Marisol walked out of the bookstore and into the thick Georgia heat, her arms aching from the weight of overpriced textbooks and her chest buzzing with something she refused to call nerves.

  That boy - Bharath - he’d been sweet. In a way she hadn’t seen in a long time. Not polished. Not trying to be cool. Just... awkward and oddly sincere. He didn’t know how to flirt. Which was the only reason she hadn’t immediately dismissed him like the rest.

  She gnced over her shoulder. The boys were still back there, ughing about something. Probably Tyrel trying too hard again. She smirked.

  Bharath was different.

  But so was her father. Once.

  She didn’t talk about him - not to anyone at Tech, and barely even to Mia.

  Her dad had left when she was just a baby. Packed up and gone before her sister had even turned six months old. According to her mother, he said something ridiculous like, “This isn’t the life I imagined.” He was apparently working at a car dealership at the time. One day, he stopped showing up to work and to home.

  The st thing they heard was that he’d moved to Tampa with some girl ten years younger - a waitress who used to flirt with him at the diner.

  That was it. That was the end of their family.

  Marisol’s mom never begged him to come back. Never cried in front of them even though she had barely been older than Marisol was right now. She just went to work. Took evening shifts at the grocery store. Cleaned houses on the weekends. Paid the bills. Kept her hair tied back in a bun and never brought another man home again.

  Watching her mom hold it together like that? It taught Marisol two things early: Men can leave; You don’t fall apart when they do. Still, that hadn’t stopped her from getting curious.

  Her first kiss had been in middle school - behind the gym after a school dance. She couldn’t even remember the boy’s name anymore. Just the scratchy polyester of his dress shirt and the way he smelled like Axe body spray and Juicy Fruit.

  Then in high school, it was Jeremy. Tall, part of the yearbook club, always borrowing her notes. He’d called her “beautiful” once and it had made her chest tighten in all the wrong ways. They’d dated two months - if you could call sharing fries at the mall food court dating.

  Then came Carlos.

  The one she really thought might be different.

  He made her a mix CD. Said he’d drive her to prom. Prom never happened. Because three weeks before, she caught him making out with a junior near the parking lot, their hands on each other like they were in a telenove.

  Now?

  Now she didn’t fall for anything.

  She liked her boundaries. Her headphones. Her schedule.

  And yet here she was - thinking about a boy who barely said ten words in a row without stumbling over one. Who looked at her like she was a page in a textbook he couldn’t believe he got to read.

  And maybe that’s what scared her most.

  He wasn’t trying. He was just being... him.

  She crossed the quad slowly, letting the crowd thin around her. The sun was lower now, staining the sky with that soft orange haze that always made Atnta look prettier than it had any right to.

  Her fingers adjusted the strap of her backpack, her mind repying the way Bharath had looked at her when she teased him.

  Not flustered in the gross, twitchy way guys did when they were thinking about what you looked like naked. Flustered like... he didn’t know where to look because he was too busy trying to not mess up the moment.

  That was rare. Especially here. Especially now.

  She’d already had two guys ask her what club she was joining “because a girl like you can’t go unnoticed,” and one of them had winked - winked - while gncing at her chest. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Gross.

  Marisol hadn’t wanted to go to Tech at first.

  She’d gotten into other schools - smaller, private ones that were more artsy. But Tech had the better program. Better schorships. Closer to home, too, even if she told everyone that didn’t matter.

  Her mom cried when the acceptance letter came. Said her daughter was going to be an enginera - even if it was Computer Science and not civil like her uncle in Havana.

  She wasn’t doing this for her mom, not entirely. But it helped, knowing she could look back one day and say, “We made it.”

  She stepped onto the path near the fountains, the sound of water bubbling under the hum of cicadas.

  She thought again of Bharath’s face - stunned, a little sweaty, almost boyish in its ck of guile.

  He wasn’t hot in the obvious way. He didn’t walk like he owned the pce. He didn’t look like he had a list of ex-girlfriends back home. His T-shirt wasn’t even ironed properly.

  But something about him - the quiet eyes, the unassuming posture - it made her pause.

  Was he real?

  Was this just a phase for him - a wide-eyed international student trying to find his way, saying nice things because he didn’t know the rules of the game yet?

  Or had he really meant it when he said she looked like she belonged in a music video?

  Stupid line.

  Stupidly effective.

  But Bharath... didn’t seem like he was waiting for anything. Not approval. Not leverage. Not an opening to sneak a hand somewhere it didn’t belong.

  He just looked gd to be speaking with her. Like someone had granted him permission to walk in a dream for five minutes.

  It made her chest ache, just a little. Maybe she’d keep an eye on him.

  Not too close. Not too soon.

  But if he showed up to css tomorrow, sat near her, maybe she’d... leave space in her notebook margin. A gesture. A start. She wasn’t stupid. She knew people could pretend. She knew how boys could look at you like you were special - right up until they found someone easier, quieter, shinier. She wasn’t going to be fooled again.

  But if Bharath was really that rare kind of boy? The kind who didn’t just see your face but also your effort - the weight of your days, the pressure in your smile - then maybe...

  Maybe he was worth watching.

  For now.