Chapter 6 Luca

Avery's POV

Luca Ferretti was waiting by my locker Wednesday morning with two coffees and no explanation.

He held one out. "I don't know how you take it. So I got both black and asked them to put the sugar on the side."

I looked at the cup. Then at him. "We've had one conversation."

"You seemed like someone who needed coffee more than small talk." He shrugged. "Was I wrong."

He wasn't. I took the cup.

We walked to first period together because his AP Chemistry was three doors down from my AP Computer Science, and we had the same route through the east corridor. He talked about the school like someone reading a guide to a foreign country. Curious. None of it landing as a threat. He'd transferred in spring from a school in Milan. He spoke three languages. He'd somehow gone six months at Ridgemont without getting pulled into any social group.

"How."

"How what."

"How have you been here six months and Madison hasn't made you her project."

He thought about it. "I think she tried in April. I didn't react the way she wanted." He sipped his coffee. "She needs an audience. I didn't give her one."

I thought about that the rest of the morning.

At lunch he found me again at the window table. I hadn't invited him and I didn't tell him to leave. He ate. I coded. The silence between us didn't need filling.

"That video." A pause. "I saw it."

"Everyone saw it."

"I didn't watch the whole thing." He set his fork down. "Felt like watching something that wasn't mine to watch."

I looked up at him. Nobody had said that to me yet. Not my teachers. Not the scholarship coordinator who'd emailed me a link to counseling services. Not even my mother, who'd hugged me instead of talking about it at all.

"Thank you." I meant it more than the words let on.

"You don't owe Madison an explanation for existing." He went back to his food like the sentence hadn't cost him anything. "For what it's worth."

I didn't answer right away. I wasn't used to someone handing me something that simple without expecting anything back.

"Why are you being nice to me?"

"Would you rather I wasn't?"

"I'd rather understand why."

He considered that. "You build things. I like people who build things instead of just talking about building things." He gestured at my laptop screen without asking what was on it, which I appreciated more than if he'd asked. "That's the whole reason."

"That's a strange reason to bring someone coffee."

"Best reasons usually are."

The bell rang before I could figure out if that was a joke. I packed up my laptop, and he grabbed his tray, and for a second neither of us moved to leave first.

"See you tomorrow. Same coffee?"

"Same coffee."

He left like the conversation had never needed an ending in the first place.

I sat there another minute after he'd gone, turning the exchange over. Nobody at this school had approached me without an agenda in three years. Even the teachers who liked me liked me because I was useful, a name they could put on a competition roster. Luca hadn't wanted anything. He'd just shown up with coffee and asked nothing in return.

I didn't trust it yet. But I didn't hate it either.

My phone buzzed as I stood up.

An unknown number. No name attached.

saw you with the new kid. does jaxon know you're already moving on

I stared at the screen. My stomach dropped before my brain caught up to why.

Someone was watching me closely enough to know who I sat with at lunch. Closely enough to frame two harmless coffees as something worth reporting.

I deleted the message and shoved my phone in my pocket. I told myself it was nothing. A random troll riding the wave of the video, nothing more specific than that.

I didn't believe myself even a little.

Fifth period dragged. I kept checking my phone under the desk, waiting for the number to text again. It didn't. That was almost worse, the not knowing when it would come back.

By the time the final bell rang, I'd almost convinced myself to forget about it.

Almost.

Outside, Luca was leaning against the bike rack, phone in hand. Not waiting for me exactly, just standing where our paths happened to cross again.

"You looked freaked out in fifth period. I could see you through the door window."

"I was fine."

"You checked your phone eleven times. I counted."

"You were supposed to be taking notes."

"I multitask." He fell into step beside me toward the pickup lane. "Something happen?"

I thought about telling him. About the text, the number, the phrase that had known exactly where to land. I looked at him a second too long before I answered.

"No. Just tired."

He didn't push, the way he hadn't pushed about the video. He just nodded and let the subject go, and something about that made the knot in my chest loosen slightly.

"Same coffee tomorrow." It sounded like a promise instead of a question.

"Same coffee."

I watched him walk off toward his own car, and for the first time all day, I didn't check my phone until I was already in the Ryder driveway.

Whatever waited on the screen could wait a few minutes longer.