Balancing her tray of food in one hand, Nya dug in her pocket for her phone with the other hand. She pulled the phone out and checked it again, finally finding that, yes, she did have some new messages.

Nya read through the new messages and immediately frowned. Even though she'd known there was a good chance at least one of her usual Wednesday lunch group wasn't going to be present today, she hadn't counted on absolutely all of them being absent. However, between two different classes going long and a project that was "way overdue to get at least a little bit of something done on it" in Jay's words, it looked like Nya was the only one who was getting lunch at that time. And she had been waiting, too, for a good fifteen minutes or more. After all that… Yeah, she'd need to sit down and eat pretty quickly so she could still make it to her next class reasonably on time.

Glancing around at the cafe's tables, Nya frowned again. The busy room had only a few seats left open, and of those open seats, the two closest of them were at a table with that absolute jerk Kalmaar. To get to any of the other seats, she'd have to go past his table too. For a moment, Nya considered just eating standing up.

Then, there! An open chair on the other side of the room.

Nya slid her phone into the space between her elbow and her torso, took a full two-handed hold on her tray, and beelined for the open seat. It sat at a two-person table, with the other of the two chairs already taken by someone, which wasn't really preferable, but with the amount of time Nya probably had left, she couldn't be too choosy.

"Is this seat taken?" Nya asked the person sitting in the occupied chair as she rounded the table toward the empty chair. "Would it-"

The person didn't look back at her, but he spoke clearly, cutting her off. "No, no, you're all right."

"Thanks," Nya said, and she plopped down in the empty chair, setting down her messenger bag beside her so she could place her tray and her phone on the small table, which she did.

That's when she got her first good look at the person opposite her: his almost-white blond hair, his tall and wiry frame, and his thoughtfully-serious good-looking face with those deep eyes that drew her right in and that might've even made her shiver if…

If she hadn't recognized him.

"Oh," Nya said, then, feeling foolish, "Hey. I don't think I got your name last time."

"Not exactly, I believe," the strange guy said, staring off in some vague direction over Nya's shoulder and a few degrees to the left.

Nya turned her head, but she didn't see anything important in the way the guy was staring, so she looked down at her tray instead, starting to take a few bites. Swallowing around her food and around the awkward silence over the table, Nya said, "So, I'm Nya."

"Ah," the guy said, like that made way too much sense to him, or like he already knew what she was going to say. "I know, I know. I understand."

Nya frowned. Why would he know her name? She didn't know his name, and she didn't think she'd told him when they'd met briefly before. Oh, that's why! "Lloyd must have told you who I was while you were talking when he moved in, huh?"

"I don't believe so," the guy said.

Glancing up at him, Nya saw that he was still staring vaguely away. She frowned deeper. "Have you two been talking since then, maybe? Did he tell you about me then?"

The guy's lips twitched into a half-smile and he huffed out an amused breath, but he said nothing.

Nya tried to let it go. Maybe Lloyd hadn't told the guy after all. Maybe the guy knew her from something else. She took another few bites, trying to calm and cheer herself. It wasn't really her business if Lloyd had been talking to this guy, except it kind of was, so she'd see if she could find out what was going on another way. "Well, I'm Nya, like I said. I don't know if he said anything, but I'm Lloyd's older sister, basically."

"I would not have thought so," the guy said, still doing that sideways half-smile. "I would have thought something entirely different, most likely."

"Like what?" Nya asked, stuffing another bite in, then it hit her. She choked on her food, and as soon as she swallowed, she stammered out, "Wait, like that I was his girlfriend? Oh, wow, gross!"

The guy had the nerve to huff out another amused breath at that, almost a laugh, and he said, "Really? Truly?"

"Yes, really and truly gross," Nya said. "He's-"

"I would not believe it," the guy said, interrupting her.

"Believe it," Nya said hotly, glaring down at her tray. "He's my little brother, pretty much! He's definitely-"

"Not a chance," the guy said. "Something else, most definitely."

Nya reared her head back, her eyes wide at that accusation, her mouth opening to give this guy a piece of her mind-

"All right, all right," the guy said, his head crooked down so he could speak better into the microphone of his headphones. "I will talk with you tonight. We can clear it up then. Yes. Yes, I agree."

Oh.

Oh, Nya had been even more foolish than she'd felt.

The guy hadn't been talking to her. He'd been on the phone with someone. He probably hadn't even noticed her at all.

Nya felt her cheeks warm. And here she was, getting so angry at someone who'd done basically nothing to her. Granted, she'd thought he was being kind of creepy and mean about her little brother and her, but she'd thought all wrong.

The guy picked his phone up off of the table from next to his tray, saying, "All right. I love you. Thank you. Have an excellent afternoon. Please remember I love you. Good-bye."

Nya watched him hit something on his phone screen and pull his headphones out of his ears. She coughed a little nervously.

The guy startled hard, gaze flying toward Nya's face then sliding down to his tray. "Ah! Oh. Well, greetings."

"Greetings," Nya repeated, feeling like a jerk and an idiot and a total mess. "Yeah. Hi. Sorry."

"Sorry," the guy repeated flatly, blinking down at his tray. "Sorry for-"

"Nothing. Sorry for nothing, really, it's not a big deal," Nya said quickly, shutting herself up by shoving another bite into her mouth.

"Oh," the guy said. He looked up a little, frowning at her.

Cheeks still warm, Nya looked down as the guy looked up. She clicked her phone's screen nervously. What she saw there sent a pulse of dismay through her. "Ugh!"

"Ugh," the guy repeated, still flatly, but Nya decided to take it as a question anyway.

"Ugh," Nya said definitively. She picked her phone up, holding the screen out to face the guy. "The time! My waiting must've taken longer than I thought. Forget lunch, I've really got to go!"

She scooped up her half-full tray, balanced her messenger bag strap on her shoulder, shoved her phone in her pocket, and rushed away.

It wasn't until she sat in her next class, trying to do a little better than just half-listen to the professor ramble, that Nya realized she hadn't really explained herself to the strange guy. He probably would be thinking of her as "the strange girl" now, Nya thought ruefully.

And he probably didn't even know her name.

And she definitely still didn't know his name.

AN: Sorry for the wait on this chapter, everybody! I hope it was worth it. Let me know what you thought!