Noah Bennett made a point of not missing people.

  Missing people implied you had become accustomed to them, a taxing venture that led to expectations, disappointment, and staring at your phone like it had personally wronged you.

  Noah avoided that trap entirely.

  So, when Friday arrived, he interpreted the faint, persistent irritation in his chest not as missing her, but as a disruption in routine. Like when the elevator made a slightly different noise and you spent the rest of the trip waiting for it to fail dramatically.

  Completely normal.

  He left the Science & Engineering Library at his usual time, bought a few things at the grocery store, returned to King’s Park Flats with his usual calm, and nodded at the lobby camera, seeking the tacit approval of an inanimate object.

  The lobby was quiet. Of course it was. It was Friday evening, and the building’s residents were either out being social or inside pretending they were above being social.

  Noah fit neatly into the second category—except his brain kept producing small, unhelpful thoughts like:

  You should make chili.

  Chili held no secondary meaning; it certainly didn’t imply romance—though Noah wasn’t entirely sure why his brain had selected that specific example to rule out. Chili was the opposite of romantic. It was practical. Chili was I have things in my pantry and I would like all of them to become dinner. Chili was a dish that could be improved by time and ignored safely, which made it a comforting choice for people who didn’t like uncertainty.

  Noah stepped out of the elevator onto his floor, rounded the corner, and immediately stopped.

  Rachel was in the hallway.

  She was coming from the stairwell, paper bag in one hand and keys in the other, moving with the careful efficiency of someone who was trying not to drop anything, including her dignity. Her hair was down—copper and soft in the corridor light—and she looked worn around the edges. She bore the specific tiredness of someone who had spent the week holding herself together at full volume, only to see the battery indicator finally hit yellow.

  Noah felt, strangely, relieved.

  Normal neighbour relief, he told himself. Like spotting someone you recognize in a crowded place. Like confirming your building’s recycling dungeon hadn’t swallowed them whole.

  Rachel looked up and saw him. Whatever crossed her face did it quickly—something honest, then carefully neutral.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hey,” Noah replied, and realized too late that his voice came out softer than it did any other time he’d said it that day. He blamed the acoustics.

  Rachel’s gaze flicked over him—his tote bag, his general existence, the fact that he was a solid, calm object in the hallway. “How was your week?” she asked, then looked like she regretted asking, as if the question had stepped over a line.

  Noah shrugged, because shrugging was safer than honesty. “Survivable.”

  Rachel’s mouth twitched. “High praise.”

  “I’m saving ‘wonderful’ for emergencies,” Noah said.

  Her shoulders loosened a fraction. Noah noticed and pretended he didn’t. Sometimes it was best to treat small victories like birds: watch quietly, don’t grab.

  Rachel lifted the paper bag slightly, and the end of a baguette appeared like a flag of accomplishment. “I… actually remembered to buy bread.”

  Noah blinked. “Congratulations.”

  She gave him a look of mild offense. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Noah said, tone approaching sincerity laced with something a little lighter. “I’m proud.”

  Rachel made a small sound that might have been a laugh. Then she exhaled, and the sigh had the weight of a week in it.

  Noah’s brain—apparently eager to be helpful and also to create problems—said:

  Invite her. Make chili. This is reasonable. Invite. Chili. Reasonable.

  Noah, for the record, avoided impulsive things.

  He made a careful internal list of reasons why inviting Rachel over for dinner was a perfectly normal action between two neighbours who had established a pattern of mutual… existing near each other with increasing frequency.

  It was Friday. He was making chili anyway. Chili made too much for one person. He could freeze the rest, but he didn’t have to. She was holding a baguette like it was proof she could survive.

  Noah nodded at his list, satisfied by its thoroughness, and spoke before his brain could add a footnote.

  “I’m making chili tonight,” he said, as casually as if he were announcing the weather. “If you want some.”

  Rachel froze with her key halfway to her lock. The hallway went very still.

  Noah heard his own sentence echo back at him and realized how easily it could land wrong. He adjusted quickly, because he had practice at smoothing edges.

  "I mean,” he added, reaching for a justifiable explanation because one felt required, “I’m making a stupid amount. Because I bought ingredients like a person who can’t do math.”

  Rachel turned fully toward him. Her expression was careful—evaluating, as if deciding how much this could tilt the scales.

  Noah held her gaze and kept his face neutral. He didn’t want to look eager. Eagerness was a slippery substance. It got everywhere.

  “It’s just chili,” he said, aiming for light and almost landing on earnest. “If you want.”

  Rachel’s mouth opened. Closed. Her eyes flicked down at the floor for a beat, then back up. “Okay,” she said.

  Two syllables. Calm. But her shoulders eased again like she’d allowed herself to accept something. Noah pretended not to see. He was good at pretending not to see.

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  “Okay,” he repeated simply, like he hadn’t just felt a ridiculous little spark of triumph.

  Rachel’s lips pressed together. “I can bring something.”

  “Don't worry about it,” Noah said automatically.

  Rachel narrowed her eyes at him. “Noah.”

  His name, said like that—flat, firm, almost affectionate—hit him in the sternum.

  Noah swallowed and recalibrated. “Fine,” he said. “Bring your excellent opinions. Chili is improved by feedback.”

  Rachel’s expression softened, neutrality cracking. “That’s not a thing.”

  “It is,” Noah insisted. “Think of it as culinary peer review. I need an external examiner to verify my methodology.”

  Rachel snorted. “You make dinner sound like I’m defending a thesis.”

  Noah shrugged, as if this were an unavoidable side effect of his personality. “I’d prefer not to be rejected from the program.”

  Rachel stared at him for half a second like she hadn’t expected that to make her laugh, and then she did—quiet and quick, like it escaped. She looked down at her keys again as if she needed something solid to hold.

  “I’ll—” she began, then paused. “How long?”

  Noah did the mental math. Chili wasn’t quick. Chili was a slow simmer and an even slower internal negotiation about spice levels.

  “A bit,” he admitted. “Come by in… forty-five? An hour?”

  Rachel nodded once. “Okay.”

  Then, very deliberately, she unlocked her door. Noah watched her step inside, watched her turn back, watched the tiny hesitation in her hand before she closed it.

  “See you,” she said.

  Noah nodded. “See you.”

  Her door clicked shut.

  Noah stood there for a beat, staring at the door like it might reopen and reveal that this had all been a misunderstanding.

  It did not.

  He went into his apartment and immediately began cooking, because if he stopped moving his brain would start asking him difficult questions with unreasonably simple answers.

  He washed his hands, pulled out ingredients, lined them up with the tidy precision of a man staging a controlled experiment. Onion. Garlic. Peppers. Ground meat. Beans. Tomatoes. Spices in little jars that he turned label-forward without thinking, because chaos was free and order cost nothing but attention.

  As the onions hit the pot and the smell rose up warm and sharp, Noah felt himself settle into the rhythm. Cooking for someone else was still new enough to feel like an event, but cooking itself—chop, sizzle, stir—was familiar. Reliable. It asked for focus and gave calm in return.

  He was stirring when the knock came. Noah’s hands paused over the spoon.

  He told himself, sternly, that it was normal for his pulse to jump like that. It was adrenaline. Chili adrenaline. Very common.

  He wiped his hands, went to the door, and opened it.

  Rachel stood there with her hair brushed back, her glasses on, and a bag in her hand that looked suspiciously like it contained something. Her expression was composed. The faint nerves behind it were not.

  “I brought… something,” she said, holding the bag out like an offering.

  Noah glanced at it. The baguette appeared again, as if to prove a point.

  “Is that—”

  “Yes,” Rachel said, mouth tightening. “Bread.”

  Noah reached for it. Their fingers brushed against the paper bag—a clumsy, static-charged hand-off. He nodded solemnly as he accepted it, ignoring the way his entranceway suddenly felt too small for two people.

  “Excellent choice,” Noah nodded, approvingly. “Chili needs bread. It’s basically policy.”

  Rachel huffed a laugh and stepped inside.

  This time, she didn’t hover in the entryway quite as much. She took her shoes off neatly—still careful, but less like she was afraid the floor might judge her—and followed him toward the living room.

  Noah’s apartment, under her gaze, suddenly felt more sterile than usual. He saw it through her eyes: clean surfaces, minimal decoration, the vibe of a place belonging to someone who lived like they were always five minutes from having to pack up and leave. Rachel didn’t comment. Her eyes flicked around anyway, taking in the basics with a cautious familiarity.

  “It smells good,” she said, and sounded faintly surprised, as if he might only be capable of stir fry.

  Noah kept his face neutral. “It’s in the ‘hopefully edible’ stage.”

  Rachel raised an eyebrow. “That’s reassuring.”

  “It’s safer than optimism,” Noah said, and headed back to the kitchen.

  “Do you want me to… do anything?” Rachel asked, following just far enough to be heard.

  Noah shook his head. “No, go ahead and have a seat. Seriously. It’ll take a bit.”

  She hesitated near the dining table, glanced toward the kitchen like she was doing logistics, then drifted toward the couch instead and sat with her hands folding in her lap, taking up as little space as a person could while still being physically present.

  Noah went back to stirring. The chili thickened slowly, red and patient, forgiving as long as you respected it.

  Behind him, he heard Rachel exhale—slow and controlled. He heard the soft sound of her phone being set face-down on the coffee table, like she was choosing not to let the outside world intrude, or maybe that was Noah projecting.

  Noah cleared his throat, because the quiet was comfortable but also full of things he didn’t want to think about.

  “So,” he said, “how’s your apartment?”

  Rachel made a small sound that could have been a laugh if it wanted to be. “Still standing.”

  “Good,” Noah said, stirring. “That's a higher bar than you'd think, based on some of the places I've stayed.”

  A beat passed, and then the conversation drifted into smaller things: the coffee shop, the neighborhood, the building’s peculiar insistence on secret rules. Rachel asked him about the library, and Noah gave her the funny version—printers that were emotionally complicated demons in disguise, patrons who treated late fees like war crimes. Rachel offered careful broad strokes about her week that suggested it had been full of proving herself to people who didn’t need proof, and then coming home and having to prove herself to her own brain on top of it.

  At some point, music came up because it always did when two people were trying not to talk about the fact that being here together felt… good.

  “What do you listen to when you cook?” Rachel asked from the couch.

  Noah opened his mouth and then hesitated, because the honest answer was whatever keeps my thoughts from eating me alive, and that felt like a lot for chili.

  “Depends,” he said instead. “Sometimes jazz.”

  Rachel’s eyes brightened a fraction. “Jazz?”

  Noah nodded, reached for his phone, and put something on, a bluetooth speaker made its existence known. Soft horns, a walking bass, the kind of music that sounded like confidence and cigarette smoke even at a polite volume.

  For about thirty seconds, it was fine.

  Then the mood in the room shifted, subtle but undeniable. The jazz didn’t sit quietly in the corner. It lounged. It implied things. It made Noah feel like he should be wearing a trench coat and regretting choices he hadn’t made.

  He turned it down a notch.

  Rachel’s gaze flicked toward the speaker, then back to him with the careful neutrality of someone deciding whether to lie.

  “It’s—” she began, then seemed to recalibrate mid-sentence. “It’s nice.”

  Noah huffed a quiet laugh. “It’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

  Rachel’s shoulders loosened, grateful for the permission. “A little.”

  “Yeah,” Noah admitted, scrolling. “Jazz is either ‘background warmth’ or ‘now we are in a film and someone is about to say something loaded.’ There’s no middle setting.”

  Rachel made a soft, amused sound. “And we are definitely—”

  “Just real people,” Noah supplied. “Eating chili.”

  “Right,” Rachel agreed, sounding somewhere between relieved and something unidentified.

  Noah scrolled once, then twice, and landed on something warm and rhythmic—older soul, clean guitars, steady drums, voices that sounded like sunshine that had learned manners.

  He played it.

  The room changed immediately. The music didn’t demand anything. It didn’t ask them to be characters. It just sat in the background like soft light.

  Rachel visibly relaxed, shoulders dropping, head tipping back against the couch.

  “This,” she said, and there was faint relief in it. “This is better.”

  Noah nodded, stirring the chili slowly as it simmered. “Agreed. It’s safer. Good for keeping the noise out.”

  Rachel hummed, closing her eyes for a second. “I lived on this stuff during my undergrad. Finals week, 24/7. I think it’s the only reason I have a degree.”

  Noah smiled over his shoulder, “Then I should probably take notes.”

  Rachel laughed, low and easy.

  Noah let the quiet exist.

  He chopped cilantro out of habit, then paused and glanced over his shoulder. “Do you like cilantro,” he asked, “or are you one of the people it betrays?”

  Rachel blinked, then smiled. “I like it.”

  “Good,” Noah said, genuinely pleased, and added it in at the end like a small, green kindness.

  The chili thickened. The smell deepened—tomato and cumin and slow heat. Noah turned down the burner and set the spoon aside. The apartment felt warm, smelling of spices and sounding like a lazy Sunday morning despite it being Friday night.

  He looked at her—sitting on his couch, shoes off, eyes closed as she listened to the music he’d picked. It looked… correct. Noah looked away before his brain could do anything stupid with that observation.

  “All right,” he said, and his voice came out steadier than he felt. “Dinner’s ready.”