Milly
Bennett Shaw stopped mid-sentence when he saw me. Oh my god!
The three people from his research lab kept talking, but his gray eyes settled on mine across the corridor outside honors statistics as if I had become the only variable worth measuring.
“Hollis.”
He said my last name the way professors said elegant proof.
I tightened my grip on the fellowship flyer I had been pretending to straighten. “Bennett Shaw.”
He let the circle fall away without taking his eyes off me.
“I used your correction.”
“The repeated-measures model?”
“You were right. We reran the analysis, and the effect held.” One of the girls touched his sleeve, but he shifted closer to me instead. “You saw what four people missed.”
Warmth spread beneath my ribs.
His gaze dropped to the flyer under my hand.
“Minnesota Summer Undergraduate Fellowship in Computational Text Analysis,” he read. “You’re applying.”
“I’m considering it.”
Most people heard English and Statistics double major and asked which half I planned to abandon first.
“You should. Your authorship model is the most interesting project in that seminar.”
My pulse stumbled.
Bennett knew about my project. Bennett thought it was interesting. Bennett had left an entire research lab waiting to tell me so.
“I could look over your proposal,” he said. “Maybe over coffee?”
“Yes.”
His mouth curved. “Tonight?”
“Excuse me?”
I turned toward the voice.
My shoulder struck something solid. A plastic lid snapped free, and iced coffee poured down the front of my cream blouse.
“Oh my God,” a girl said.
Cold soaked through to my skin.
The real Tuesday-afternoon corridor rushed back: shoes squeaking against tile, a classroom door closing, the vending machine humming. Bennett was not standing in front of me. He was halfway down the stairs with two people from his lab, his pale-blue shirt disappearing below the landing.
He never looked back.
The girl clutching the empty cup stared at me. “I’m so sorry. I thought you heard me.”
“No. It’s okay.”
It wasn’t, but she looked close to tears.
She offered me a napkin already dark with coffee, apologized twice, and hurried away. Students moved around me without slowing. In the glass over the notice board, my pencil sat crooked through my bun, and coffee spread across my chest like a badly drawn continent.
Five seconds ago, Bennett had chosen me from a crowd.
In reality, he knew my last name because Professor Landry used it during a seminar.
My library shift started in forty minutes.
I folded the fellowship flyer into my backpack and went to find a clean shirt.
Josie Tran looked up from her phone when I entered Britt Hall room 214.
“Did Bennett Shaw finally throw himself at you?”
“Someone threw coffee.”
“Less romantic.”
She sat cross-legged on her bed in emerald satin shorts and a black tank top, her bleached crop bright against the dark roots beneath it. Westbrook Whispers glowed from her phone.
I pulled the wet blouse over my head.
Josie’s eyebrows rose. “You wore the cream one.”
“I had a seminar.”
“You wore the cream one because Bennett has a seminar too.”
“Both statements can be true.”
She tossed me a faded gray Westbrook Library shirt.
Westbrook Whispers chimed.
The account had started freshman year with anonymous reports about a residence-hall creep. Now it had more than forty thousand followers and enough influence to ruin a cheating boyfriend’s weekend before breakfast.
Josie owned it.
I was the only person who knew.
“What’s the emergency?” I asked.
“A junior parked across two faculty spaces.” She showed me a grainy photo of a silver SUV. “Caption: If you’re going to steal a professor’s spot at least hide the custom plate.”
“It needs a comma after spot.”
“It needs blood.”
“It can have both.”
I fixed the punctuation.
Another submission appeared.
Josie read aloud, “‘Football team seen playing some kind of humiliation game behind the athletic center. Deuce Simmons had to sing the fight song to a trash can. Cole Maddox still owes a dare.’”
“Delete it.”
“Why?”
“No one needs live coverage of men discovering consequences.”
“That is exactly what people need.”
She saved it instead of posting.
I collected my badge and keys.
“Did he at least look at you?” she asked.
I knew which he she meant.
“He walked past me.”
Her expression softened. I hated that more than the joke would have hurt.
“It’s fine. He used my correction in his lab model last week.”
“That’s almost foreplay for statisticians.”
“He said thank you.”
“Filthy.”
I laughed despite myself.
Josie pointed at me. “Keep that face. The haunted Victorian one scares patrons.”
I left before she could ask whether I had imagined an entire conversation beside the fellowship board. She already knew me too well.
By eight forty, the fourth floor of Hargrove Library had settled into its nightly hush.
Students bent over laptops beneath fluorescent lights. The carpet swallowed footsteps. From the service desk, I could see three aisles of humanities stacks and the card-locked door to the closed collection behind them.
My staff keys hung at my hip. My badge had flipped backward against my shirt.
The fourth floor made sense. Every book had a place. Every question had a better answer than panic.
At eight forty-eight, a metallic crash sounded beyond the restricted door.
Then a man’s voice said, much too loudly, “That seems structurally unnecessary.”
Three students looked up.
The restricted door stood open by two inches. Someone had wedged a pencil beneath it.
I removed the pencil, stepped inside, and followed the sound.
Cole Maddox stood beneath a STAFF ONLY sign with one hand on a rolling ladder.
He wore black athletic pants and a Westbrook Football shirt stretched across broad shoulders. White tape crossed two knuckles. His phone sat against a shelf, its screen displaying a timer.
Recognition arrived with his grin.
Starting quarterback. Team captain. His face appeared on posters above words like LEGACY.
In person, he looked less polished and more entertained.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Depends.”
“On?”
“Whether you’re authorized to issue a formal warning.”
“I’m authorized to call campus security.”
“That feels excessive.”
“You entered a restricted collection.”
“The door was open.”
“You wedged it open.”
He glanced at the pencil in my hand. “Circumstantial.”
Laughter burst from his phone speaker. Cole reached for it and muted the sound.
“You’re recording this?”
“Technically, they’re listening.”
“They?”
“My teammates.”
“You lost a dare.”
His grin pulled crookedly left. “I prefer honoring a competitive agreement.”
“What do you have to do?”
He hesitated.
“Annoy the employee until she yells?”
“Get escorted out.”
“That’s disappointingly specific.”
“It was Deuce’s idea.”
I held out my hand. “Phone.”
His brows lifted.
“Give it to me, or I call security and let them finish the dare.”
He placed it in my palm.
I turned the volume back on.
Several voices erupted.
“Maddox, make her mad—”
“Ask if she alphabetized the—”
“Is she hot?”
Cole closed his eyes.
I brought the phone closer. “This is Hargrove Library staff. Cole has entered a restricted university collection and admitted all of you are witnesses.”
Silence.
Then someone said, “Abort.”
I ended the call and handed the phone back.
Cole stared at the screen. His shoulders began to shake.
“Are you laughing?”
The laugh escaped anyway, rough and surprised.
“You made Deuce hang up on his own dare.”
“You still need to leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am.”
“What should I call you?”
“Gone.”
He laughed again.
I walked him through the restricted door. On the public side, he tucked his phone away and followed me toward the desk, still quietly laughing.
A calm male voice cut through the sound.
“The fourth floor is supposed to be quiet.”
Bennett stood beside the return slot holding a thick blue book against his hip.
The actual Bennett.
My spine straightened.
Cole looked from him to me. “She gave me the full orientation.”
“I’m sure she did.”
Bennett’s gaze moved to my face.
“Hollis.”
My last name, real this time.
“Hi.”
Brilliant.
He placed Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis on the desk.
“Your point about within-subject correlation was right,” he said. “We reran the model.”
The fantasy returned with cruel precision.
You saw what four people missed.
“That’s good.”
“It saved us from presenting the wrong result.” His eyes held mine for a second. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Cole leaned one elbow on the desk. I could feel him watching me forget how language worked.
Bennett nodded toward the elevators. “I should go. Early lab.”
“Right. Of course.”
He stepped inside the elevator and gave me a small smile before the doors closed.
Then Cole said, “So that’s your polite voice.”
I turned on him. “Leave.”
His grin returned. “There she is.”
At the stairwell, he glanced back.
“Good luck with the quiet thing, good girl.”
Then he was gone.
My face felt hot. Bennett Shaw knew my last name. Cole Maddox still didn’t know my first.
I wasn’t sure which fact bothered me more.
“Amelia?”
Mrs. Alvarez hurried from the elevators with a clipboard against her chest. Only payroll and official forms called me Amelia.
“I have an unusual tutoring assignment,” she said, lowering her voice. “General Chemistry I. Confidential placement. The student’s identity is being withheld until the first session.”
“I’m already carrying a full load.”
“The dean’s office requested our strongest tutor.”
That stopped me.
She passed me the schedule. “Tomorrow night. Nine o’clock. The annex has been approved. The student will bring your confidentiality form, and you’ll sign before tutoring begins.”
No name appeared anywhere on the page. Only a course, a time, and a locked room.
At Westbrook, secrets were the only thing people trusted me with. I signed the assignment acceptance.
