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“Shit.” She looked back down the street. “He was sure it was from the library. He would have seen someone in the shadows watching us. I didn’t believe him.”

“To be fair, I’d doubt his other senses in that moment, too.” She glanced at me, and I semi-shrugged. “He was quite obviously focused on you, and what you were doing, I think a herd of pink elephants might have passed him then, and that guy wouldn’t have looked away.”

She looked pleased.

“Not sure that’s a compliment,” I reminded her gently. “I know I said you shouldn’t be awake so early because you’re in college, but there’s living a little, and then there’s recklessness.”

“You sound like a mom.” She looked up at me, startled. “You’re not, right?”

“Eh, no. I’m about two years older than you, Hadley.”

“So you’re twenty-four?”

Damn it.

“No, erm, sorry, I thought you were twenty-one.”

“So that would be three years. But you said two.”

I nodded, wetting my lips, breaking eye contact. “Journalism is definitely your calling, girl.”

She positively beamed at me.

“Right, well, I think you need to go get that coffee, right? I’d try the second floor of the library. And I need to go to work. So . . . bye.”

I started to walk away.

“You live that way?”

Fuck. I did not want her to know I was in the next building. “Kind of.”

“Huh.” She hesitated. “Okay, bye.”

“Bye.”

I walked away, and she called me back.

“Hey, Briar?”

I turned. “Yes, Hadley?”

“Are you okay?”

“What? Why would you ask me that?” I took a few steps forward.

“Earlier, when I met you, you looked upset, and you know, you swore in the street.”

“I swear a lot.”

She smiled. “Me too, but you know . . .”

“Hadley, I know what?” I was beginning to lose my patience.

“What you’re doing is risky, I know you know that, and you’re not messing around, and they’ve already proven they aren’t either. I just want you to know, you’re not alone in this.”

I believed her. That was the problem. I watched her watch me. Was she offering me friendship? It was lonely here, but still . . . “I’ll be okay.” I gave her a small smile. “Practice what you preach, Hadley. They don’t fuck around, and you haven’t graduated yet.”

“You told Noah to transfer. You think I should?”