The next, there’s a girl from track sitting across from him in the athlete dining hall, laughing into her smoothie while he steals her fries.
She’s pretty.
Fast-looking.
All sleek limbs and shiny ponytail and easy confidence.
He looks relaxed with her.
Not intense.
Not careful.
Just easy.
I register it.
Then I move on.
Or I try to.
Tristan is harder to pin down.
There are no big moments.
That’s what makes it worse.
It’s all flashes.
A laugh I hear before I see him.
That stupid dark lock dropping over his forehead in the quad.
His watch catching light outside the business school.
Isa’s hand on his arm.
A photo on a Stanford athletics page.
A tagged clip on somebody’s story.
Enough to know he’s fine.
More than fine.
He’s folding into Stanford the way expensive things always seem to fit wherever they land.
The campus likes him.
The team likes him.
The cameras definitely like him.
And Isa?—
Isa makes sense beside him.
She looks polished where I look practical.
