"Thanks."
"Come get coffee with me. You look like you need to not be here."
***
The Meridian was the kind of coffee shop that could only exist on a campus like Kingswell. Exposed brick walls lined with bookshelves nobody touched. A chalkboard menu behind the counter listing drinks with names like "The Hemingway" and "The Fitzgerald"—because even caffeine had to come with a legacy reference.
The furniture was mismatched in the deliberate, expensive way that meant a designer had been paid to make it look accidental. Velvet armchairs. Marble-topped tables. A fireplace in the corner that actually worked, throwing warm light across the hardwood floors.
We sat in the back corner. Two armchairs angled toward each other, a low table between them. Ethan had an oat milk something. I had black coffee. The afternoon light came through the tall windows in slanted columns, catching the dust.
A few students were scattered around—a girl in cashmere typing on a MacBook, two guys from the economics department arguing over textbooks, a couple sharing a scone by the fireplace. Nobody paying attention to us.
Ethan drank. I held my cup and didn't.
"So," he said. "What's going on?"
"Things with Liam are bad."
"I gathered. That interview looked like two people being held at gunpoint." He set his cup on the table. Leaned back in the armchair, one arm draped over the side. Settling in. "What happened?"
I stared at the coffee in my hands. The surface trembling because my fingers weren't steady.
"We had a fight," I said. "A bad one."
"About?"
"He went after Braden. Physically."
"Shit what'd he do?"
"Pushed him against his car."
"So not full on Liam attack mode?" Ethan smirked.
I almost laughed. "No. But then we got into a fight."
"And it was about that?"
"It started there. But then it got deeper."
"Deeper how?"
The Meridian hummed around us. The espresso machine hissing. The fire crackling.
"The night before the fight. I'd been drinking. Way too much." I turned the cup in my hands. "Liam came and got me. Brought me back to my dorm. Took care of me."
Ethan's face changed. Not the patient stillness from before. Something sharper. His jaw tightening. His hand going still on the armrest.
"You were drinking," he said.
"Yeah."
"And he had to come get you."
"Yeah."
"What'd you do?"
