Controlled.
Predictable.
Exactly the kind of place where people like me go to build fantasies on top of harmless little rituals and call it emotional intelligence.
I’m at our table—our table now, apparently—in the far back corner on the third floor, the dead zone where athletes go when they want to work without too many eyes on them. My boot is kicked out under the chair beside me because there’s no comfortable way to sit in it for more than fifteen minutes, and Tristan’s got my backpack hooked over the back of his chair because he took it from me the second we sat down like he always does now.
He’s across from me in a black T-shirt and sweats, one forearm braced on the table, dark hair falling over his forehead in that unfair way that makes me ache to reach across and fix it just to have an excuse to touch him.
He’s pretending to read.
I’m pretending to outline.
Neither of us is doing much actual academic work.
He slides my highlighter back across the table and says, “You’ve underlined the same sentence four times.”
I glance down.
That is, unfortunately, true.
“It keeps needing emphasis.”
“No,” he says. “You keep needing a distraction.”
I lift a brow.
“And what would you call yourself?”
His mouth moves at one corner.
“Public service.”
That gets me.
Of course it does.
It always gets me when he turns on that quiet, private version of his humor—the one that doesn’t belong to the cameras or the court or the boys on his team. The one that feels like it was built for smaller spaces and lower voices and girls dumb enough to think getting a better version of him means they’re getting the real one.
I reach for my water bottle.
Miss it slightly because the stupid boot shifts when I move.
Before I can even correct, his hand is there, sliding the bottle into my reach without him breaking eye contact.
That tiny little gesture hits harder than any grand move ever could.
The reason girls like me get ruined isn’t usually the big thing.
It’s the accumulation of all the little ones. And the reason why any guilt I had for pushing Drew away faded.
I take a sip and ask, “Do you ever actually study, or do you just come here to emotionally destabilize me?”
He leans back in the chair.
“That implies intention.”
“That implies guilt.”
