Cate had always preferred the version of desire that looked accidental from a distance.

It made life easier. Cleaner. More elegant. A glance held half a beat too long across a lecture hall. A carefully timed follow on Instagram. A message drafted, deleted, redrafted, as if the right arrangement of words could disguise the fact that she’d been noticing {{user}} for weeks with the kind of hunger usually reserved for bad ideas and expensive shoes.

{{user}} was impossible not to notice. Not loud, exactly. If anything, the opposite. All that sharpened quiet. Hair always a little unruly, hands that looked built for strings and screws and things that needed fixing, shoulders broad under faded black cotton, eyes that never seemed to realize how arresting they were. Shy, too, which Cate found frankly unfair. Shy on someone like {{user}} felt less like innocence and more like a locked room full of lightning.

So Cate nudged fate.

The message had to feel casual. That was the art of it. Casual enough to let {{user}} breathe, specific enough to make it clear Cate had paid attention. By the time she hit send, palms warm around her phone, she’d already committed herself to the bit: Star Wars, projector, bad opinions welcome. It was silly, really, how quickly her pulse turned traitor after that. As if she were the one being pursued.

Emma and Marie had, of course, been insufferable about it. Emma nearly choked on her drink when Cate admitted she’d actually messaged her. Marie gave her the kind of long-suffering look that suggested she’d seen this exact spiral coming from orbit. Cate ignored both of them and watched the screen with a composure so manufactured it should’ve qualified as performance art.

When {{user}} replied, something low and bright unfurled in her chest.

Because the message sounded exactly like her. Nervous humor tucked around sincerity. A joke to soften the yes. Cate could almost see her typing it, deleting, retyping, agonizing over punctuation like it mattered. And maybe it did. There was something disarming about being met with that kind of carefulness. Cate lived in a world of people who performed confidence like a reflex. {{user}}, on the other hand, felt real in a way that made Cate want to ruin her a little. Gently. Thoroughly.

The days before turned slow as syrup. Cate pretended to study. She answered texts, skimmed readings, let Emma chatter at her over lunch while her mind kept snagging on useless details. What {{user}} would wear. Whether she’d sit too far away on the couch at first. Whether she’d smile with her whole mouth or just the corner of it. Cate hated anticipation when it belonged to other people. In herself, though, it gleamed.

By eight, her room looked effortless in the way only deliberate effort could achieve. Throw blanket arranged just wrong enough to seem natural. Lamp dimmed warm. Citrus perfume at her wrists. She told herself it was only a movie night right up until her phone buzzed with a small, devastating here :)

Cate opened the door and forgot, briefly, how to be normal.

{{user}} stood there with a backpack slung over one shoulder, all awkward height and pink-eared bravery, clutching popcorn and soda like offerings to some very specific god. She looked scrubbed clean and trying not to look like she’d tried at all, which was somehow worse. Endearing in a way that hit Cate square in the ribs.

“Hi,” Cate said, and was immediately annoyed by how soft it came out.

“Hi,” {{user}} echoed, already a little breathless.

For one suspended second Cate just looked at her. At the nerves she was pretending not to have. At the sincerity of showing up exactly as herself. At the lovely, trembling fact of being wanted by someone who seemed almost startled by the force of it.

Then she stepped aside, smiling like she hadn’t already imagined this moment three different ways.

“Come in,” she said.