Chapter 3 – Cracks in the Wall

The waiter had just taken their orders when silence settled over the table again.

Cordelia smoothed her napkin, tracing the embroidery along its edge. She hated silence—at least, this kind. It wasn’t comfortable or companionable; it was taut, full of unspoken history.

Adrian broke it first.

“So… publishing, right? That’s what I heard from your aunt. You’re an editor?”

Cordelia inclined her head. “Assistant editor. Mostly I wrestle with manuscripts that need more saving than the writers care to admit.”

His lips twitched. “Sounds brutal.”

“It’s honest.” She allowed herself the smallest smile. “What about you? Architecture, if I remember correctly?”

“Still at it,” Adrian confirmed, leaning back. “Designing spaces, arguing with clients who think they’re visionaries because they once rearranged their living room. The usual.”

Cordelia raised a brow. “So you crush dreams for a living?”

“Only the badly proportioned ones.”

Despite herself, Cordelia laughed—quiet, quick, but real. She caught the flicker of satisfaction in his eyes, and her defenses snapped back up. He wasn’t supposed to make her laugh. Not after what he’d said years ago.

She sipped her water, letting the coolness ground her.

Adrian leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You’ve changed, Cordelia.”

The words made her stomach knot. “Everyone changes.”

“No, I mean… you’re sharper now. More…” He hesitated, searching for the word. “Composed. Back then, you always kept to yourself.”

Her fingers tightened on the glass stem. Back then. Did he even remember? Or was the memory of that cruel remark so insignificant to him that it hadn’t scarred him the way it had scarred her?

“And you,” she said lightly, masking the tremor in her chest, “still think you can read people like blueprints.”

He grinned. “Occupational hazard.”

Their food arrived, rescuing her from the weight of his gaze. Cordelia busied herself with cutting her risotto, chewing carefully, anything to avoid the unspoken history pressing at the edges of her thoughts.

But Adrian wasn’t finished. “Do you ever think about those tuition classes?”

Cordelia’s fork stilled mid-air.

He chuckled, oblivious to her stiff posture. “Those endless debates, the late-night cramming… We thought we were conquering the world.”

She forced a polite laugh. “Teenage arrogance.”

His expression softened. “You were good, though. I remember. Always precise, always making me think harder.”

Cordelia’s throat tightened. He remembered that? But not… the other thing?

The contrast was unbearable. Here was Adrian, casually pulling at threads of their shared past, unaware of the wound he’d left stitched into her. She could have told him. She could have said, Yes, I remember too. I remember when you called me ugly, when you taught me that showing myself was a mistake.

But she swallowed the words. Not yet.

Instead, she lifted her chin. “Funny. I don’t remember you ever taking me seriously back then.”

His brows lifted slightly. “I didn’t?”

“You were always surrounded by people, always the center of attention.” Her tone was steady, but her heart raced. “Some of us stayed invisible.”

Adrian’s smile faded. He studied her for a moment, and in his eyes she saw something different—something quieter. “If I missed seeing you then… that was my loss.”

Cordelia blinked, thrown off balance. For a heartbeat, it felt as though he was peering through her defenses, brushing dangerously close to the truth.

She stabbed another bite of risotto, retreating into sarcasm. “Well, maybe architecture suits you. You’re very good at building things… and tearing them down.”

Adrian didn’t flinch. He only smiled faintly, almost ruefully, as though he understood more than she wanted him to.

The conversation drifted to safer ground after that—books they’d read, cities they hoped to visit, the absurdities of extended families. Cordelia kept her laughter measured, her comments clever, but beneath it all was a current she couldn’t control. He wasn’t the boy she remembered. His arrogance was tempered now, replaced with warmth that unsettled her more than cruelty ever had.

When the bill came, Adrian reached for it without hesitation. Cordelia protested automatically, but he waved her off.

“Consider it a truce,” he said with a grin. “One dinner on me, no debates about fairness.”

She rolled her eyes but let him have his way. Outside, the night air was cool, the city lights painting the pavement in soft gold. Cordelia hugged her shawl tighter around herself, already preparing the neat goodbye she’d deliver.

But Adrian walked beside her, hands in his pockets, not rushing, not filling the silence with chatter. Just… present.

At the corner where their paths would split, he paused. “It was good seeing you again, Cordelia. Really good.”

She met his eyes, her heart betraying her with an unsteady rhythm. For a moment, she saw not the careless boy of sixteen but the man standing before her—steady, genuine, impossibly disarming.

“Goodnight, Adrian,” she said softly, then turned away before the crack in her armor widened any further.

But as she walked home, the echo of his words followed her.

You’ve changed, Cordelia.

And she wondered, not for the first time, if change was enough to rewrite the past.

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