Sometimes, he falls and she doesn't.

"You guys ready for our lesson?" Chidi asked eagerly as he turned from the chalkboard towards his "students". "We're talking David Hume today, bundle theory of the self, baby!"

Tahani and Jianyu looked…..well, much less excited than he was, to be honest, but Chidi wasn't too concerned. After all, they had kept coming back for his ethics lectures, so they must like something about them.

It had been a scary moment when Tahani had burst into the house mid lecture - a subdued Jianyu following in her wake - to invite them over for tea. He couldn't speak for Eleanor, but he had definitely been somewhere between choosing a froyo flavor and naming his childhood dog on the panic scale. All the secrecy, all the long hours and hard work they had put into Eleanor's "good person" lessons, and now it was all going to blow up in their faces and he was going to be sent to the Bad Place for helping an impostor…

But Tahani had simply stood for a moment, taking everything in, before bouncing up onto the balls of her feet excitedly. "Oh how delightful! Chidi, you're spreading your ethical knowledge and showing Eleanor what it is you did whilst on Earth! That is just lovely, what a kind thing to do. You simply must allow Jianyu and I to partake as well; it would be ever so delightful to study under an expert such as yourself, wouldn't it Jianyu?"

Jianyu, for his part, had only nodded and slightly bowed, so Chidi couldn't be sure if he was totally on board. But Tahini could be very persuasive when she wanted to be, and now three weeks later, here they were. There was still a bit of tension, and Eleanor had to be on her best behavior now that the others were involved, but the excitement of having students again was enough to help Chidi ignore her complaints after the other neighbors had left. Speaking of Eleanor….

He eyed the blonde as she dropped the note she had been reading back onto the kitchen counter and made her way towards the group in the living room. "Sounds like a real banger," she began, joining him in front of the chalkboard, and he couldn't help but grin. The Eleanor he had met nearly 6 weeks ago would never have said even one good thing about his lectures, even sarcastically.

The first few interactions and lessons they had shared had been…interesting to say the least. (Infuriating, if he was being honest). They butt heads over nearly everything, and there had been several points at which he questioned why he even bothered. But eventually she had opened up and told him the truth - that she thought she had been sent to the Good Place as a mistake - and since then things between them had gotten better and better, to the point that he would probably call her his closest friend here.

"But you guys gotta scram. My soulmate has some sort of surprise planned for me and he seems very excited about it". Right. Chidi felt himself freeze up, the chalk he had been tossing from hand to hand suddenly grasped in the fist he was trying very hard not to make. As Eleanor was his friend, the fact that he found himself again desperately pushing away the hot, sickly feeling that bubbled up in him every time she mentioned her "soulmate" was more than a little concerning.

He exhaled deeply and composed his face into a neutral expression, as Tahani's voice, heavy with implication, reached his ears. "Well you two are certainly getting along very well these days".

"Yeah," Eleanor replied, and Chidi felt his heart sink like a stone as she went on "I'm actually kind of into Sebastian lately. I mean, he's a little hokey, but he's growing on me a little bit". Chidi let his head drop, his hand unconsciously tightening around the chalk as he felt a grimace stretch across his face.

This was how it was supposed to be, he argued to himself as the foursome went about tidying up their notes and stashing the chalkboard back in its hiding place. Everyone had their soulmate; that's how the system worked. He should be happy that Eleanor was starting to feel something towards hers. Although, a small voice in the back of his mind piped in, if Eleanor wasn't supposed to even be in the Good Place, there's no reason her "soulmate" actually was right for her.

But that didn't mean he was, by any means. He had his own soulmate to think about, after all. And while yes, they were friends, they were still basically polar opposites. AND there were still so many things she did that irritated him to no end. The way she would doodle in the margins of his textbooks whenever she was bored during lectures. The way she always insisted he give her the first bite of his frozen yogurt. The way she refused to back down whenever they had a moral debate, invading his personal space even more than she usually did, biting her lip while she scrambled for a rebuttal….. no, no, it would never work between them. He knew that.

So why wouldn't his heart stop racing at the thought of it?

He almost made it back to the safety of his home without further incident, but Eleanor caught him on the way out the door with a hand on his arm. "Hey," she began, smiling softly up at him, "I'm sorry about having to cancel class for the day. Maybe we can rain check; you could come by later?"

His gaze unconsciously flickered from her eyes to her mouth while he considered, and he saw with a great rush of heat that she was biting her lip. He forgot what he was about to say; he couldn't form words. He suddenly wanted to stay here forever; he wanted to be a thousand miles away; he didn't know what he wanted, and her hand was burning into his arm and he couldn't think…

And then his eyes met hers again and he saw the excited spark in them; noticed the slight grin she wore, and he realized that she was genuinely looking forward to whatever surprise Sebastian had planned. He took a deep breath in and lifted her hand off his arm, patting it in what he hoped seemed like a friendly gesture before letting it fall back to her side. "No, don't worry about it." he reassured her, each word feeling like it was causing him physical pain. "We'll catch up some other time, go have fun with your soulmate".

Her grin widened and she seemed to almost have a bounce in her step as she bade him goodbye and started walking back towards her bedroom. Chidi turned, walked out the door, and didn't stop until he had shut and leaned against the door of his own home. "This is the way it's supposed to work." he muttered, and he knew it was true. But even so, he couldn't stop himself from wondering how such a "good place" could make him feel so horrible.