Mia adjusted the strap on her shoulder bag as she stepped out of the MARTA station, the chilly November breeze catching her hair and sending a shiver up her spine. She walked for a while following the signs to GT until she paused in front of Smith Hall and gnced around for a campus phone.

  She spotted one in a half-open gss booth under the dorm’s awning and slipped inside, immediately wrinkling her nose. The phone smelled like sweaty coins and questionable life choices. She punched in the number Marisol had scribbled down.

  Four rings.

  Then: “Hello?”

  “It’s Mia. I’m outside.”

  A pause. Then Bharath’s warm voice: “Be right down.”

  She hung up and stepped back onto the sidewalk, exhaling steam in the crisp air.

  And then... she noticed it.

  Windows. Dozens of them.

  All across Smith Hall, windows had heads peeking out like meerkats during a thunderstorm. Some had pressed their faces to the gss. Others were pulling friends to the window, pointing and whispering. One guy held up a small cardboard sign that said “WHO IS SHE???”

  Mia blinked. “Okay… what the hell?”

  The door swung open.

  Bharath jogged out in a sweatshirt and jeans, hair slightly mussed, face glowing with that annoyingly kind expression he always wore like a second skin.

  “Hey!” he called.

  Mia couldn’t help but smile. “Hey yourself.”

  As he reached her, the collective movement behind the gss intensified. Curtains twitched. Blinds shifted. At least three guys scrambled to get better angles.

  “Are they always this… creepy?” she asked under her breath.

  Bharath followed her gaze and sighed. “It’s... gotten worse.”

  Mia crossed her arms. “Why? Is this about that girl you rescued at MARTA? Because I thought they gave you a thank-you card or something. This feels like you’re in a boy band.”

  “No, it’s... not just that.”

  Before she could press further, two guys burst out of the building and paused mid-run when they saw her.

  “Is that her?” one whispered loudly.

  “No way. She’s, like, beyond hot,” the other muttered. “That’s an 11. At least.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  They backed up immediately, mumbling apologies, then fled.

  “Okay what is going on?” she asked, genuinely baffled.

  A third guy leaned out the lobby door and yelled, “Hey Bharath, what’s your cologne again?!”

  “Wild Stone!” Bharath called back automatically.

  The door smmed shut.

  Mia turned. “Wild Stone? Seriously? That stuff smells like high school locker rooms and budget hotel soap.”

  Bharath looked genuinely offended. “Hey! It’s not that bad! My cousin gave it to me before I flew out.”

  “Well, it’s clearly enchanted.” She squinted up at the dorm windows again. “They’re looking at you like you’re Brad Pitt dipped in gold.”

  He winced. “Apparently Marisol already threw it out. Twice. Someone doesn’t understand the value of Wild Stone.”

  Mia snorted. “Good. But someone needs to tell your fan club.”

  As they began walking toward the library, Mia noticed more people giving them a once-over. A girl at the vending machine did a double take so aggressive she tripped on her own backpack. Two guys paused mid-conversation and followed them with their eyes like radar dishes.

  Mia leaned in. “Are you secretly on the cover of TIME or something?”

  Bharath chuckled, “Not unless they have a new ‘Most Confused Engineering Student’ list.”

  “Well,” she muttered, “you’re clearly hot campus property now.”

  As they rounded a corner toward the library, two freshmen ran past them-one held a tiny notepad, the other was muttering something about pheromones and ‘ambient charisma levels.’

  “Did they just take samples of your aura?” Mia whispered.

  “Don't look at them,” Bharath muttered, clearly mortified. “It only encourages them.”

  Mia walked a bit closer to him, amused and a little stunned. The attention wasn’t just about him being hot-though, okay, he was definitely hot now. He had this lean, clean strength about him. That hoodie wasn’t hiding much. His shoulders had filled out. His forearms looked like he could lift her with one arm and recite poetry with the other.

  And he had a butt.

  Mia had spent her entire academic life walking down hallways like she owned them. At her school, she was that girl. But this… this was a different level. The way people whispered his name. The way eyes followed them. She wasn’t even sure they were looking at her. They were looking at him.

  Which was... new.

  Inside the library, things didn’t calm down. If anything, the gawking intensified. A guy by the payphone hung up mid-call. A girl behind the check-out desk elbowed her coworker so hard he dropped a stack of index cards.

  “Tell me something,” Mia muttered as they passed a shelf of whispering juniors. “Do you, like, read poetry in the quad at midnight? Or have you cured cancer?”

  Bharath kept walking like he hadn’t heard.

  “Don’t ignore me. This is weird.”

  “I know it’s weird,” he said finally. “It just… started happening.”

  “After the mugging?”

  “Yeah. Then it got... exponential.”

  They reached a group study room and he opened the door for her. “Here. I booked this one earlier.”

  Mia walked in, gncing back to find-yes. A guy had followed them. He didn’t even try to hide it. He was pretending to browse the encyclopedias while staring through the gss like it was SeaWorld and Bharath was the prized dolphin.

  “What is this?” she muttered. “A zoo exhibit?”

  “Ignore him,” Bharath said, pulling out a chair and grabbing his notebook. “They’ll leave once they realize I’m about to teach calculus.”

  “Unless they think your math voice is sexy.”

  He gave her a look.

  She grinned. “Just saying. You’ve got ‘academic heartthrob’ energy.”

  He took a deep breath and opened her textbook, flipping past dog-eared pages with a kind of calm precision that Mia found deeply unfair.

  “Here,” he said. “You were stuck on some of the basics?”

  “Yeah,” she said, trying to focus as a shadow flickered past the window.

  She leaned closer. “But seriously-what is it? Did you write a viral chain email about being soulful and brooding and sensitive?”

  He looked up. “You think I’m brooding?”

  “No, but apparently someone does.

  He grinned. “Maybe it’s the Wild Stone.”

  Mia ughed. “God, I hope not. That cologne smells like my cousin's gym bag.”

  “Hey-my cousin swore it would make me irresistible. And it did!”

  “To who? Mosquitoes?”

  He paused, dramatically solemn. “It did get me tackled by two girls once.”

  Mia blinked. “Wait-seriously?”

  He froze.

  She narrowed her eyes. “What kind of tackle are we talking about? Fg football or… Cosmo Magazine?”

  “I meant metaphorically,” he said too quickly.

  She filed that reaction away for ter.

  They settled into the lesson, and for a while, the world beyond the study room faded. Bharath was focused, articute, and-of course-patient to a fault. He didn’t treat her like she was stupid. He never rushed her. He even made bad math jokes, which she secretly appreciated.

  But every so often, Mia would gnce up and see someone lingering by the door or pretending to fix the water fountain across the hall.

  Fifteen minutes in, she dropped her pencil and whispered, “Are those two girls… passing notes about you?”

  He looked.

  They were.

  Another ten minutes passed. The air cleared. The math clicked. Mia felt her brain untangle itself a little-and that warm, steady presence beside her felt weirdly… grounding. Like being near him made her sharper. Better.

  At one point, he shifted to reach her notebook and his shoulder brushed hers.

  She looked over.

  He didn’t flinch.

  He just smiled.

  And suddenly, the buzz outside didn’t matter. The fan club. The whispering. The stupid cologne. None of it.

  What mattered was that he was here. Patient. Funny. Kind.

  The problem set was going well-too well.

  Bharath sat beside her, posture calm, voice smooth, his focus entirely on the equations he was patiently expining. She nodded along, asking the right questions, solving the next one before he could finish expining it.

  But underneath all of it, another question pulsed louder than any math problem:

  Does he see me the way I see him?

  She’d wondered since that second dinner. Since the tutoring offer. Since he’d looked her in the eyes and told her she was smart, capable, and worth the effort. No one said things like that unless they meant something. Or maybe he did. Because Bharath was frustratingly sincere.

  Still, it gnawed at her.

  She took off her hoodie and leaned forward slightly, letting her arm brush against his as she worked a step. When he shifted slightly to accommodate her, she took it a bit further-adjusting how she sat. Her blouse, carefully chosen that morning, slid just enough to show the curve of cleavage she knew was… well, impressive.

  Bharath gnced-just a flick of his eyes, so fast it might have been imagination.

  But it wasn’t.

  Mia bit back a smile.

  “You’re quiet,” she said softly.

  “I’m letting you think,” he replied.

  “I like it when you watch me think.”

  Bharath looked up, blinked once, and then flushed-not wildly, just a faint hue, but it was there.

  Oh, he noticed.

  Encouraged, Mia leaned her chin on her hand, elbow resting just enough to gently press her breasts together. She asked a question about parabos that even she knew the answer to. As he leaned in to respond, she exhaled softly in his direction.

  Outside the gss wall, a ripple of movement.

  One of the note-passing girls gasped and ducked.

  Another guy elbowed his friend hard and made some ridiculous gestures.

  Mia fought back a smirk.

  She turned slightly toward Bharath, knowing that he was getting an eyeful of her cleavage, watching him flounder for a beat before regaining control. His pencil paused mid-air. His throat bobbed with a swallow.

  “You okay?” she asked, batting her shes with just enough irony to let him almost catch her game.

  “I’m-fine,” he said, carefully looking back at the math.

  Victory.

  Sort of.

  Because even though it thrilled her to know he did see her-not just as a Rivera sibling, but as a woman-he still didn’t take the bait. He stayed gentlemanly, noble to the end. A little flustered, maybe. A little distracted.

  But not disrespectful.

  And somehow… that made her like him even more.