The fluorescent lights in the high school library buzzed, tired and stubborn, like they'd seen better days. Dusk slipped in outside, painting the campus in deep blue shadows that stretched across the empty shelves. The desks sat in a loose half-circle—a mess left by the Student Council debate team, who'd just cleared out. Crumpled notecards, half-finished water bottles, and a prickly sense of frustration still hung in the air.
Ethan stood at the head of the library table, tapping a pencil against a stack of papers. He'd tossed his tweed jacket over his chair but left his tie loose—too late in the night to bother fixing it. He scanned the minutes from the meeting again, squinting at a note about someone interrupting with a "point of information." That one clearly bothered him.
Sarah stood across from him, leaning against the circulation desk with her arms folded tight. She eyed the whiteboard, its surface crowded with messy, color-coded notes and arguments all tangled up. Her glasses were sliding down her nose, and the harsh overhead lights picked out every silver strand in her dark hair. She let out a long, quiet breath—not quite a sigh, but tired enough that it seemed to fill the empty room.
"They're still treating the rebuttals like dramatic monologues," Ethan said, not looking up. "They need to understand the structure. Parliamentary debate isn't theater. It's about precision, adherence, discipline."
Sarah turned to him, her voice low but edged. "They'll lose on precision alone. Judges remember delivery. Passion. A well-placed metaphor or a rhetorical question that lands—those are what shift opinions. I've watched teams with weaker logic win because they made people feel."
Ethan looked up then, his green eyes calm, tired. "Feeling doesn't win debates governed by Robert's Rules. Emotion clouds argument. Logic wins. Consistency, proper citation, following procedure—these aren't boring details. They're armor."
"And you think dry, rigid form is engaging?" Sarah asked, pushing off the desk. "You're teaching them to debate robots. No one listens to someone who sounds like a parliamentary manual."
She stopped, shook her head, and said, "Ten years ago, you'd have made that kind of comment with a grin. I'd toss an eraser at you, you'd catch it, crack some terrible joke about points of order, and we'd wind up at that awful Thai place, fighting over Aristotle and Cicero while picking at greasy pad Thai."
Ethan closed the binder slowly. "And you'd quote Keats to justify emotional appeal," he said.
"And I'd pretend to disagree just to hear you go off on a tangent about tragic heroes. Then you'd roll your eyes, say something like 'You're insufferable,' and somehow, we'd end up drinking red wine that tasted like cough syrup and calling it 'character-building.'"
A silence settled between them, heavier than the stacks of legal pads on the table. The air smelled faintly of old paper and dust—a smell that had absorbed a decade of unspoken goodbyes.
"Now," Ethan said quietly, "we just argue about flowcharts."
Sarah looked away, toward the empty chairs where students had sat hours ago. "Now we just argue."
She grabbed her tote bag and tucked her lesson planner inside. "They need both," she said, her voice gentle. "Structure and soul. If you only teach them the steps, sure, they'll follow the rules, but the audience won't care. And if I only show them how to sound impressive, they'll fall apart the moment someone pushes back."
Ethan nodded, once. "Agreed. I'll work on their time limits and point structure tomorrow. You can take the afternoon session." He hesitated. "Maybe we can... script a joint drill. Blend the approaches."
"Maybe," Sarah said, not meeting his eyes. She adjusted the strap of her bag. "I'll send you something over the weekend."
He nodded again, already turning back to his notes, the pencil moving again across the page.
Sarah lingered a moment, watching him—the tightness in his shoulders, the way he still tucked a pen behind his ear like he used to—but there was no warmth in the gesture now, no shared history sparking in the quiet.
The romance hadn't burned out with a flame. It had faded like old ink, word by word, until all that remained were sentences they both knew by heart but no longer believed.
She walked toward the exit, the automatic doors sighing open.
"Lock up when you leave?" she asked, not turning.
"I will," Ethan said.
The lights flickered once, then stayed on, illuminating two empty chairs side by side—close, but not touching.
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To be continued.