Derek slides into the chair next to mine and drops his bag on the library table hard enough to make the girl across from us look up from her laptop with murder in her eyes.
He turns to me. "So I had this idea for the project."
"You said you were the ideas guy."
"And I'm delivering." He pulls out his notebook, flips past three pages of nothing, and lands on a page with one sentence written on it. One. He turns it toward me like he's presenting a thesis.
I read it. "Target audience analysis. That's your idea?"
"It's a starting point."
"It's the assignment description."
He grins. No shame in it. "See, this is why I need you. I provide the vision, you provide the—"
"Everything else."
"Exactly."
We actually get some work done. Thirty minutes of back and forth on the project outline, arguing about which brand to analyze, him pulling up examples on his phone and leaning in to show me. His warm arm presses against mine and stays there. I shift my laptop closer to the edge of the table and pull my chair with it. He doesn't notice. Or he does and he doesn't care.
Later he's reading something on my screen, leaning over my shoulder, and his hand lands on the back of my chair. His fingers graze my lower back through the gap in the seat. I reach for my water bottle. Take a long sip. Lean forward when I put it down so there's space between my back and his hand.
"This section is good," he says, tapping my screen. "You wrote this fast."
"One of us had to."
He laughs. His hand drops from the chair when he sits back. I exhale through my nose slow enough that he won't hear it.
We wrap up around three. He walks out with me, asking about my weekend, whether I went to the fresher's party.
"Same time Thursday?" he asks when we split at the path.
"I've got work Thursday."
"Work? Where?"
"Gino's. The Italian place that isn't Italian."
"I know Gino's ".He walks backwards for a few steps. "I'll text you about rescheduling."
He waves. I wave back. He turns and jogs toward his building and I stand there for a second rolling my shoulders, stretching out the tension that's been sitting between my shoulder blades for the last hour.
My shift starts at five. I change at the dorm — Nadia and Kira are both out somewhere — and tie my hair back and leave without checking the mirror because I've learned there's no point looking good for a job where I'm going to smell like fried food within twenty minutes.
Gino's is steady tonight. The Monday crowd is mostly regulars and a few students who look like they're avoiding their dorm rooms. Jay is behind the bar drying glasses and nods at me when I walk in. Patricia tells me table six has been waiting and I grab my notepad and go.
Three hours. I take orders, deliver food, refill drinks, smile at people who don't tip and people who do.The rhythm of it is starting to feel less like something I'm learning and more like something I'm doing.
I clock out at nine fifteen. Count my tips in the back. Thirty-eight dollars. Not bad for a Monday. I add it to the number in my head — the running total I've been keeping since my first shift. I'm close. Close enough that tonight might work if I go now.
The shop is called Second String. I found it last week scrolling through listings on my phone at two in the morning because I couldn't sleep and I was thinking about what to get Ethan for his birthday and I remembered what he said. Months ago. We were at his parents' house watching a game and he pointed at the screen when one of the players came out for warm-ups wearing a vintage jersey — '96 Hawks, Dikembe Mutombo, the teal one with the red trim. He went off about it for five minutes. How clean it was, how impossible they are to find in good condition, how he'd give up his left shoe for one. Then the game started and he forgot about it. I didn't.
Second String is across town. I mapped the bus route on my phone during my break. The shop closes at ten. If the bus comes on time I'll make it.
The bus comes on time. The transfers go smooth. I'm standing in front of the shop at nine fifty with my work shirt still damp at the collar and my tips folded in my back pocket.
The place is small and the guy behind the counter is reading a magazine, doesn't even look up when I walk in. The walls are covered with jerseys in plastic sleeves, sneakers behind glass, signed basketballs on shelves. I scan the wall. Hawks section. My eyes move across names and numbers until I find it.
Teal and red. Mutombo. '96.
I pull it down carefully. The plastic crinkles in my hands. The stitching is clean. No tears, no fading, no stains. It's perfect. I turn it over and check the price tag and it's almost everything I've made in two weeks.
I take it to the counter. The guy looks at it, looks at me, and starts ringing it up.
"Gift?" he asks.
"Yeah."
"Good one."
He bags it. I pay. The bills leave my hand and I feel every single one of them go but I also don't care because when Ethan opens this he's going to look at me ,he's going to wonder how I remembered something he said once while half-watching a game six months ago.
I walk out. Check my phone for the bus schedule back. The screen is dim. Four percent. The map loads slow, buffering, struggling. I get the route up — next bus in twelve minutes. Two blocks east. I start walking.
Three percent. Two percent. The screen flickers.
Dead.
I stop on the sidewalk and press the power button three times like that's ever worked in the history of phones dying. The screen stays black. I shove it in my pocket and keep walking toward the bus stop because I know the direction even without the map. Two blocks. I can see the sign from here.
I get there. Check the posted schedule under the streetlight.
Last bus left six minutes ago.
I stare at the schedule. Read it again. Read it a third time like the numbers might rearrange themselves into something useful. They don't.
The sky has been doing something for the last twenty minutes that I was too focused to notice. The clouds are low and heavy and dark in a way that doesn't suggest rain — it guarantees it.
It opens up.
Not slow. Not a drizzle building into something. Just water. Instant and heavy and warm for the first three seconds before the wind picks up and turns it cold. I'm under the bus shelter which is really just a metal roof on poles that covers about two-thirds of the bench. The other third is open and the rain is coming sideways and within a minute my left side is soaked through.
I hold the bag against my chest. The jersey. I'm not letting the rain touch this jersey. Everything else can get wet. My shirt is already plastered to me, black fabric gone thin and clinging to my skin, and I can feel the cold settling into my bones in layers. My hair is done. Was done. Now it's dripping down my neck and into the collar of my shirt and I can feel every single drop tracing a line down my spine.
I need a phone.
Across the street. A gas station. Lit up yellow and buzzing. I hold the bag under my arm and run. The rain hits my face so hard I can barely see and I almost eat the curb stepping off the sidewalk but I catch myself and keep going and by the time I push through the glass door I'm dripping a puddle onto the tile floor.
The guy behind the counter looks at me over his glasses.
"Can I use your phone? Mine died."
He points toward the back without a word. Payphone on the wall near the bathroom. I dig quarters out of my tip money and dial Ethan's number. The only number I know by heart besides Dad's.
Three rings.
"Hello?"
"It's me. My phone died."
"Bella? Where are you? Whose number is this?"
"A gas station." I read him the name off the window behind me. "Last bus is gone , it's pouring and I'm stuck."
"Hold on."
He pulls the phone away from his face. I hear his voice, muffled, calling out. Then another voice further away. Flat. Uninterested.
"Owen. Owen, come on, bro."
I can't make out Owen's response but I can hear the tone of it. The tone of a person who is comfortable where they are and has no intention of moving.
Ethan again, closer to whoever Owen is now. "She's stranded. Just go get her, it's like twenty minutes."
More muffled back and forth. A door closing. Footsteps. Something that might be keys.
Ethan comes back on the line. "He's coming. Stay there."
"Ethan—"
"He's coming. Just stay inside, okay? What's the gas station called again?"
I tell him. He repeats it back to make sure. We hang up. I stand near the entrance holding a bag with a vintage jersey in it while water runs off me onto a floor that the gas station guy is going to have to mop because of me.
Ten minutes. I watch the parking lot through the glass. Cars pass on the road. None of them turn in. The rain is getting worse somehow. The streetlights look like they're underwater.
Fifteen minutes. The gas station guy has stopped pretending he's not watching me. I probably look insane. Soaked head to toe, arms crossed tight over my chest because my shirt is see-through at this point and I'm very aware of it, clutching a plastic bag like it contains something worth more than me.
Twenty minutes. I start thinking about walking. I don't know which direction campus is from here but I could figure it out. I could ask the gas station guy. I could—
Headlights. Low. Cutting through the rain like they're angry at it. An engine that doesn't sound like other engines — deeper, rougher, the kind of sound you feel in your feet before you hear it with your ears.
The car pulls into the lot. Dark. Sitting low to the ground. Rain bouncing off the hood. It stops right in front of the door.
The passenger window rolls down. Owen's face behind it. He doesn't wave me over. Doesn't gesture. Just looks at me through the gap with an expression that says he'd rather be anywhere on earth than in this parking lot right now.
I push through the door and the rain hits me fresh like the first time wasn't enough. Three steps to the car. I open the door. Drop into the passenger seat. The bag goes on my lap. Water goes everywhere — the seat, the floor mat, the dashboard where my elbow drips.
I pull the door shut and the sound of the rain cuts in half. Inside the car is warm and dry .His music is playing low. The heat is on.
He looks at me. Looks at his seats. Looks at me again.
I open my mouth to say something and he puts the car in drive and pulls out of the lot before I get the first word out.