Nothing happened on Tuesday, which was, after the last week, almost suspicious.
Garrett went to two lectures, took notes he’d probably reread once before the exam and never again, and queued for a sandwich behind someone spending an unreasonable amount of time deciding between two nearly identical wraps. Daniel met him outside the library at midday, already mid-complaint about a seminar reading nobody had apparently done, himself included.
"It’s four pages, Daniel."
"Four pages of nothing. It’s the same sentence six times with different footnotes."
"Sounds like most of your essays."
"That’s fair, actually."
They found a bench that was more shade than sun and split the last of Garrett’s crisps, which had become enough of a routine over the past fortnight that neither of them bothered asking anymore.
"Your neighbour," Daniel said, out of nowhere, around a mouthful of crisps. "Freya. I’ve been noticing her a bit...I Think she’s actually interesting."
Garrett looked at him properly for the first time since they’d sat down. "Since when?"
"Since a while. Library, mostly. She’s sharp. Argues with people properly, doesn’t just agree to be polite." Daniel shrugged, a little more carefully than the shrug usually needed. "I don’t know. She’s interesting."
"You’ve been watching my neighbour."
"I’ve been noticing her. Different verb."
"Sounds like the same verb wearing a jumper."
Daniel threw a crisp at him, which Garrett caught and ate, which felt like the correct response.
"Anyway," Daniel said, "I just thought you should know. In case it’s weird. Her being your neighbour and everything."
"Why would it be weird."
"I don’t know, you tell me. You’re the one who knows her."
Garrett didn’t have a quick answer for that, and it took him a second to work out why.
He hadn’t actually seen Freya in a while.
Not at the flat, not the corridor by the lifts, not the library where she’d apparently been sharp enough to hold Daniel’s attention for however long this had been going on. He ran back through the last week or so and came up with nothing concrete, no run-in in the stairwell, no printer favour, nothing since their last conversation, which had ended awkwardly enough that neither of them had seemed particularly interested in continuing it.
He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d seen her.
That sat there for a second, unresolved, next to the low, half-formed thought that maybe that wasn’t entirely a coincidence, that maybe whatever had gone sideways between them last time had made her go quiet on purpose. He didn’t chase it any further than that. It wasn’t the kind of thought that improved with more attention.
"You’ve gone somewhere," Daniel said.
"Just thinking."
"About Freya?"
"About the fact that I apparently haven’t seen her in a week and only just noticed."
Daniel considered that with more concern than Garrett had expected. "That’s not very neighbourly of you."
"She’s not exactly banging on my door either."
"Fair point." Daniel finished the crisps. "Anyway. Not trying to make it weird. Just thought I’d mention it before I did something embarrassing, like ask her out and find out you’d already called dibs years ago."
"There’s no dibs, Daniel."
"Good. Because I wasn’t going to respect them anyway."
The afternoon went back to being an afternoon. Garrett had a seminar he actually needed to pay attention to, an essay plan he’d been putting off that wasn’t going to plan itself, and a specific hunger that meant proper food rather than crisps split on a bench. Daniel peeled off toward his own timetable somewhere around two, still talking about the four-page reading like it had personally wronged him.
Garrett didn’t think about Freya again for a while. There wasn’t a version of the thought that led anywhere useful, and he had enough else going on without adding a mystery he had no evidence for.
By early evening he was walking back from the library the long way, past the row of shops with the bakery that always smelled better than its actual bread tasted, running through the essay plan in his head, whether the second point needed its own paragraph or could fold into the first, whether he had enough for the word count without padding it out with something he didn’t fully believe.
He was three streets from his flat, deep enough in the paragraph problem that he’d stopped noticing much of what was actually around him, when someone fell into step close behind him.
He didn’t clock it straight away, footsteps on a street with other footsteps rarely meant anything.
Then a hand, landing softly on his shoulder.
"Hello."
Garrett turned.