Malik turns to me, eyes bright. “So, rumor is you’re the brains of this operation. You cool with being the poster child for campus romance, or should we let the meme die?”
I blink. “Can I vote for the meme dying?”
He laughs, clapping me on the shoulder. “Too late, man. You’re trending.”
The other guy leans in, lowering his voice. “We saw the video,” he says. “You and Aaron at the coffee shop. It’s kind of adorable.”
My face goes hot. “There’s a video?”
Malik nods, solemn. “Everything’s a video. You just gotta assume.”
I sink a little lower in my seat, wishing I could dissolve.
Aaron sees the look and nudges my foot under the table. It’s a small thing, but it grounds me. He grins, then looks athis friends. “You guys are being weird,” he says. “Let us eat in peace.”
“Fine, fine,” Malik says, but he winks at me as he says it.
For the next ten minutes, the conversation is all rapid-fire jokes and cafeteria gossip. I keep expecting the other shoe to drop, but it never does. Instead, the group settles into a rhythm, the old boundaries gone, replaced by something new.
At one point, Aaron’s hand brushes mine under the table. The touch is fleeting—a single knuckle, a flick of warmth—but it sends a line of heat up my arm.
I glance at him, and he’s already looking, eyebrows raised, like he’s daring me to pull away.
I don’t.
The rest of lunch blurs past. When it’s time to go, Aaron lingers, letting the others file out first.
He looks at me, serious again. “You good?”
I nod. “Yeah. I think I am.”
He smiles, then stands, shouldering his backpack. “See you in lab?”
“Yeah,” I say, voice steadier now.
As he walks away, I feel the ghost of his touch still humming in my bones.
My phone buzzes one last time.
SARA:Proud of you.
—ΠΩ—
Aaron’s apartment is exactly like I imagined—if I had imagined it as a physics experiment designed to isolate the essence of him—and nothing like the dorms. The entryway is stacked with muddy sneakers, duffel bags, and a collapsed umbrella leaking rainwater onto a sacrificial towel. A dry-erase calendar near the door has every day filled with either a gymsession or a group study, most of them written in different colors, some in someone else’s handwriting. The walls are hung with a random but confident mix: a framed poster from the World Series (not this century), a black-and-white print of Neil deGrasse Tyson, a hand-drawn anatomy diagram with key muscles shaded in neon highlighter.
The soft lighting from the single lamp left on in the small living room paints every surface with a shade of honey. I drop my backpack just inside the door, feeling like an alien who might contaminate the sample.
Aaron leads the way down the narrow hall, passing the kitchen (more empty Gatorade bottles than actual food), then into his bedroom.
His room is smaller than I expected. There’s a full-sized bed, barely made, with a gray comforter and a single pillow. Two bookcases flank the window—one for textbooks and binders, one for trophies and athletic detritus. A pair of dumbbells live under the desk, beside a milk crate filled with mystery novels. I notice a mini-chemistry set on the dresser, the kind you buy for twelve-year-olds with a death wish.
Aaron clears his throat, then sits on the bed, patting the spot next to him. “I, uh, didn’t know if you’d want to come over,” he says, and the words come out softer than usual.
He trails off, and I realize he’s just as nervous as I am.
I sit, careful to keep a full backpack’s width between us. My hands are clammy. I wipe them on my jeans, hoping he doesn’t notice.
Aaron leans back, palms flat on the comforter, and watches me. The overhead lamp catches his profile—jawline sharp, neck still flushed from the walk up the stairs, a constellation of freckles I’ve never seen before scattered over his left cheekbone.
