The compensatory upside to this busy schedule is coffee. Not new to me, though newly essential. My favorite shop is nestled right near campus and has wooden walls with turquoise trim and small round tables that were most definitely not built for large groups. It’s perfect. Quiet, a few two-tops inside and out, the kind of place where productivity feels inevitable.
This morning I stared down the glass case, ran a quick cost-benefit analysis on the lilikoi scone versus the bacon frittata, and selected the statistically correct option: both. Plus a latte. Several hours of research and writing later, I am deliciously overcarbed and mentally scrambled—which I believe isthe frittata effect.
“Oh mygod, I can’t believe I found you.” The voice is a little high, very smooth, and attached to a lanky boy with a galaxy of freckles. He drops into the chair across from me and eases my laptop shut with green nail-polished fingers. “I hope you saved whatever was on there.”
“I, uh… yeah?” I have the inventor of autosave to thank for that.
“Great. You’re the Taylor girl, right?” His smile is so warm I glance behind me to make sure there isn’t a nicer, more approachable person he could be aiming at. “I’m Kai. We share a lab bench—technically. I don’t go as often as my advisor would like.”
“Wait, you’re studying marine science too?”
He nods, grin widening. “Yes, ma’am. Fewer classes this semester because I’m on Moku o Lo?e most days for field work.” Another quick once-over, friendly and warm. “Also, I saw you the other day and figured it’d be nice to have someone to talk to in the lab who’s not a complete nerd.”
I snort, latte escaping through my nose in a very dignified manner. “Sorry.” I blot with a napkin. “It’s just… I amthecomplete nerd.”
I see why he might mistake me for normal. Well-adapted, even. Today’s outfit doesn’t exactly scream science nerd: a soft white skirt and a thin yellow long-sleeve shirt, currently vacuum-sealed to my curves by humidity. Normal anywhere else; dubious on a day the island feels pre-boiled. I still haven’t cracked the local dress code, it seems.
“Yeah, I guessed,” he says, laughing. “I saw the stack of papers you left last week. But you seem fun, too.”
Do I have a clone walking around campus? One who actually socializes enough to be considered fun when looked at from afar? For science, I’d like to meet her.
“Anyway, bottom line.” He taps the table. “We should go to the lab together sometimes. Ilivefor lab gossip. I’ll keep you updated on everything. And maybe you can bully me into working on my thesis.”
That pulls another laugh out of me. Kai is a small sun—too many colors for one outfit, dark skin dusted with freckles, light-brown curls refusing to obey gravity—and somehow the chaos is magnetic.
“I’d love that,” I say. And I mean it. Another friend would not hurt.
We spend the next half hour on the story of how Kai almost lost his snorkel to an octopus—which, in the cephalopod’s defense, would be a solid addition to any benthic home. He’s easygoing, friendly, and—data point I did not see coming—my first true friend in the program. When he asks what I’m up to later, I tell him the library is a mandatory stop since Google has officially given up on answering my questions. He laughs, pulls a turquoise apron from his bag—as if he needed more color—and ties it around his waist.
“I’ll come find you after my shift, then.” I follow his thumb toward the counter.
“You work here?”
“As of yesterday, yeah.” He gives me a boyish grin. “See you later, Taylor!”
I watch him hop the counter and kiss the cheek of the middle-aged woman on shift; she shoo-swats him and turns back to her customer.
Nowthatwas an interesting development.
The library is packed. Where I’m from, sunlight is a campus-sanctioned holiday—you skip class or “study” outside because thenext clear day will be a month from never. Here, solar irradiance has zero predictive power on attendance. Just another weekday.
I grab the textbooks that promise to explain scientific writing and why “anyway” is not, in fact, suitable for an academic paper. I’m smart; I just haven’t domesticated my thoughts for public consumption yet.
I weave the aisles hunting a table that isn’t fully colonized by laptops or sticky from someone else’s sugar intake. Slim pickings, until I spot a marginally empty mahogany table near a cracked open window and make for it.
The books touch down, and the table’s other occupant finally looks up. From a distance I’d assumed two people, given the square footage he commands, but it’s just him. There’s no mistaking the brown eyes with a faint hazel halo near the center—somehow the prettiest thing in the room. And there’s an original Darwin under glass at the entrance, so that’s saying something.
His stare isn’t cold, it’s… noncommittal. Forty-three facial muscles and he declines to use even one. If he wants to do the unapproachable-statue-on-a-very-tall-horse thing, fine. I have as much right to this table as anyone.
I take the chair opposite but a little off-center, unpack my notebook and pens. I leave my computer in my bag, because one more hour of screen glare and my corneas will unionize.
I try—really try—to focus on what I came here to do, but his gaze is singeing my left temple. My peripheral says he’s grading; my trigeminal nerve says Superman is powering up his laser eyes. I refuse to look. I do not need visual confirmation of the disdain I can alreadymodel.
Eventually he returns to his work—or at least I think he does. But there’s only so long I can fake-study with an extremely inconvenient variable occupying half the table. Test, not thrash, right?
I risk a glance. He’s grading with precise, controlled strokes of an angry red pen, dark hair slipping over his forehead. Damn. Why are the assholes always the gorgeous ones?
“You know, I’m not trying to annoy you,” I say, chin propped on my fist, watching the red pen march. Why I chose this moment to speak is beyond me; consider it a tiny public-health intervention against the miscommunication epidemic.
