Jaden
The noise at Ace's family compound in Rosemere was a living thing. It pulsed from the open windows-the thump of speakers, the clink of bottles celebrating the long freedom after final exams, laughter layered over shouted conversations. Jaden Dion stood on the periphery of the back patio, a warm soda in his hand, feeling untethered.
It had been a year since secondary school ended for him, a year of waiting, of his name not appearing on the army list, a year of watching a planned future dissolve into static.
He was about to slip back inside, away from the buzzing cicadas and the easy familiarity of friends whose paths were already unfolding, when the side gate swung open.
And the noise, the heat, the vague sense of being left behind —it all dissolved.
She came in like a quiet shift in the atmosphere. A slender figure in a simple, sunflower-yellow dress that seemed to hold the last of the summer light. She wasn't looking at the party. Her gaze was on the dusty ground, a slight trown of concentration on her face as she untangled a pair of white earbuds, the cord knotted in her slender fingers.
Jaden stopped breathing.
It wasn't just that she was beautiful, though she was, in a way that felt like a physical ache. It was the utter completeness of her.
She was a self-contained universe, moving to a soundtrack only she could hear, perfectly oblivious to the gravitational pull she'd just exerted on his entire being.
"A man from first glance knows if a woman is to be his wife or not."
The phrase was something my grandfather used to say, a piece of old-world wisdom l'd never paid much mind to.
I'd heard it a dozen times, nodded politely, and forgotten it just as fast. Love wasn't a lightning strike. It was a slow burn. It was movies and pizza and figuring things out.
That's what l'd thought.
I was wrong.
I will marry this girl.
The thought didn't arrive. It simply was. An absolute, cellular certainty that bypassed his brain and took root in his bones. It was illogical, insane, and as undeniable as his own heartbeat.
"Halen! Over here, honey!"
Aunt Yana's call made her look up. The girl-halen-pulled out an earbud, and the smile she turned on her aunt was wide and warm, transforming her face.
Aunt yana I came to drop off the meat mommy said I should bring.
"You are a blessing. Come, say hello to everyone."
Halen's smile became polite, a gentle shield.
She allowed herself to be steered toward the patio. Her eyes, a cool, clear grey like woodsmoke, swept over the gathered cousins, uncles, friends. They passed over Jaden without a flicker of interest, without a pause. He might as well have been a piece of furniture.
"Good evening, everyone," she said, her voice soft but clear. A general, pleasant murmur.
And then she was gone, back through the gate with a final wave to her aunt, a stranger in a yellow dress who had just rewritten his life's purpose in under sixty seconds.
The world rushed back in, louder and more meaningless than before.
"Who," Jaden heard himself ask Ace later, his voice strangely rough, "was that?"
Ace followed his gaze to the now-empty gate and grinned. "Ah, that's Halen. My cousin. The family genius. Head always in the clouds or in a book. Why?"
Jaden didn't smile back. "I need to see her again."
Ace's grin faded, replaced by a look of brotherly concern. "Jaden, no. Not her."
"Why not?"
"Because halen... she's different. Her head is on straight. She's got a ten-year plan mapped out on her wall. She doesn't have time for... for whatever this is." Ace gestured vaguely at the party, at Jaden's own uncertain year. "Especially not for a guy whose plan just fell apart. You're my friend, but she's my blood. I won't set her up for a distraction."
"It wouldn't be a distraction," Jaden said, the certainty like iron in his gut.
He begged. He, who had swallowed his pride when the army list was published, found new pride to lay at his friend's feet.
He begged Ace for her number, for an introduction, for anything.
Ace refused, firm and final. "My answer is no, J. She deserves a clear path. Not a guy who's figuring it out."
Jaden's every instinct screamed. I just figured it out. It's her. But he saw the protective wall in Ace's eyes.
So he did the only thing he could. He waited. He became a ghost at the edges of her life. He haunted the community college library, the bus stop near her house, the grocery store where Aunt Yana shopped. He learned she liked the quiet corner by the periodicals, that she took the 4:15 pm bus, that she always bought two mangoes and a loaf of bread on Fridays.
Her love for books and horses which they both shared.
The number sat in Jaden's phone for three days. A live wire he was afraid to touch.
Ace had handed it over with a look of profound resignation. "Eight months, J. You wore me down. But she said friend. You hear me? She's fresh off a bad thing with her ex. She said she can't handle any drama, any romance, none of it. She said friend. So you call her as a friend, or you don't call her at all."
Jaden had just nodded, his throat too tight for words. Friend. It was a foothold. It was a chance. After eight months of being a ghost in her periphery, it was everything.
He waited until Thursday night. Late.
Because he remembered she closed her volunteer shift at the clinic at nine, took the bus home, and would be unwinding by now.
He didn't want to catch her in the rush of her day.
Sitting on the edge of his bed in his dark room, the glow of his phone screen the only light, he took a breath that did nothing to steady him and pressed call.
It rang. Once. Twice.
She won't answer. An unknown number.
Three times.
She's busy. She's—
"Hello?"
Her voice. Not the distant, polite murmur from the party, but clear and close in his ear. A little cautious, but present. Utterly, devastatingly real.
All the speeches he'd practiced evaporated.
The clever lines, the casual greetings.
Gone. All that was left was the stark, simple truth of how this had happened.
"Hey," he said, and his own voice sounded rough, unfamiliar. "My name is Jaden. I got your number from your cousin."
And that was the beginning of the first time.
The whirlwind. The all-consuming love that made him believe he could build empires for her. The love that crashed against the hard shores of reality, of her relentless focus, of his own desperate need to become someone worthy.
The love that ended with her walking away, and him letting her go, because the one thing he knew, from that very first look at the gate, was that he would never stand in the way of what she wanted. Even if what she wanted, temporarily, was a world without him.
He had made a promise to himself that star-dusted night: Always.
And a man who knew he would marry a woman from a single glance is a man who knows how to wait.