“Is there a man?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“Go to school.”
“I am going to school.”
“Then learn something.”
She cackled as I ended the call.
For a moment I stood there with the silent phone still in my hand, smiling in spite of myself. Then the smile faded. Silence had a way of letting thoughts back in.
And there he was again.
Pietro.
I still did not know his last name. I did not know what he studied, whether he always sat in that exact spot, or whether I had imagined half of what had passed between us. All I knew was that something about him had caught under my skin and stayed there, irritating and impossible to ignore.
Which would have been easier to dismiss if I had not spent the rest of the week quietly rearranging my study schedule in the pathetic hope of seeing him again.
Not pathetic, I corrected.Mildly humiliating.
By the time I reached the history building, the wind had picked up hard enough to make my eyes water. I pushed through the doors, grateful for warmth, and headed upstairs to the seminar room where twelve undergraduates waited to be led through political propaganda in Renaissance Italy.
The teaching assistant job paid just enough to make my bank account slightly less tragic and ate far more of my time than the department brochure had implied, but I liked it. Most days.
Today, the universe had decided to test that.
“Morning, Emily.”
I looked up from my notes to find Tyler Dawson already in his usual seat, smiling at me with the polished confidence of a boy told all his life that dimples counted as a personality.
“Morning,” I said.
His smile widened.
I had met enough charming men to know when charm was really just entitlement with good lighting.
“Did you have a good weekend?” he asked, leaning back in his chair like we were halfway through a date instead of eight minutes from a discussion section.
I set my papers down carefully. “Did you do the reading?”
He gave a lazy shrug. “Depends. Does flirting with my TA count as extracurricular effort?”
A couple of students snorted.
I smiled, because murder was frowned upon in academic spaces.
“No,” I said pleasantly. “But embarrassing yourself in front of your classmates does show initiative.”
That got a laugh, including from one of the girls in the back who looked seconds away from applauding.
Tyler pressed a hand to his chest. “Cold.”
“Open Machiavelli.”
