“For what?” I ask, even though I know.
“Billie in February at Radio City Hall.” She flips the phone; the kitchen ceiling blurs, then I see her grin. Messy buns. Illicit eyeliner. Home.
“February when?” I grab my towel. “The twenty-first?”
“Friday night. Mom’s worried about the subway that late.” She attempts a stern-mom voice and fails. “She said, ‘we’ll see if we can afford it and if someone responsible can go with you.’ Then she stared at me like she was trying to summon one.”
“I can be responsible.” A beat. “Sometimes.”
“You do math. That’s basically responsibility.”
I laugh. “I’ll be home that weekend. We’ll go.”
Her face lights up—soft lilac, the way our hallway used to glow during movie nights. “For real?”
“For real.”
“Wren, you don’t have to?—”
“I want to.” I mean it. “Early birthday present. For both of us.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
We hang up. I flop back on the bed and do the math anyway—tickets, bus fare, food. The numbers settle heavy in my chest.
The tutoring money isn’t extra anymore. It’s necessary.
Which means I need to keep Kieran as a client.
I dress fast, knot my hair, zip my coat, and head to campus to do the one thing I’m actually good at: solving problems.
The study loungeon the third floor has terrible lighting and one table that doesn’t wobble. I claim it, lining up the things that give order to chaos: notebook, mechanical pencil, graph paper, highlighter.
Theo arrives first, careful smile in place, a stack of printed slides nobody asked for.
“Afternoon,” he says.
“Hey.” I glance at the pile. “You brought slides.”
“Sometimes it helps to see it.” He’s already pulling up the stress–strain curve lab. “I was thinking we isolate the variable we couldn’t get clean in simulation?—”
The air shifts.
White-gold at the edges of my vision, warm and bright.
Kieran drops into the chair beside me. When he leans in to look at my notes, his shoulder brushes mine.
My grip tightens on the pencil.
He doesn’t look like a campus hockey star right now. Just someone who skated hard and slept badly—beanie low, hoodie sleeves shoved up his forearms. Present in a way that makes the space tilt.
“Hey, Rules.” Steel blue, threaded straight through me.
I hate that I recognize the difference between tired and teasing. Hate that I like it.
Theo lifts a hand. “Nice game last night.”
