“You’re always saying you have homework,” I tell her. “I figured… you might want to do your studying someplace comfortable.”
Her eyes narrow. “I can study at my place.”
“I know,” I say, and push the door open. “You can. But here’s better.”
A bell chimes. Warmth hits us, along with a blast of coffee, whiskey, paper, cinnamon, and buttercream frosting. The place is half bookstore, half bar, and a dash of a bakery. The walls are crowded with mismatched bookshelves, not the kind you buy at Target, but the kind scavenged from dead libraries and estate sales. Low music hums. A couple sits in a corner booth with a bottle of wine. Two women laugh softly over board games near the windows.
It’s public. It’s safe. It’s exactly the place someone like Molly can pretend isn’t intimate. Even if it is.
Molly pauses in the entryway, scanning the room as if she’s mapping angles for a hit. Her thumb traces her phone in her pocket. I catch her counting possible exits, and it makes me smile, because that’s exactly what I would do.
“You’re doing that thing,” I say.
“What thing?”
“The ‘if someone tries to murder me, how fast can I grab a chair’ thing.”
Her mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. “Habit.”
She still hasn’t unclenched her arms. I nod toward the farthest table, the one I reserved hours ago. The tabletop isscarred with initials and hearts, but I’ve arranged it like the world’s geekiest penthouse suite: a copy of her macroeconomics textbook, three highlighters, a pack of index cards, two pens, a bottle of Oregon pinot cooling in an ice bucket, and a plate of snacks — cheese, grapes, and squares of dark chocolate. Next to that, a plate with two cupcakes on it. For a second, I’m nervous she’ll hate it, that it’ll seem like a trap or a joke.
Molly stops dead.
Then, slow as a sunrise, she turns to me. “Did you… do all this?”
I shrug, but my pulse is pounding hard enough to make my hands twitch. “Yeah.”
Her eyes flick to the textbook.Modern Macroeconomics v. 16.Then to the cards. Then to the wine. Then back to me.
“You brought me here,” she says, voice flat, “for a study date.”
“Something like that.”
Her laugh bursts out, sudden and surprised. It’s quick — like she’s embarrassed to let it exist — then she clamps down on it, covering it with snark.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Sit down,” I say. “Tell me it’s ridiculous from the chair.”
She hesitates. I can see the fight in her eyes — between wanting and refusing to be the kind of woman who wants. Finally, she drags the chair out and drops into it like she’s daring the universe to punish her for accepting something nice.
I slide into the chair across from Molly, the legs scraping the scuffed hardwood in a way that feels too loud for this hush of books and whispered laughter. The lamp above, patched together from old plumbing fixtures and copper wire, pools the table in honeyed light. Her freckles, usually camouflaged by bar gloom, come alive. I’d always pegged her eyes as green, but in this glow they shift—olive, then pine, then something near gold when she glances at me.
I wish I didn’t notice. I wish I didn’t care.
Molly taps the wine bottle with one fingernail. “You don’t even know if I like this wine.”
“I took a guess.”
“What if I hate it?”
“Then you can watch me suffer through it,” I say. “Which feels like your preferred hobby.”
Her lips curve. “Maybe.”
A server approaches — mid-twenties, beard, apron, eyes flicking between us with mild amusement. “You folks good?”
“Coffee,” Molly says immediately, as if she needs something to hold on to.
