Episode 5

For once, I did not have a clean answer.

So I did what I always did when my life became emotionally inconvenient.

I made myself busy.

For the next several days, I studied in the library until the cleaning staff started stacking chairs. I picked up a Sunday diner shift. I built a color-coded task list for my systems project, then reorganized it twice when I realized half the tasks were just excuses not to think about Austin Coleman standing under my dorm awning, looking at me like care was not something he needed permission to feel.

Maggie was not fooled.

"You are stress-highlighting," she said, dropping into the chair across from me in the library.

I capped the yellow marker. "Highlighting is a valid academic practice."

"You highlighted the page number."

"It might be important."

"Ava."

"Maggie."

She leaned forward, chin on her fist. "Has QB1 texted?"

My phone sat facedown beside my laptop. It had been facedown a lot lately.

"No."

Technically true.

Austin had not texted because he did not have my number.

That did not stop me from noticing every time my phone buzzed.

Maggie opened her mouth, but her expression shifted before she could speak. I followed her gaze toward the library entrance.

Austin Coleman was walking straight toward my table.

The library did not go silent, exactly. It performed silence badly. Pages stopped turning. Someone whispered. Two girls at the end of the row suddenly became fascinated by the same shelf.

Austin seemed aware of all of it and interested in none of it.

He wore a gray Lions hoodie, practice pants, and a backpack slung over one shoulder. His hair was damp at the edges, like he had crossed campus directly from the athletic complex.

My pulse made a stupid decision.

"Ava," he said.

Maggie looked between us. "I just remembered I need... a vending machine."

"Maggie."

"Academic emergency." She fled with no dignity at all.

Austin did not take her chair. He stayed standing, careful with the space. "I brought you something."

"If it is a puddle shield, I am fully stocked."

His mouth flickered. "A ticket."

He set a small card on the table. Not paper, exactly. A printed access card with a QR code and the Atlantic Lakes Lions logo at the top.

My throat tightened. "For what?"

"Saturday's game."

"I know what a Lions ticket is."

"Then why ask?"

"To buy time."

The almost-smile disappeared. "Come watch."

Simple. Direct.

Dangerous.

Around us, the library pretended not to listen with the subtlety of a dropped plate.

I pushed the ticket back toward him. "No."

Austin looked at the card, then at me. "Because of Annika?"

"Because of your reputation. Because of the clips. Because everyone in this room will have a caption ready before I make it to the door."

His jaw tightened, but he did not argue fast enough to feel practiced. "I cannot control what they say."

"Exactly."

"I can control what I do."

"For a month?"

That landed. I saw it in the tiny pause before he breathed in.

"That was fair," he said quietly.

It should have felt good.

It did not.

"I am not trying to embarrass you," he said.

"You do not have to try. Being seen near you seems to do most of the work."

His hand closed around the ticket. For a second, I thought he would press it again, charm me, challenge me, make refusing him feel childish.

He did none of that.

"Okay," he said.

Just okay.

He slid the ticket into his hoodie pocket. "If you change your mind, tell Maggie. Creed can get you through the student gate."

"I will not."

"Okay," he said again, and this time it sounded more like hurt than permission.

He left the library with half the room watching.

I stared at my highlighted page number until the ink blurred.

Toby Mercer found me later in the CS lab, where I was pretending a broken demo was the most urgent crisis in my life.

"You know he came here between practice blocks, right?" Toby said.

I looked up from the code. "Who?"

Toby gave me a look usually reserved for missing semicolons. "Austin Coleman."

"I did not ask."

"No, but I overheard Gary Flynn telling someone in the hallway that Coleman had twelve minutes before film review and spent eight of them crossing campus."

That should not have mattered.

"Football players exaggerate," I said.

"Maybe. But that is inefficient exaggeration."

Before I could answer, Evan Brooks leaned over from the next workstation. "Your collision detection is firing twice."

I exhaled in relief. "A problem I can fix."

Evan was a senior mentor for the CS lab, calm in the way of people who did not need to prove how smart they were. He pointed at my screen, and for ten minutes the world narrowed to code, coordinates, and a tiny square that refused to stop crashing through a wall.

When the demo finally worked, Evan smiled. "Nice. You going to the game Saturday?"

I nearly laughed. "Why is everyone recruiting me?"

"Because the department got a small block of seats from alumni outreach. I have an extra ticket if you want one." He lifted his phone. "No pressure. It is mostly a networking thing."

Networking sounded safer than wanting.

His phone rang before I could answer. The screen showed Lena Ortiz, and his entire face softened.

"Hey," he said, stepping back. "Yeah, I am still in the lab. No, I remembered dinner. I am not that brave."

Toby smirked at me. "Girlfriend."

"I gathered."

Evan ended the call a minute later, still smiling. "Sorry. Lena has a strict anti-lab-hermit policy."

"Smart woman," I said.

"Very." He held up the digital ticket link. "Want it?"

This should have felt different from Austin's ticket.

It did.

That was the problem.

Evan's ticket was safe because it was not about me. It was alumni outreach, CS networking, a Saturday activity I could explain without blushing. No one would think I had been personally invited by the most watched man on campus.

"Sure," I said. "Thanks."

That night, Maggie lay upside down on her bed while I opened the ticket link on my phone.

"So you refused Austin's ticket and accepted Evan's," she said.

"Evan's is for networking."

"Uh-huh."

"It means nothing."

I tapped Add to Wallet.

The Lions logo appeared on my screen, bright blue and impossible to ignore.

Maggie smiled like she had just watched me lie to both of us.

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