By the time we’d finished the second round — her idea, not mine, though I hadn’t fought it — I reached for my wallet out of pure instinct, the same automatic motion I’d make at any restaurant, with anyone.
"Already handled," she said, before I’d even gotten it fully out of my pocket.
I looked around for the waiter, for a receipt, for anything — some visible moment I could point to and say ’there, that’s when it happened’ — and came up with nothing. No card exchanged in front of me. No signature, no tap, no pause where a total might have registered. Just her, perfectly relaxed, like the entire transaction had taken place somewhere outside of time I was allowed to witness.
"When did you even—"
"Does it matter?"
It probably shouldn’t have. And yet it sat there anyway, one more small, unexplained thing added to a pile that was starting to feel less like a pile and more like a pattern.
I filed it away without saying anything, the same way I’d filed away the desk, and the chair, and the couch that wasn’t a repurposed waiting-room reject.
We took the elevator down together, quiet in a comfortable way rather than an awkward one, and walked the two blocks back toward where I’d parked. She didn’t ask why it was two blocks. Didn’t comment on the walk at all, actually. Just fell into step beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world, hands tucked into her jacket pockets, heels clicking evenly against the pavement.
I unlocked the car and opened her door before she could reach for it herself. She paused for half a second, glanced at me, and got in without a word — though the small smile she wore doing it told me she’d noticed.
I circled around, got in, and started the engine.
"Where to?"
"This is normally the part where I’d say ’my place or yours,’" she said, entirely too pleased with herself, "but I’m fairly certain you’d stop talking to me altogether."
"I wouldn’t stop talking to you." I pulled out onto the street. "I’d just change schools."
That got an actual laugh out of her — the real one, sudden and a little too loud for the car, the kind that made her cover her mouth like she hadn’t meant to let it out that big.
I glanced over, caught the tail end of it, and shook my head. "But seriously, where to?"
"My place." A beat, then she raised a finger before I could react. "Just... to drop me off."
"Wasn’t going to say anything."
"You were thinking it."
"I wasn’t."
"You were." But she was smiling.
I didn’t argue further, mostly because she wasn’t wrong, and I’d learned by now that arguing a point she’d already won just extended how long she got to enjoy having won it.
She gave me the address, and I drove. Every so often I caught her looking at me out of the corner of my eye, not bothering to hide it when I glanced over, like being caught wasn’t a concern in the first place. If anything, she seemed to want me to notice. I pretended not to, mostly because I didn’t trust myself to know what to do with it if I acknowledged it directly.
The address took us out of downtown and into a quieter, tree-lined stretch of the city. The kind of neighborhood where the houses got progressively less visible from the street the further you went, tucked behind hedges and gates like privacy was simply part of the architecture.
She directed me through one more turn, then: "Here."
I pulled up in front of a two-story house set back from the road, modern but warm with clean lines, floor-to-ceiling windows on the second level lit from within, and past the side gate, the unmistakable blue shimmer of a pool.
I sat there for a second, hands still on the wheel, doing the same quiet math I’d been doing all night.
It still wasn’t adding up to anything I liked the shape of.
She noticed. Of course she did. She’d been reading me all night, catching every hesitation before I’d even finished having it.
"You’ve gone quiet," she said, watching me instead of moving to get out.
"Just admiring the architecture."
"Nathan."
"It’s a nice house."
"Nathan."
I exhaled, finally looking over at her instead of the house. "Okay. Fine. I’m doing the math, and the math is starting to feel less like ’comfortable professor’ and more like ’should I be worried you’re just slumming it, and I’m just this month’s hobby.’"
It came out sharper than I meant it to. I heard it the second it left my mouth, half a beat too late to take any of it back.
She didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile, actually, which somehow made the moment feel heavier than it already was. "Is that what you think this is?"
"I don’t know what to think. That’s kind of the problem."
She studied me for a second, quiet in a way she hadn’t been all night.
"It’s not a game, Nathan. None of it has been." A pause. "I know how this looks from where you’re sitting. I do. But the house isn’t the point, and it was never supposed to be part of tonight. I didn’t bring you here to show it off."
"Then why does it feel like it’s suddenly the only thing in the car."
She paused, longer this time, like she was deciding whether to actually say the next part.
"I took a cab tonight," she said finally, "because I wanted a reason to end up back in this car. Not because I needed a ride. I have plenty of ways home that don’t involve you at all. I just... I wanted the twenty extra minutes with you."
She reached for the door handle, then paused again, looking back at me.
"I like you. I’ve liked you since the rain, and that was before you knew I taught your class, or you’d seen the desk, or, or even the bill. This just... happens to be where I live."
She hesitated, something almost uncertain crossing her face for the first time all night.
"You’re not going to disappear on me over this, are you?"
I stared at her for a moment, then exhaled.
"You might not know this, but I don’t even know what to call you. Professor Collins. Nicole. I—" I stopped, because that alone summed up most of what I was actually trying to say. "This was already complicated before tonight. I still haven’t figured out what I’m supposed to do with any of it, and now there’s this too."
She was quiet for a second, then softened, like she’d decided to make at least one part of this easier for me.
"How about this," she said. "You call me Nicole. Always. Outside of class, you don’t have to call me anything else." A small, wry smile. "In class — Professor Collins, obviously. Unless you’re planning on marrying me, in which case, you’d have grounds to argue for something more casual."
I huffed a laugh despite myself.
She smiled wider, watching me do it.
"So. Does that mean you’re no longer disappearing on me?"
I stared at her for a moment, still half-smiling, before answering.
"How do you even do that?" I said, mostly to myself, not really expecting an answer.
"Do what?" She tilted her chin up slightly, already grinning like she knew exactly what I meant and just wanted to hear me say it. "Turn a serious conversation into a joke and somehow still walk away with the exact answer I wanted?"
I nodded slowly, still smiling.
"Because I’m a genius. It’s been medically confirmed. Multiple times. By multiple universities."
That got a real laugh out of me. She watched me do it, grinning like she’d been hoping for exactly that reaction.
"Thank you," she said finally, "for dinner." A small pause. "Even though it was just wine."
I smirked. "Sure."
She reached for the door handle and opened it, then stopped. Faced me again. Her mouth opened, like she meant to say something, then she seemed to change her mind entirely.
"I’m not going to say goodnight yet."
I made a face. "No?"
She gave a small nod. It felt more like reassurance than an answer. "I’ll text it." Her eyes dropped from mine, a faint color rising to her cheeks, gone almost as quickly as it appeared. "Right before I go to bed."
And then she bolted. Well, not bolted exactly, but it felt like it. Heels striking fast against the pavement, straight up the walk, not once looking back, like putting distance between us was the only way to actually get herself moving.
I sat there for a second, watching her go, then laughed quietly to myself, at absolutely nothing and everything at once.
I looked at the house once more — the lit windows, the pool shimmering faintly past the gate, all of it — and exhaled.
Then I drove off, no closer to figuring out what to do with any of it than I’d been five minutes ago.