Poster

Dinner turns out to be a hearty meal, and Elise enjoys the grilled chicken and fries she ordered, laughing lightheartedly as she attempts not to overthink what just happened. Yet her mind inevitably drifts to it, and after a few iterations she concludes that it was probably just Aiden being friendly. That would be for the best, anyway.

Evening falls soon, and before she knows it they've left Brunswick and are back at Silverstone, with the Carter and Ashton siblings having retired to their respective lodgings. She's stepped out of her room into the hallway to grab a glass of water when she catches sight of Aiden in the room across the hall, door open.

"Elise? Can you help me for a moment?" he asks, motioning for her to join him.

Elise obliges and enters the room, where he's standing on his bed, struggling with the poster he got from Brunswick in the gift shop. An elaborate copy of an original manuscript of some piece written in the time period, it's quite large when unrolled, which explains why he's having difficulty putting it up.

"Is that straight?" he asks, holding up the corner that he's about to tape up.

"No, move it down a little."

He does.

"Too much."

He moves it back up. "There," he declares, sticking on the last piece of extra durable tape. "That good?"

Elise takes one glance at the awfully tilted poster. "You're hopeless," she says, laughing as she shakes her head. "Here, let me do it."

Aiden obliges and gets down from the bed as she climbs up and fixes the poster. "That should be good." Aiden nods approvingly, and smiles at her.

Elise doesn't know why, but it flusters her. She quickly looks away and starts stepping down from the bed when, moving too fast, she loses her balance, and is about to go careening into the desk and shuts her eyes bracing for the collision when—

"Woah, you okay there?" Aiden catches her arms before she falls down. Still, the impact has pushed him backward into the desk, and quite a few papers have fluttered down from it.

Elise nods. Even more flustered now, she says, "Sorry about that," gesturing at the mess on the ground, and bends down to pick up the papers, his drawings.

"No problem. So long as you didn't get hurt."

Elise nods again, and gathers up the sheets into a neat stack. She gets up to replace it on his desk, but a small Polaroid on the wooden surface catches her attention.

It's the same girl from the portrait he'd drawn. But something about it…the background — a beach — look familiar. And the details on the shirt that he'd left out of the drawing…she recognizes that shirt, it's from the physics competition she'd entered last year. Could it…

"Aiden?" Her voice is soft, which draws Aiden's attention more than anything else. He'd still been picking up some of the other items which had fallen in the incident. He gets up and walks toward the desk to see what she's looking at.

Oh, frick, Aiden realizes.

"Isn't this…the girl from your portrait?"

Pause. "Yeah."

"Is it…me?"