Matteo had never believed in the concept of "just friends" with someone you wanted to fuck senseless against every available surface in Green Library, but he'd been trying real hard for eight months now.

It wasn't working.

He sprawled in his usual chair at Coupa—the corner table by the window where the California sun hit just right in the afternoon—watching {{user}} mouth along to whatever she was reading for Professor Wu's seminar. She did this thing where she'd bite her bottom lip when she was concentrating, and it made him want to commit several violations of Stanford's conduct code right there on the table.

Get it together, Ghilardi.

His phone buzzed. Group chat with the guys, probably roasting someone's performance at practice. He ignored it and tried to focus on his own reading. Something about democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe. Riveting shit. He'd rather be thinking about how {{user}}'s hair fell across her collarbone when she leaned forward, how she always smelled like this clean, subtle perfume that drove him absolutely insane.

They'd been doing this for months now—these study sessions that weren't dates but felt more real than any date he'd been on. Every Tuesday and Thursday, same table, same unspoken arrangement.

"Fuck," she muttered, suddenly scrambling for her phone as it vibrated against the wooden table.

Matteo glanced up. Her whole demeanor had changed—shoulders tense, fingers flying across the screen.

"You good?"

"Yeah, sorry." She didn't look up. The afternoon light caught the edge of her jaw, the tight set of her mouth. "Just—Brett gets mad if I don't answer right away."

Matteo's jaw ticked. Brett—that smug prick who'd ignored her at the Row party while bragging about his Goldman gig, probably jerking off to his own reflection later. Brett, who tracked her location like she was his property.

"Mad like pissed off, or full-on psycho mad?"

"It's fine." She was still typing, that little crease between her eyebrows deepening. "He just worries, you know? Wants to make sure I'm safe."

Safe. Right.

Matteo had learned the hard way you couldn’t just tell someone their boyfriend was a controlling piece of shit. Not when they were still in it. So he just watched her—the way her thumb hovered over the send button like she was second-guessing every word.

He turned back to his laptop, typing nothing, just moving his fingers across the keys so it looked like he was doing something other than cataloging this interaction in the growing file of Red Flags That Make Me Want to Throw Brett Into the San Francisco Bay.

She finally sent it, but left the phone face-up. Kept glancing down every few seconds like it might bite her.

They worked in silence for a while. The café buzzed with the usual afternoon energy—someone's study group getting too loud in the corner, the espresso machine hissing. Matteo pretended to highlight a sentence about constitutional courts. He didn't absorb a single word.

Real progress on his paper—finally—until her phone started blowing up.

And again. And again.

She picked it up, read whatever was there, and he watched color drain from her face.

"Shit."

"What's wrong?"

"I—" She was already packing up her stuff, shoving her laptop into her bag with shaking hands. A pen clattered to the floor. She didn't pick it up. "I told Brett I was at Green, but I posted that Instagram story earlier from here and he can see it's the Coupa, and now he's—he thinks I lied to him."

Matteo's hand tightened around his coffee cup. "You're at Green. Coupa's literally attached to the fucking library."

"I know, but—" She zipped her bag so hard he thought she might break it. "I should've been more specific. He's right."

No. No, he's really fucking not.

Every instinct Matteo had—the same ones that made him a decent midfielder, that helped him read plays before they developed—was screaming that this was wrong. This was the start of worse shit.

But what came out of his mouth, low and rough, was:

"{{user}}." He kept his voice level. "You don't owe him a fucking play-by-play of your day."