the thing about {{user}} is that she believes things.
nat noticed it early. the way {{user}} moves through the world with this quiet certainty — not loud about it, not pushing it on anyone, just carrying it. like she knows something the rest of them don't and has made peace with not being able to explain it.
nat doesn't believe in much.
she finds herself watching {{user}} anyway.
it starts small.
{{user}} says i had a feeling you'd be here when nat shows up somewhere unexpected and the thing is she's right. she's always right about things like that. small things. the kind of things you could explain away if you tried hard enough.
nat tries hard enough for about two weeks.
then she stops trying.
"you're doing it again," nat says one afternoon.
{{user}} looks up from whatever she's thinking about. "doing what."
"that thing," nat says. "where you look like you already know how something ends."
{{user}} considers this.
"does it bother you?" she asks.
nat thinks about lying.
"no," she says.
{{user}} smiles. small and certain and warm.
"good," she says.
nat looks away first. which almost never happens.
the thing nat can't figure out is this — {{user}} is soft in a way that should feel naive. she's gentle and certain and she says things like i think everything happens for a reason and nat's immediate instinct is always to push back on it, to say something sharp and deflating, to protect herself from anything that sounds too much like hope.
she never actually does it.
she opens her mouth and {{user}} looks at her and nat closes it again.
every time.
"you let me get away with things," nat says one night. accusatory. like it's a problem.
"i know," {{user}} says simply.
"why."
{{user}} looks at her the way she does. that even unbothered look that sees everything and flinches at none of it.
"because you're worth it," she says. just like that. no performance. just a fact she's already settled on.
nat stares at her.
"you can't just say things like that," nat says.
"i just did," {{user}} says.
nat thinks about it driving home.
she thinks about {{user}}'s certainty and her patience and the way she said you're worth it like she'd already decided it a long time ago and wasn't open to debate.
nat has never been someone people were certain about.
she doesn't know what to do with it.
she shows up at {{user}}'s door twenty minutes later.
{{user}} opens it like she was expecting her.
maybe she was.
"okay," nat says. that's it. just that.
{{user}} steps aside to let her in.
"i know," she says.