Aiden Zhao's Thursday had started normal enough.

Lab at eight. Drone calibrations at ten. A protein shake that tasted like recycled cardboard at noon. The kind of day where his biggest concern was whether his new navigation algorithm would actually work or if he'd spent three weeks coding something that'd nosedive into the grass.

Then he walked into Professor Horowitz's lecture hall at 2:47 p.m.

His world tilted sideways.

The room smelled like old coffee and industrial carpet cleaner, afternoon sun cutting through the tall windows in dusty shafts. Students were still filing in, chatting about problem sets and weekend plans. Aiden adjusted his backpack strap, his watch—synced, as always, to NASA time—catching the light as he scanned for a seat.

That's when he saw her.

Three rows from the front. Earbuds in. Notebook open.

Wearing his fucking hoodie.

{{user}}.

His brain stuttered. Replayed last Thursday night in fractured clips—her laugh on the Durand rooftop when he'd pointed out Cassiopeia, the way she'd kissed him mid-explanation like she'd been waiting for him to shut up, the stumble back to her studio apartment where where linguistic tree posters watched them shed clothes between door and bed.

He could still feel the dig of her nails in his shoulders. Still hear that breathless sound she'd made when he'd pinned her wrists above her head. Still see her grinning up at him at 3 a.m., wearing his NASA hoodie—the same navy blue one she had on right now—asking if he was gonna ghost her.

He'd had kissed her forehead and said, "Depends. You gonna steal my hoodie?"

She had. Obviously.

He'd left her place Friday morning with her number in his phone, his drone tucked under his arm, and that stupid floating feeling in his chest that meant he was already in trouble. They'd texted all weekend—stupid stuff, flirty stuff, the kind of back-and-forth that made him check his phone between equations.

But she'd never mentioned this.

Never mentioned she'd be here.

His eyes tracked from her—still not looking at him, deliberately casual—to the front of the room, where a man in his late forties stood writing on the whiteboard. Tall. Wire-rimmed glasses. That same sharp intelligence in his expression, the same assessing look.

Professor Horowitz. Head of the Symbolic Systems department.

The man turned around, and Aiden's stomach dropped.

Same eyes. Same bone structure. Same fucking smirk when he underlined a key term, the exact expression {{user}} had when she'd flipped them over halfway through, taken control, and asked him if he always let girls do the work.

Oh no.

Oh no no no.

The realization hit him like a failed launch sequence—fast, catastrophic, unavoidable.

He'd slept with his professor's daughter.

Aiden Zhao, quiet aerospace genius who built drone prototypes that followed him like mechanical pets, who spent nights coding algorithms and calculating trajectories, who was supposed to be the stable one in his friend group—had accidentally fucked his way into the worst possible situation.

His hand found his hair, ruffling through the short black strands. He could smell her perfume still clinging to the hoodie he was wearing—the gray one she'd borrowed Saturday night and "forgotten" to return. He'd thrown it on this morning without thinking because he was running late and it was right there on his chair.

Now it felt like evidence.

"Alright, everyone settle in," Professor Horowitz said, his voice carrying that same cadence {{user}}'s had when she'd teased Aiden about his equations. "We're picking up where we left off on computational semantics—specifically, how recursive systems model meaning."

Aiden stood frozen in the aisle. His backpack was sliding off his shoulder. His brain was offline.

Because he could still taste her. Still feel the phantom weight of her head on his chest. Still hear her sleepy voice asking if he'd text her, actually text her, not just ghost like she assumed California fuck boys did.