After their successful presentation, they were awarded a free weekend pass to a regional STEM conference in the next town over—complete with a hotel room, meal stipends, and the promise of socially awkward mingling with equally brilliant weirdos.

They were the only ones from their school selected.

Elie had stared at the congratulatory email for a full minute before the room assignment sank in.

“Looks like we’re stuck together again,” Calen said, casually glancing over his shoulder, his screen already open to the event itinerary.

She scrolled past the workshop schedules and froze when she saw it.

Room: Suite 1407. Occupants: Eliana Soren, Calen Reed.

Elie blinked hard. “We’re sharing a suite?”

Calen shrugged. “It says two beds.”

“Still. A suite.”

He gave her a look—half amused, half unreadable. “You’ll survive.”

Easy for him to say. He was always calm. Like he’d been born already knowing how to handle weird situations without combusting.

She, on the other hand, was about five seconds away from Googling “is it illegal to panic in public.”

Seriously. Who thought it was a good idea to put two emotionally-repressed, teenage introverts in the same room?

Elie snuck a glance at Calen, who was now typing something on his phone, completely unfazed.

It’s not like we’re emotionally inclined to do anything, she reasoned. We’re two awkward puzzle pieces in a very confusing box. It’s fine. Probably.

Still, when she closed her laptop, she couldn’t help the way her heart had decided to start skipping like a broken metronome.

The hotel room smelled like lemon-scented ambition and carpet cleaner. Elie set her bag down and walked straight to the desk—where she pulled out her sketchpad, intending to scribble ideas while Calen connected their devices to the TV for the demo panel tomorrow.

Except—she left it open. Forgot about it.

When Calen turned around, she was brushing her teeth in the bathroom, and there it was: a page full of doodles of cats in space helmets, a chubby robot named “Sir Floof,” and an embarrassingly detailed tea party scene featuring the Meowtrix sipping boba.

He smiled.

Not the amused kind. The genuinely soft kind.

When Elie came out, he casually asked, “So… Sir Floof?”

“I saw brilliance,” he said, pretending to be serious, lips twitching with barely concealed amusement. “Also, Meowtrix with boba? That’s lore now.”

Her face flushed instantly, heat rushing to her cheeks. She ducked her head, brushing imaginary dust off her hoodie string. “It’s just a thing I do when I can’t think. Helps me process.”

Calen tilted his head slightly, watching her. “It’s cute,” he said before his brain could hit the brakes.

Elie blinked. Her fingers stilled. That word—cute—landed somewhere unexpected, soft but powerful, like a pebble in still water.

“You think I’m cute?” she asked—tone light, but eyes sharp—trying to sound casual and completely failing.
She bit the inside of her cheek. He probably saw how my eyes lit up. So stupid, Elie, she scolded herself.

Calen hesitated. “No,” he said at first, and her heart dropped. He cleared his throat, shifting slightly, and for a moment, she thought she’d misread everything.

But then he added, softer this time, almost like it cost him something to say it:
“I think the things you make are cute. You… you’re something else.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was warm. Weighted. A stillness that buzzed underneath with potential energy.

Later that night, long after lights out, Elie lay in bed staring at the ceiling. The soft hum of the air conditioner filled the silence, broken only by the occasional creak of settling walls. Across the room, Calen’s silhouette was just barely visible—still, calm, like he belonged in the dark.

But her thoughts were anything but still.

They raced, overlapping and tangling in anxious loops. Everything's changing. Fast. Too fast. She turned slightly, hoping the movement would quiet her mind. It didn’t.

“Do you think we’re weird?” she whispered, the words falling out before she could second-guess them.

There was a pause. Then, with dry humor, “Statistically, yes.”

She laughed, barely audible. A puff of breath. “I mean… together. Us. Do we make sense?”

Calen shifted, and the bedsprings creaked. For a moment, she thought he might fall asleep without answering. But then, his voice came, low and steady:

“Not to everyone,” he said. “But we’re not for everyone.”

A long beat passed. Elie’s chest softened. Her mind, for the first time that evening, slowed.

And somehow, that was enough.

The conference had been loud. Too many voices, too much networking, too many people pretending they weren’t exhausted from all the pretending.

Elie had just ducked into the hotel lobby's café for some solitude when she heard someone call her name. A name only a few people still used.

“Eliana?”

She turned. Her spine went stiff.

It was Anya, her old teammate from a science camp she didn’t talk about. The camp where she’d been the weird, overthinking kid who never quite fit. Where her ideas had been labeled “too much,” her silences “too cold,” and her awkward laughter “insincere.”

Anya smiled with practiced sweetness. “Didn’t think I’d see you here. Still doing your… robot thing?”

“Yeah,” Elie said, suddenly aware of every insecurity stitched into her skin.

“And you brought someone?” Anya glanced toward the café’s glass wall—where Calen stood, watching.

Elie didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

“Cute,” Anya said, as if that somehow explained something. “Good to know you found someone who doesn’t mind the quiet.”

She walked away like she’d never held a scalpel to Elie’s self-worth.

Elie just stood there, frozen, her thoughts spiralling.
All the memories she thought she had buried came rushing back—sharp, vivid, and unwelcome. Of all people, why did it have to be Anya? The very person tied to a part of her past she had tried so hard to forget. A part of her that still stung in the quiet moments.

Her chest tightened, the air around her suddenly too loud, too bright.

She was pulled from her thoughts by the soft touch of a hand on her back—a gentle, grounding gesture.

“You okay?” Calen asked, his voice low.

“Sort of,” she muttered, barely looking up. Then, without another word, she turned and began walking toward the café, her footsteps heavy, as if each one was trying to outrun the past.

Back in their room, the storm hit.

Winds howled. Rain slammed against the windows like it had a point to prove. The power flickered and died, taking the Wi-Fi and the conference livestream with it. Leaving the two of them alone, again.

But the silence never felt heavy when Calen was around. In fact, he brought a kind of calm to her loud, restless mind—like still water settling over chaos.

“Guess we’re off-grid,” Calen said, lighting the emergency lamp.

Elie was silent.

He glanced up. “You okay?”

“Do you think I’m too… hard to be around?” she asked suddenly. “Like… too much and too closed off at the same time?”

He looked at her for a long, quiet moment. Then sat on the edge of her bed.

“I think you feel everything in high-definition,” he said. “And you’ve spent so long hiding it that now people only see the noise, not the signal.”

Elie didn’t reply.

So he added, “I like your noise.”

That made her laugh—a choked, half-real, Elie kind of laugh.

“You make it sound poetic.”

“It is,” he said. “You are.”

Lightning flashed. The room glowed for a breath. And Elie saw the truth in his eyes before the dark took it back.

She lay down, facing the ceiling.

After a pause, she whispered, “You ever wish you could just—turn your brain off and feel something without dissecting it?”

“All the time,” Calen replied. “But I also think… when it does happen, it hits harder. Stays longer.”

She turned toward him.

And for the first time, neither of them reached for logic.

They just listened to the storm. And let the silence between them fill in the rest.