Chapter 8: I’M NOT INTERESTED
Chapter 8
Lumi
I closed my eyes and pulled the edge of the duvet over myself and lay very still and let sleep find me again because it was the only thing available to me that required nothing.
A knock was what woke me up, I wondered who it was because no one came around this time.
I looked at my phone. Eight fourteen. Maybe it was one of Neve’s friends who didn’t know she wasn’t around and wanted to say hello.
I sat up, pushed my hair back from my face, and sat on the edge of the bed for a moment just breathing before going for the door.
When I opened it, Ren was standing on the path.
He had changed his jacket. Dark still, but different, and he was standing with his hands loose at his sides and looking at me with an expression I couldn’t immediately categorise.
It wasn’t the blank armour from before, nor was it the cocky tilt from this morning.
He looked, if anything, slightly uncomfortable, which on his face was such an unusual thing that I found myself just standing there staring at him.
He cleared his throat.
"Can I come in," he said, and then, after a beat, as though the word cost him something, he muttered "please." I stared at him.
He looked like a man who had not said that word in a considerable length of time and was not entirely sure he had done it correctly.
I didn’t answer him. I didn’t know what to do with this version of him, this careful, slightly stiff version standing on the path asking permission.
So I did the only thing that came naturally, I turned around and walked back inside.
I heard nothing behind me and glanced back.
He was still on the path. He had started to turn, reading my silence as a refusal, and something in me moved before I thought about it.
"Didn’t you ask to come in?"
He stopped, then he turned around, walked through the door and went directly to the same spot where he had sat this morning, settling into it with the same ease as before.
I stood in the middle of the room waiting for him to say why he was was here but he said nothing for a moment.
I cleared my throat. "What are you doing here?"
He looked at his hands briefly, then back up. "I was heading down to the restaurant on the main road. Wanted to get dinner." He paused then continued. "I was passing. Thought I’d see if you would come along." I blinked surprised.
I tried to imagine what Neve had said to him. What she had promised, threatened or pleaded, to produce this, Ren, sitting on a sofa asking me if I wanted to go to dinner, using the word please at a front door like it hadn’t physically pained him.
I almost asked. But if he was choosing to be decent then I would be the mature one. That was what adults did.
I shook my head slowly, and I meant it to come out neutral, maybe even a little warm. "I’m not interested," I said. "I’ve already eaten."
His expression didn’t change, but my stomach did.
It made a sound that was loud and completely unambiguous and entirely without dignity.
The silence it left behind was the most embarrassing silence I had experienced since arriving in this house, and something moved across Ren’s face so fast I almost missed it, a flicker at the corner of his mouth, a warmth that was almost a smile, the briefest softening.
Did he just smile?
But then it was gone and his face was straight again and he looked away like it hadn’t happened. But it had happened.
He stood up, slow, unhurried, and looked at me with complete seriousness. "Your stomach has already said what needed saying." He nodded toward the hallway. "Go and get ready. I’ll wait."
I blinked. "I don’t... what?"
"You’re hungry and so am I." He said it like this was a simple equation, like it required no further discussion. "We eat. That’s it."
I shook my head again, and this time I felt the edge of stubbornness creeping in because I didn’t want to be managed and I didn’t want to be a task he had been assigned.
And I certainly didn’t want to sit across a restaurant table from someone who had barely spoken a full sentence to me all week. "There’s no need. I can manage."
"When did you last go outside?" he asked.
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I closed it again because the honest answer was that I hadn’t, not since the short walk I took those first days when Neve was still here.
"Right," he said quietly. Understanding my silence for the answer it was.
"When did you last eat a proper meal?" I drew breath to say something defensive but he spoke before I could.
"I’m not asking to make a point." His voice was even and unaffected. "Neve is my sister. She’s wherever she is right now not concentrating because she’s worried about you. She keeps talking about coming back." He looked at me steadily. "She was close to putting in her notice, few hours ago."
I looked at him with a wide eyes. He didn’t mean what he said, did he?
He nodded once, slow and certain, and continued. "If she sees a photo of you eating dinner at a restaurant like a person who is okay, she’ll breathe. That’s all this is." He paused. "You’d be doing it for her."
Neve has done so much for me, and I wouldn’t let her abandon her future because of me.
I looked at Ren, he looked back at me with no smile, nor pressure. Just patiently waiting.
I exhaled slowly.
"Give me a few minutes," I said, and walked back into the bedroom before I could change my mind.
