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Not-Tanya took him dancing after finals. She told him to wear his best tux and brought him to some fancy party with expensive champagne and a live orchestra. Matt didn’t question how she got them in, and Not-Tanya didn’t try to pretend she was an ordinary college girl from Indiana or Ohio or wherever it was she said she was from. It was just like when he was with Elektra, and at the same time nothing like that at all. For one thing, she had kept her promise not to disrupt his life until after his grades were in, for another this was clearly goodbye.
So Matt laughed and he kissed her, and she laughed and kissed him, and they pretended for just a moment that this was all there was.
They held hands walking back to school, arms swinging gently between them. Matt never did this with anyone else, Elektra always kept a foot of distance between them whenever they walked together, and his various other girlfriends were always guiding. It felt nice, to walk freely like this with no secrets and no distance between them.
She walked him all the way to his building, and they stood on the stairs to his dorm.
He wasn’t going to cry, he was an adult, he wasn’t.
Her heart beat slow, slow, slow and she was tense in a way he’d never felt her before. He wondered if she’s grieving them too.
“Did you get what you came for?” He asked.
“No,” she said, “But I got all the answers I could find here.”
He nodded. He wondered what she did come for, not his unusual talents, those had surprised her, and she was keeping them a secret for him.
“Am I crazy to trust you?” He asked her.
She shrugged.
“Certainly,” she said, “But less so than I am for keeping your trust.”
“Thank you,” he said.
It was maybe pushing it a little too far. She turned her face away from him, like she couldn’t bear to see him.
“So I guess it’s a love him and leave him sort of thing,” Matt said, offering her a small crooked smile, trying to make light of the heartbreak, hoping to get her to smile one last time, trying to say goodbye without saying it.
She leaned forward on her toes and kissed him lightly on the nose. He felt her smile against his skin.
“Yes,” she said, too seriously for the lightness of denial.
Yes, she was leaving him. Yes she loved him.
Matt swallowed the ache in his throat. She turned to go, the heat of her leaving him feeling colder than it should have. But she still held his hand a moment longer than was natural, let the touch stretch, neither of their fingers willing to let go.