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Chidi flicked his eyes down to his watch. ARGHHHHH when was Eleanor going to get here? She was late again, and if she didn’t hurry up, Chris was going to walk in on their lesson. Getting caught yet another time was the last thing Chidi wanted for two very simple reasons:
1) Her soulmate would grow suspicious after seeing them at the house again. Like all the neighborhood residents, Chris knew Eleanor and Chidi were best friends, that they shared frozen yogurt over orange spoons and playful bickering, but he knew nothing of Eleanor’s situation, and Chidi wanted to keep it that way. There had been no incidents since the sinkhole, and Eleanor had fully dedicated herself to becoming a better person in the past two months. She let people cut in front of her at the store, bit her tongue when Tahani bragged about her trips to Milan, and even helped clean the neighborhood every Sunday with Antonio and Gunnar. Each morning, she met Chidi in the town square at 7 AM, and they sat in comfortable silence while Chidi savored his coffee and Eleanor reviewed the reading from the night before. She chewed the end of her pen as she flipped page by page, occasionally peppering Chidi with questions he answered at ease. He would never forgive himself if Chris figured out what was happening, reported her to Michael, and got her sent to the Bad Place. After working so hard, Eleanor didn’t deserve eternal damnation, and he couldn’t imagine losing her and returning to the mornings of drinking coffee alone in his apartment.
2) If they got caught again, Chidi would have to do the thing was worst at: lie. Unlike Eleanor, he didn’t have the stomach for dishonesty, and truthfully, he wasn’t sure if he could fumble through another lie about his visits. The other day, when Chris had arrived early from the gym, Chidi had managed to scoff, “Oh, you have nothing to worry about! We’re just friends!” to distract from Eleanor while she stashed her books under the coffee table. Fortunately, Chris had bought his thoughtless explanation, nodding and pecking Eleanor on the cheek, but Chidi’s own words came back to haunt him. He tossed and turned restlessly at night, cursing himself for spurting such a blatant lie. He thought about how his and Eleanor’s fingers brushed so tenderly, how they exchanged soft smiles, how their eyes always seemed to meet and their gazes always seemed to linger. Of course they weren’t just friends, he saw her as so much more than th-
“Hey, Professor Stomachache?” Eleanor’s firm tap brought him back to Earth. She held out a frozen yogurt cup for him, and briefly, the buzzing in Chidi’s head hushed as he fell across her eyes. “You alright there, bud? I got you something on my way back. New book flavor.”
Chidi exhaled, accepting the cup and gulping down a cold spoonful. “Thanks, Eleanor.” He opened his mouth to chide her for being so late, but the shadows and angles on her face stopped him. Something about her was new… why were her collarbones exposed, and why was her neck so long and bare? I mean, not that Chidi noticed her like that or anything but… Oh! Her hair was different! She got a haircut!
“Your hair looks nice,” He blurted. Oh god, his face was flushing. Crush Chidi was coming out again…
“Huh?” Eleanor’s eyebrows folded in confusion.
“You got a haircut, right?” Nervous sweat drenched Chidi’s palms. He quickly wiped it on his pants while rambling on like an idiot: “It looks nice. It frames your face in a very nice way! And it’s very, um symmetrical.” Oh god, he needed to stop, he needed to stop now… “Not that your hair wasn’t symmetrical before!” He cried. Nope, guess he wasn’t stopping anytime soon! “It’s just, you are a very symmetrical person, and your last haircut wasn’t as symmetrical, but this haircut is um… as symmetrical as you are…” His mind ran dry as his voice trailed off. Suddenly, his idiocy smacked him in the head like an existential crisis. Symmetrical person? Symmetrical haircut? Oh no, what was he thinking? Now he was definitely getting a stomachache… Eleanor probably thought he was stupid as fo-
“Man, Chidi, that’s a lot of words for saying you liked someone’s haircut.” She accompanied her teasing with a smile, making Chidi relax and laugh in response. She thought he was funny, not an idiot. Oh thank god…
“You know I’m a man of many words!” He exclaimed. Was it just him or were her eyes shining at him more than usual? No, no, he was probably just seeing what he wanted to see. Still, he might as well try to crack a joke while she was smiling. “You’re lucky I didn’t write a 3600 paged thesis on your haircut.”
Chidi’s chest flooded with joy as Eleanor laughed at the crack. She was so cute when she was happy, and always being the less funny of the two, he loved when he was able to draw a laugh out of her. It was the least he could do since she had come and brightened his life, even if that meant she drove him crazy sometimes.
“You know, you’re onto something,” Eleanor waggled a finger. “Old Eleanor would’ve loved that! Why didn’t you mention that possibility when I was a selfish monster?”
Chidi laughed again, the stomach pain finally quelled from his amusement. He felt Eleanor study him as he dipped his head down to laugh, but her eyes were averted away when he glanced back up, her cheeks red from either blushing or burns from the sun. Why was she looking away?
“Now that we have our jokes out of the way,” He transitioned, trying to catch her attention again with soft eyes. “Are you ready to discuss Death by Todd May?”
“Yeah!” She bobbed her head. Their knees touched as she plopped next to him and crossed her legs, Chidi trying not to delight from the warmth of her skin against his. “I mean, what is the deal with this dude? I mean, honestly!”
Chidi smiled as she prepared to rant, memorizing the new shadows on her chin as she spoke. He really did like her with her new haircut- and of course, without it, too.