

For a brief, absurd moment, I wanted to thank him. Not for agreeing with me, he hadn’t, but for understanding enough not to push.

But I bit it back. Gratitude was a dangerous currency with Dave.

Show it once, and he’d think he could buy more from you.

So instead, I said nothing.

The silence stretched, but this time, it wasn’t suffocating. It was... bearable. Like the lull after a storm, not calm exactly, but no longer violent.

And maybe that was enough for now.

I turned my eyes away first, pretending to adjust the sleeves of my robe so that I wouldn’t have to see if he was still watching me.

The truth was, I didn’t want to know. If I caught even a trace of that unreadable half-smirk again, I might lose the fragile grip I had on my composure.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught him glancing at me once more, but only for a second. Then he shifted his stance, the faintest sigh leaving his lips, like he’d decided this conversation was over...for now.

And that was fine by me.

Because in the end, I’d gotten what I needed: his unspoken acknowledgment.

Not approval.

Not agreement.

Just... understanding. And with Dave, that was rarer than gold.

I didn’t fool myself into thinking this was the end of it.

Knowing him, he’d circle back when I least expected it, testing me again, pushing for cracks.

But for today, I’d won this small, quiet victory which I could celebrate for the whole month.

And as ridiculous as it sounded, it felt like a lifeline.

***

A week went by, and everything settled like fine dust after the storm. While I kept working on my story, slowly but steadily.

Also, Linda and I kept track of his health, helping him to take all the medications on time.

Also, this week, Linda introduced us to a total of five different cuisines, serving dishes I had never even heard of in my entire life.

Dave, on the other hand, kept quiet most of the time, locked in his room.

Surprisingly, we did not argue; instead, we had a few short conversations. It did not have any pattern, but whenever we were free, we used to talk about the day.

And intentionally, I kept leaving crumbs of the past memories. Not too direct to trigger, but kept it vague enough to make him recall about anything.

It was like feeding breadcrumbs to a wild animal. You can’t shove the food in its face...you have to drop it, step back, pretend you don’t care if it takes it or not.

Patience was the only rule. And God, did it require a lot of it with Dave.

Sometimes he would completely ignore the hints intentionally or unintentionally, I did not know but very few times something flashed in his eyes, making me almost guess it as remembrance.

The small changes in his facial expression cracked through his cold façade.

One evening, Linda was bustling around the kitchen, humming some tune I couldn’t place, when I found him leaning against the counter.

He stood there idly scrolling through his phone. It was one of those rare, quiet moments where the air wasn’t thick with unspoken jabs.

"You remember that café near our middle school?" I asked casually, pretending to inspect the strange green sauce Linda had just set down.

To which we used to go after school ended. Our spot.

His eyes flicked up to mine, brief, unreadable. "No."

Liar.

I didn’t push. Just shrugged and dipped a piece of bread into the sauce. "Shame. They made the best hot chocolate." Which we used to share every time.

For the rest of the meal, he didn’t say much. But I caught him once, mid-bite, staring off like he was somewhere else entirely.

Later that night, I passed by his room and noticed the faint sound of something—pages turning.

For a second, I wondered if he was reading a script or something. Which of course was not new, but surprising, making me wonder if he wanted to go back to work.

After that night, I called Josh, who, till now got the whole ’our kiss’ scandal under control. Fortunately, I did not need to break his bones to put some sense into his thick skull.

I informed him about my suspicion, and he assured me to talk to Dave and Grandpa about it. Agreeing to it, I hung up the call and waited to see what life would lead us.

The days continued like that, this strange balance between normalcy and a game neither of us admitted we were playing.

I worked on my story, adding scenes that felt too close to reality, almost like I was daring myself to notice the change through it.

And sometimes, I caught myself wondering if maybe and just maybe, he too notices it.

While I was still working on my story, wearing shorts and an oversized shirt, which I accidentally got while folding the laundry.

Technically, it was not stealing but borrowing for some time. And yes, I would never dare to go in front of Dave wearing this, or he will again start arguing with me about touching his things.

I rolled my eyes, still remembering when I used his toothbrush by accident and he threw that freaking new brush into the trash, getting another one.

My phone buzzed, interrupting my music as I glanced at the screen.

It was Josh.

Tapping against the screen, I opened the message. It was almost a paragraph, which in short was.

Hi Mrs. Morris, (which I totally skipped it and read ahead)

How are you and blah, blah...blah.

I talked to Dave, sir, and he actually wished to get back to work.

I talked to Mr. Morris (Grandpa Albert) about it, and he said that we could do that from next week while he would make some arrangements.

I just completed reading the message when my laptop chimed in with an email making me surprised and shocked at the same time.