The bike is Shai’s. The seat is too low. Aaron is fully aware that a 6'2" wide receiver pedaling across campus at 9:40 on a Tuesday with a Chipotle bag swinging off the handlebars is not a look.

He doesn’t care. That’s a lie. He cares a normal amount and is choosing to ignore it.

The Chipotle is on El Camino. Her place in EV is the opposite direction from literally everything he had going on tonight, which was nothing, which was film he’d already watched twice.

I was in the area.

He’s been workshopping it the whole ride. Casual. Shoulder shrug. A little whatever in the voice. Aaron Jenkins has sold a lie to a defensive backfield on a double move in front of fifty thousand people. This should be easy.

He knocks.

Nothing. Then the deadbolt.

She opens the door in the hoodie. His hoodie. Again.

Hair up, glasses on, a highlighter stuck behind her ear that she’s clearly forgotten about. Behind her the room is a crime scene of syllabi and a laptop with about forty tabs open.

Aaron holds up the bag like evidence.

“I was in the area.”

She looks at the bag. Then at him. Then at the bike leaned against the railing behind him, the little Stanford Athletics sticker Shai never peeled off.

“You were in the area.”

“Yeah.”

“On Shai’s bike.”

“It’s a great area.”

Her mouth does something. Not a smile. The almost-version of one, still deciding.

“I have a midterm Thursday,” she says.

“I know. That’s why it’s a study break.”

“I haven’t started my break.”

“I’m starting it for you.” He shakes the bag. “Steak, brown rice, no beans, corn salsa. Extra napkins because you say you don’t need them and then you need them.”

She goes very still.

Aaron realizes about a full second too late what he just did. He said it like it was nothing. Like three months of Chipotle runs were still filed under active.

Say something normal. Say something normal.

“I can go,” he says. “I can just leave it. Honestly, I’ll leave it on the railing like a pizza guy.”

She steps aside.

Her floor is the only clear surface, so that’s where it happens. She sits cross-legged against the bed. Aaron folds himself down across from her, knees up, back against her desk chair, all 210 pounds of him trying to take up less room than he does. It doesn’t work. It never has. Her room is small and he is a lot.

The speaker is low. Something soft and slow with a lot of reverb. He knows the song, and it’s almost worse that he knows it. He picks up his bowl, doesn’t open it, and puts it down again.