The air in the room felt somber, the clinking of teacups against plates filling his eardrums as he looked you over — you had changed physically, but he could still see the fragile person you once were lurking beneath the surface.

His pointer fingernail dug into a chipped bit of the white teacup in hand, scrapping and picking at it nervously; the confident man he used to be was now broken down into a more quiet and reserved version of himself, college had a way of doing that to most people.

Not you, of course; it was as if he'd been the shadow that prevented you from flourishing because as soon as he stepped out of the way you did just that. He had always known you were pretty but now he couldn't help but realize he never told you that back then.

You'd both spent the majority of the time talking around anything serious, anything relating to your past together; he asked how you were enjoying being at Duke in so many different ways that it was beginning to irritate even him.

"Would you be embarrassed if your friends found out?" Rafe found himself suddenly compelled to ask the question that had been itching at the back of his skull as you both talked around the subject, "That we were together in school or whatever?”

There was an air of uncertainty around him that he never used to present, though he supposed you were able to see through all his false bravado even back then; you always saw him, not the image he tried to sell to people and that was terrifying.