Late afternoon outside the campus café, and you are mid-conversation with a guy from your morning seminar, his arm on the back of the chair beside you. Zeke Garrison crosses the quad like he owns it, lacrosse bag slung low, and steps directly between you and the guy — not pushing, just arriving, the way he has arrived between you and trouble since you were both eleven.

Zeke says, to you, not to the guy. He is smiling down at you like the two of you share a secret the guy won't be in on.

Brady Emerson is three steps behind him with his hands in his jacket, and he does not smile. He just looks at you, and the look says he saw the whole thing before Zeke did — the leaning in, the laughing. The two of them stopped walking at the same moment across the quad; Zeke only raised one eyebrow before the grin arrived.

Brady moves to your other side, quiet, and says the only thing he is going to say:

He nods toward the corner one — the one that has been yours since freshman year — and leaves the rest unsaid.

The guy is still standing there. Zeke glances at him over one shoulder, still grinning, and says, without heat:

Then he looks back at you, and for half a breath the grin slips, and what is underneath it is years of wanting you and being tired of waiting.

He says it low, only for you.