A/N: I seem to be making the short chapter thing a habit, don't I? Well, it works, and anyway, I don't think I could have made this chapter much longer without it becoming too repetitive. I intend to be updating this at least weekly from now on, if not more often, but we all know how intentions are, so at this point, it's more like I hope to be updating that often. In the meantime, you can always check out the other two fics I've written in the Young Wizards universe.
Thanks to all who've stuck with me! I appreciate every one of your reviews. If you're reading and haven't reviewed, I'd really love you to tell me what you think, even if it's just a few words.
Chapter 5: Comfortably Confused
Sighing, Nita sank into a chair at one of the tables outside a small café in the terminal. She and Kit had made their way to the gate that Rhiow and company were supposed to be fixing, and Nita had been prepared to spend a long time lingering near track three, pretending to wait for a train and warning traveling wizards to use a different worldgate.
Kit, however, had had other plans. When they'd arrived at the gate, he'd opened his manual and showed her a spell he'd worked up that would warn any wizard passing closer than a certain number of feet to the worldgate to use a different gate for the next few hours. Nita had been impressed by the economy of the spell; it looked like it would have taken ages to write. Acting as a lookout, she had listened to Kit recite the spell, reveling in the sound of his voice speaking the Speech with his familiar Spanish accent. In the past, listening to Kit's voice speaking the words of a spell had been a comfort, reminding Nita of Kit's dependability, even in the worst of the situations they had seen. But now, the listening had another dimension entirely, and Nita had found herself savoring every word he had said, sorry when the spell finished.
Then, Nita had felt completely normal. But now, sitting here and waiting for Rhiow and the rest to finish working on the gate and return, she wondered about her sudden change of emotions. Hadn't it been just yesterday that she had argued with Dairine, insisting that she and kit were just friends? Yet Nita was sure that she felt differently today than she had yesterday.
"Nita? Hello? Earth to Neets!"
Nita looked up, realizing that Kit had been trying to get her attention, while at the same time furiously fighting off a blush. Had it always sounded so sweet when Kit called her "Neets?"
Shaking her head, as if that would rid it of the thoughts that kept falling through it, she said, "Sorry, just thinking."
"S'okay," Kit said. "I just wanted to know if you wanted anything," he gestured to the café. "I'm going to get a drink."
"No, I'm all right, thanks," she said, still partially lost in her thoughts. Kit got in line to order, and Nita sank back into her musings.
How can this be happening to me? Nita thought, trying to analyze the situation. She was not the type of person to change her mind about something overnight—especially not something as large as her feelings about Kit. But she could not deny that a change of feelings had occurred. She was definitely less comfortable around Kit today than she normally was, worrying about what she said, how she looked.
Thinking of looks, why couldn't I have thrown on something nicer to wear? Nita immediately clamped down on this thought, frustrated. It was thoughts like this that kept catching her off-guard and making her think that Dairine might have been right all along.
I must really be going crazy, Nita thought with a laugh. I actually contemplated admitting to Dairine that she was right and I was wrong.
The thing that bothered Nita the most about her transformed emotions was that she didn't see any way that they could be the fault of anyone but herself.
Kit sat down holding a large iced coffee drink, and Nita immediately severed her previous line of thought. There was no use in pondering over the situation she was in. It had become apparent that she wasn't going to get out of it today, but tomorrow might be different again. She would just live today as she was.
And hope that tomorrow would be different, so that Nita would not have more of a reason to seriously doubt her sanity.
Not wanting to be caught in her thoughts again, Nita fished around for a subject to talk about. "That was a really nice spell back there," she told Kit. "When did you have the time to write that one out?"
Across the table, Kit took a slurp of his coffee. Smiling, he said, "When I was supposed to be listening to my teacher's lecture in Biology."
Nita stared at him, amazed and, at the same time, possessively proud. She pushed the second reaction to the back of her mind with some effort, then replied, "You're getting good! Writing that from scratch would have taken me an hour, easy."
"Which is about how long the lecture lasted for," Kit said. "I think that that is the more amazing feat: an hour of discussing the immune system." He shuddered, as if the memory was frightening.
Nita smiled. She enjoyed Biology, a fact that Kit took as proof of her insanity. He teased her about it at every chance he got.
But Nita knew how to get him back. "Would you rather have been listening to an hour-long lecture on molecular structure?" she asked, referring to Kit's surety that he would enjoy Chemistry next year much more than Biology this year.
Kit gave her a look that plainly said he'd rather listen to two hours on molecular structure than bother with Biology again. "Three more months," he muttered under his breath, "just three more months and I'm free!"
Nita chuckled at the animosity in Kit's voice. After the events of today, this ordinary conversation felt anticlimactic in the extreme. Maybe she was just imagining things.
Like how good-looking Kit was. She was obviously imagining that.
Apparently not, Nita thought, hoping desperately that Rhiow would return before she managed to make a fool of herself.