He found her after school, sitting alone near the front gates, waiting for something — or maybe nothing, maybe just sitting there because she hadn't quite worked up the will to walk home yet either.
She saw him coming and didn't look away, which he took as a good sign, though her expression stayed carefully unreadable as he approached.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey."
Neither of them said anything for a second. The silence wasn't comfortable, not like their usual silences, but it wasn't hostile either — just uncertain, waiting to see which direction the conversation would go.
"I'm sorry," Loid said, before he could lose his nerve. "For what I said. It wasn't fair, and it wasn't even true, and I've been sitting with it for two days feeling like an idiot."
Charlotte studied him for a moment. "Why did you say it, then?"
This was the part he'd rehearsed on the walk over, and it still came out harder than he'd planned, the words sticking a little on the way out. "I was jealous. Of Ethan. I know that's stupid, I know he hasn't done anything wrong, I know you can be friends with whoever you want — I just. I didn't like watching someone else make you laugh like that. And instead of just saying that, I said something cruel instead, because apparently that's easier for me than being honest."
Charlotte's eyebrows lifted, surprise flickering across her face, quickly followed by something softer.
"You were jealous," she repeated, like she was testing the shape of the words.
"Yeah."
"Of Ethan."
"Yeah. I know it's ridiculous."
"I didn't say it was ridiculous." She looked down at her hands for a moment, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I think I already knew that, actually. I just didn't want to say it out loud, in case I was wrong."
"You weren't wrong."
"I guess not."
They stood there a moment, something easing between them, the tension of the past two days finally starting to loosen its grip. It wasn't fixed completely — Loid could feel that, some careful distance still there, something neither of them was quite ready to close yet — but it was better. Lighter.
"I didn't understand why, at first," Loid admitted. "The jealousy. I kept telling myself it didn't make sense, that we're just friends, that I had no reason to feel like that."
Charlotte was quiet for a moment, considering something.
"I think I did understand," she said finally, quiet, almost careful about it. "Or — I think I've been trying not to think about it too hard, for a while now."
Loid looked at her, and there was a question sitting right there, obvious and enormous and entirely unspoken, hovering in the space between them. Neither of them reached for it. It felt too big for a conversation that had started as an apology, too big for the front gates of a school with students still filtering past them on their way home.
"So we're okay?" Loid asked instead, smaller, safer.
"We're okay," Charlotte said, and something in her voice made it clear she meant it. "Just — talk to me next time. Instead of getting weird and quiet."
"I'll try."
"Try harder than that."
"I said I'll try. I didn't say I'd be good at it."
That, at least, got a real laugh out of her, and something in Loid's chest loosened at the sound of it, the tight, anxious knot he'd been carrying around since Friday finally starting to ease. It occurred to him that he'd missed the sound of her laugh more than he'd been willing to admit over the past two days — missed a lot of things about her, honestly, in a way that made the whole jealousy business over Ethan feel a little clearer in hindsight, a little more inevitable.
"For what it's worth," Charlotte added, quieter now, "I missed talking to you. The last two days were kind of miserable."
"Yeah," Loid admitted. "Same."
He managed a small laugh, and she smiled back, and the walk home that followed felt almost normal again — almost, except for the thing neither of them had said, sitting there quietly between them the whole way, patient, unspoken, waiting for whenever they were finally brave enough to reach for it.
Neither of them reached for it that day. But it felt closer than it had before. Close enough that Loid found himself thinking about it long after he'd said goodnight, lying awake turning the whole conversation over, wondering how much longer either of them could keep not saying it before it said itself.
Charlotte, on her side of things, wasn't sleeping much better. She kept replaying the moment at the gates — the way Loid's voice had cracked slightly on the word "jealous," like it had cost him something just to say it out loud. She'd known plenty of people who could apologize smoothly, easily, the kind of apology that came out rehearsed and a little hollow. Loid's hadn't been like that at all. It had been clumsy and a little too honest, and something about the clumsiness had meant more to her than any polished version could have.
She thought, too, about what she'd almost said back — that she thought she understood the jealousy, that she'd been trying not to think too hard about her own reasons for understanding it. She was glad, in a way, that she hadn't finished the thought out loud. It felt like something that deserved better timing than a rushed conversation by the front gates with half the school still filing past.
But it also felt, increasingly, like something that couldn't stay unsaid forever. She could feel it building the same way Loid could — quietly, steadily, in every ordinary moment they spent together, gathering weight until eventually, she suspected, it would simply become too heavy for either of them to keep carrying around unspoken.
She didn't know when that moment would come. She just had the growing, nervous sense that it wasn't as far off as it used to feel.