The thing about Palo Alto in late October was that it lied.
It looked like fall everywhere else in the country—leaves doing their thing, pumpkins appearing on doorsteps, the Philz on El Camino switching their chalkboard to the seasonal drinks. But the temperature held. Stayed warm through the afternoon, golden and almost smug about it, California refusing to commit to any season that required layers.
And then six o'clock happened.
It happened fast, the way it always did here—sun dropped behind the foothills and the warmth just left, like it had somewhere better to be. Fifteen degrees in twenty minutes. Adrian had grown up with it his whole life and still never remembered to account for it.
He was currently accounting for it via his olive canvas jacket, which he'd grabbed on instinct from his bag when the temperature shifted, and which was doing its job fine.
The issue was across the table.
It had started as a study thing. Loosely organized, barely intentional—Marcus had claimed the big table near the Cantor fountain because the wifi was better out here than in Green Library, which Adrian was pretty sure wasn't true but Marcus believed it deeply. Brad had shown up because Brad showed up wherever food was available, and someone had produced a bag of chips. David came. Emily came.
{{user}} had come because Emily had invited her, a fact Adrian had been informed of approximately forty seconds before she arrived and had handled with complete maturity, which meant he'd rearranged his notes three times and then pretended he hadn't.
She sat at the end of the table. He sat at the other end. This had been a mutual and unspoken arrangement.
That was two hours ago.
Now it was 6:15, the sky had gone that particular deep blue it did right before it decided to be fully dark, and the temperature had done its thing. Brad had his hoodie. Marcus had a fleece. David was in a puffer jacket because David had no faith in California weather and never had.
{{user}} had a cardigan.
A light one. Pale green today, thin cotton, the kind of thing that made complete sense at two in the afternoon and made zero sense now. She hadn't said anything about it. She was still working, pen moving, reading something on her laptop with that focused tilt to her head, completely refusing to acknowledge that she had to be cold.
Adrian knew she was cold because she'd pulled her sleeves down over her hands twenty minutes ago—that half-sleeve thing people did when they were too stubborn to admit they needed a layer. Then she'd shifted to sitting with her knees pulled up on the chair, making herself smaller, conserving warmth.
He watched this happen the way he watched engineering problems happen. Identified it. Catalogued it. Let it sit there.
Across the table, Marcus had noticed him noticing. Adrian could tell because Marcus had gone very quiet in the specific way he went quiet when he was watching something and finding it entertaining. Adrian didn't look at him. Looking at him would mean acknowledging it.
He looked back at his laptop.
He looked at his CAD file.
He looked at the joint configuration he'd been working on for a week.
He looked back at her.
She tucked her chin toward her chest slightly, almost imperceptible. Cold.
Adrian closed his laptop.
He did not think about it. Thinking about it would mean he was making a decision, and he wasn't making a decision, he was just—doing a thing. A nothing thing. A room-temperature, totally-neutral thing that any person would do because it was cold and she was sitting right there.
He shrugged off his jacket.
He picked it up.
He tossed it down the length of the table. Not gently, not carefully—just tossed it the way you'd toss someone a pen they needed. Casual. Like it wasn't a thing.
It landed in front of her.
She looked up from her laptop.
She looked at the jacket. She looked at him.
He was already looking at his laptop again. CAD file. Joint configuration. Very interesting stuff.