“So, you’re in a mood.”She unzipped her coat.“Lay it on me.”
“Nothing to lay.”I flipped a quiz, red-penned a circled integral.“Roommate’s busy, radiator at equilibrium, calculus kids mostly remembered their limits.Banner day.”
She hummed.“Banner days don’t make you talk in bullet points.”
I kept pen moving.“Luke’s phone had a small meltdown.That’s all.”
“Define meltdown.”
“Trio of notifications, visible spike in heart rate, possible extra shoelace knot.”
“Academic?”
“Statistically probable.I am tutoring him later in financial accounting.”I dated the quiz margin, slid it aside.“Didn’t ask.”
“What do you know about financial accounting?”
“Nothing,” I admitted.“But math is math.I can follow a formula with the best of them.”
“So, what was wrong with Luke?”
“Didn’t ask.”
Maya leaned back until the chair squeaked.“Because asking would violate… what, subsection four of the Roommate Neutrality Pact?”
“Because he didn’t offer.”I lined up the next quiz square with the edge of the desk.“Data without consent is surveillance.”
She snorted.“You’re already surveilling; you want permission to analyze.”
“Not the same.”
“Sure.”She stood, snagging my pen mid-stroke.“Break.Harbor Commons.You can buy me bubble tea with all the moral high ground you’re saving up.”
I opened my mouth to argue—saw the sophomore herd prepping to stampede my table—and closed the gradebook.
“Fine.”
Harbor Commons never decided what it wanted to be—half café, half airport terminal, acoustics for neither.We wove through clusters of students and found two seats at the window bar.Outside, dusk bled pink across piles of plowed snow; inside, someone’s Bluetooth speaker fought the house playlist and lost.
I ordered black tea, no tapioca; Maya went full unicorn—lavender milk, rainbow jellies, 150 percent sweetness.She watched me tap the debit pad.
“Want to talk now or after your annual sugar panic?”
“Now’s good.”I popped the lid on my drink, steam fogging my glasses.“Luke looks like he swallowed a hockey puck.”
“Practice injury?”
“Phone injury.”I told her the observable facts, stripped of speculation.She sipped purple sugar sludge and nodded like a clinician.
“What’s your move?”
“Wait for him to say something.”
Maya raised a brow.“And what if he doesn’t?”
“Then I continue not violating room-rule confidentiality.”
“You mean the rule only you follow.”
