The Gap

She isn’t.

The diner is quieter now — Chloe’s set long finished, the camera crew gone, the neon lights doing most of the work. A few tables have cleared but most haven’t, and the ones that remain are loud in the comfortable, winding-down way of a night that has decided to extend itself without asking anyone’s permission.

I notice it before I understand it.

At the far end of the room, where the band equipment is still half-assembled and nobody official seems to be in charge of anything, Paula is sitting on a stool with a guitar across her lap. No announcement. No introduction. Just her, filling the gap the way water finds the lowest point of a room — without fuss, without fanfare, as if the alternative were simply inconceivable.

She isn’t performing. Or she is, but not like that. Her eyes are down, tracking her own left hand as it moves up the neck, and her right thumb brushes the strings with the patience of someone who has all the time she doesn’t technically have. The people nearest to her have gone quiet in that gradual, unself-conscious way — not because they decided to listen, but because the sound made the decision for them.

I stop just inside the doorway.

I don’t know how long I stand there. Long enough that Jude, somewhere behind me, says something I don’t catch and then doesn’t say it again.

She plays the same phrase twice — not because she got it wrong the first time, but because it was worth hearing again. Her chin tilts slightly, the way it does when she’s thinking through something she isn’t going to say out loud. The light above her is doing something I’d want to draw, if I could figure out what it is exactly — the way it catches the angle of her jaw, the shadow her lashes cast, the particular stillness of someone who has forgotten she's being watched.

I already know she sings. I already know she acts. I didn’t know about this.

I don’t know why this feels like something I should’ve been told.

She finishes the phrase a third time, softer, and sets the guitar back on its stand as simply as if she’d just returned a borrowed pen. She says something to the nearest band member — he nods — and then she’s making her way back towards our booth with the manuscript already half out of her bag, and I have approximately two seconds to look like I wasn’t just standing in a doorway.

“You’re back,” she says, retaking her seat.

“You play guitar.”

“Mm.” She flips to a marked page, uncapping her pen with her teeth.

“How long have you —”

“Enough to fill a fifteen-minute gap.” She draws a line through something, writes a note in the margin. “Did you eat?”

Which means she won’t be explaining it further, and I won’t be getting a number.

Jude slides into the booth beside me not long after, easy and unbothered, and the three of us exist in the same space for exactly one song’s worth of time. It’s not uncomfortable. It’s the particular non-awkwardness of people who have no unfinished business with each other, or who are at least very good at pretending. Jude orders coffee he doesn’t finish. Paula marks up two more pages. I eat the rest of the aprikosenkuchen that somehow made it back with him — I don’t ask — and watch the room thin out around us.

Then Jude checks the time and sets his cup down.

“The wrap’s moved to the hall on Encinas,” he says, already reaching for his jacket. “You two coming?”

“In a bit,” Paula says, without looking up.

Jude nods at me — see you there more than goodbye — and he’s gone, folded into the last cluster of people heading out the door before I fully register he’s left.

The diner settles into a different kind of quiet. Paula caps her pen and squares the pages into a neat stack, clips the folder shut, and slides it into her bag with the focused efficiency of someone closing a chapter on the day.

“Ready?” she asks, slinging the bag over her shoulder.

I look at the door Jude just walked through.

I look at her.

I look at the door again.

“I’ll catch up,” I say.

Paula holds the look for just a beat longer than necessary — not pushing, not asking — then nods once, the way she does when she’s filed something away for later rather than let it go.

“Don’t take too long. It gets cold between here and Encinas.”

And then she’s gone too, and the diner is just a diner again, and I have no very good reason to still be sitting here.

I stay for another few minutes anyway.

~

I shake my head and thank her before walking out — one of the girls near the entrance offers to call a ride over; I decline, because the walk will do me good, or at least that’s what I tell myself. The streets between here and Encinas are the kind of narrow-but-lit that feel safe and slightly melancholy at the same time, like corridors in a place you’re about to leave.

As I make my way past the buffet hall, I spot Jude already flirting with someone else. I try to ignore the sting of jealousy and wait for the person to go to the restroom before approaching him.

“What are you doing?” I keep my voice level.

Jude raises an eyebrow. “What does it look like?”

“You know what I mean. Is this how you treat your soulmate? By flirting with other people?”

Jude sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Bea, I’m not breaking any laws. Besides, I think I deserve to have a little fun before I get obliterated out of existence.”

“You can’t just use people like that. What if your soulmate is out there, looking for you?”

Jude just smirks. “Good luck to them.”

“You sound just like her.”

“Except Paula can be saved and Jude can’t.”

I don’t have an answer for that. He doesn’t seem to want one. He just looks at me, easy as anything, and I stand there for a second holding the weight of what he just said like something I picked up without meaning to and now can’t put down. He asked me to save her and didn’t stay long enough to tell me the whole story. I think about that more than I’d like.

Before I can say anything else, the other guy comes back, and I make my way out of the buffet hall.

I head for the exit. Slowly. The kind of slowly where you are technically moving but no one would call it a pace. I keep my eyes on the curtains and try to look like someone who always walks this close to the wall.

Please don’t see me, please don’t see me, I chant silently, but of course, he does. His voice cuts through the din of the banquet — a low rumble that makes me flinch.

I slow — a reluctant acknowledgement of his presence. Stopping altogether feels like defeat, but I can’t bring myself to ignore him.

The man reaches me with a curious expression on his face.

“Hey, I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Rafael,” he says, extending a hand.

I take it. His grip is warm and unhurried, the kind that doesn’t rush you into letting go. “I’m Bea.”

Something about him is immediately disarming — not in the way Jude is, all bright eyes and easy charm, but quieter than that. Like he’s been paying attention to a conversation you didn’t know you were having.

“Is everything okay?” he asks, reading me the way people usually don’t bother to.

I take a breath. “I just wanted to warn you about Jude,” I say, dropping my voice. “He can be, um …”

Rafael nods before I finish, and something in his expression says he’s already ahead of me. “I know. But honestly? I’m not too worried.” He glances back at the room with a small, unbothered smile. “I’m just enjoying what we have right now.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You’re not afraid he’ll hurt you?”

“I can handle myself.” The smile stays, easy and certain without being smug. “And sometimes you have to let things be what they are before you decide what they’re not.”

I don’t entirely agree, but I can’t argue with it either. “Well. Just be careful.”

“I will,” he says, and somehow I believe him.

He heads back into the crowd, and I watch him go — still carrying that inexplicable sense that something bad is coming, and still unable to do anything about it.

Fingers crossed for that spark, I think, though I’m not sure which of us I mean it for.