Fake yours.

Chapter 5

By late Monday afternoon, the scene in the student center had faded into the background,the way most things involving Adrian eventually did. There had been laughter, a dozen conflicting versions of what actually happened, and the unmistakable feeling that something had begun without anyone consciously deciding to start it.

Noah left first, carrying himself with that infuriating self-possession he seemed to wear as naturally as his clothes. Zara’s eyes followed him on instinct, tracing his path across the student center until he vanished behind the closing door. Only then did she look away.

“You’re watching him leave,” Adrian said.

“I’m looking at the door.”

“The door he just walked through.”

She gathered her books with more efficiency. “I have class.”

Adrian leaned back in his chair and wrapped both hands around his coffee cup. He never seemed in a hurry to reach a conclusion. It was one of those traits that could be either infuriating or surprisingly helpful, depending on the day.

“He noticed things,” Adrian said. “Little things.”

Zara frowned.

“Your major. Your work schedule. The way you talk about money.” He shrugged. “Stuff people usually tune out.”

He took another sip of his coffee before adding, “Most people don’t remember details like that unless they’re paying attention.”

“And?”

Adrian looked at her over the rim of his cup.

“And people usually don’t pay that much attention unless they care, at least a little.”

Zara stood. “Goodbye, Adrian.”

“I’m just observing.”

“Goodbye.”

His laugh followed her out.

Friday arrived faster than Zara expected. The week had Moved too quickly. Adrian was waiting outside the café when her shift ended, leaning against the brick wall with a bunch of yellow flowers in one hand.

Actual flowers.

Not the stiff, cellophane wrapped kind from a supermarket display. Just a loose handful of bright yellow blooms, held casually as if carrying flowers around campus was the most normal thing in the world.

Somehow, that made it worse. A formal bouquet could have been laughed off as a joke.

She stopped on the pavement. “Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely yes.”

“You look ridiculous.”

“I look thoughtful.” He held one out. “It’s dinner, Zara. To celebrate you surviving the week without committing a crime.”

She took the flower because refusing would have extended the moment, and because a few students nearby were already watching with the mild, entertained attention of people who had nothing better to do. She tucked it under her arm and turned toward the street.

“Fine. But we’re going somewhere quiet.”

“Quiet,” he agreed, falling into step beside her.

“And you’re not going to say his name.”

“Whose name?”

“Adrian.”

He smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

They made it half a block before a voice behind them said, with the specific quality of someone who was not surprised but was choosing to act as though they were: “Interesting.”

Zara closed her eyes for one measured second.

Noah stood on the pavement with his hands in his jacket pockets, his eyes moving from the flower tucked under her arm to Adrian to her face, in a pattern that was brief and unhurried and communicated a great deal. The calm in his expression was the studied kind.

“The flowers,” Noah said, when Adrian asked what was interesting.

“Nice, right?” Adrian said pleasantly.

“They are.”

The pause between them carried the weight of two people who had agreed, silently, to be civil and were both very aware of it. Adrian offered his hand. Noah took it. The handshake lingered a second too long: not enough to be hostile, just enough to know it's deliberate .

“Oh, God,” Zara said, to neither of them specifically.

Dinner was at a place on the edge of campus that was usually quiet on Fridays, which was why she’d suggested it, and which ceased to be quiet approximately twenty minutes after they arrived when Noah appeared at a table across the room with two teammates, occupying it with the plausible naturalness of someone who had made a calculated choice and intended to deny it.

“This cannot be real,” Adrian said.

“It’s a coincidence.”

“It is not a coincidence.”

“He eats dinner. People eat dinner. Restaurants exist.”

Adrian looked at her with the patient expression of someone waiting for her to hear herself. She picked up her menu and studied it with more focus than the options warranted. Four minutes later, against her better judgment, she glanced across the room.

Noah looked away immediately.

She turned back to her menu. Something moved in her chest,not warmth, exactly, or not only warmth; something more complicated, adjacent to wanting something she hadn’t named yet and wasn’t prepared to.

“He’s jealous,” Adrian said, later, outside on the pavement after the bill was paid.

“He barely knows me.”

“That’s not how jealousy works.” Adrian buttoned his coat against the evening chill. “Knowing someone and wanting them aren’t the same thing. One takes time. The other doesn’t ask permission.” He glanced at her. “You know that.”

She said nothing, which he accepted without pressing. They parted at the corner he was heading back to the graduate housing on the far side of campus, she toward her building and she walked alone into the particular quiet of a Friday night after most people had found somewhere to be.

She was thinking about what Adrian had said.

About the difference between knowing and wanting.

About the way Noah had looked at her across the arena that involuntary fraction of a second before she’d pulled the smile back.

She was thinking about this when she heard the footsteps notclose. Not threatening, not exactly. Just present a regular movement on the pavement behind her that seemed to maintain its distance rather than close it. She kept walking, telling herself it was nothing, that the campus was not empty and people walked home at this hour. The streetlights threw long shadows across the path. Somewhere in the middle distance a door closed by.

She turned down the familiar shortcut between the science building and the car park.

The footsteps stopped.

She stopped too.