Sixty-eight point two. A D-plus. Dr. Ostroff had highlighted it in red like a verdict.

"Pull organic chem above a C by semester's end, or the Whitfield committee reviews your case." She slid a paper across the desk. "I've arranged a peer tutor. Spencer Hess. Tuesdays and Thursdays, seven PM, Morrison Library, third floor. Mandatory."

"I don't need a tutor." Muscle memory. The old Hadley talking — the one with a 3.8 GPA and color-coded study systems.

Dr. Ostroff looked at me over her glasses. "Your grade says otherwise."

I took the paper. Folded it. Tucked it into my pocket without reading it.

Tuesday came too fast.

Morrison Library, third floor. I was fourteen minutes early because I'd miscalculated the walk and because being early was the only thing I could still control. I found the study room, dropped my bag on a chair, opened my textbook to a random page and stared at a nucleophilic substitution diagram until it turned into abstract art.

Through the window, the parking lot sat two floors below.

A silver sedan pulled in. A woman in the passenger seat leaned across the console and kissed the driver. Long. Deliberate. The kind of kiss that says mine in public.

She got out. Waved as he pulled away. Or tried to.

He didn't pull away immediately. He sat there for a moment, both hands on the wheel. Then he cut the engine and got out.

Tall. Lean. Dark hair that needed a cut. Navy pullover, messenger bag with the look of several abused semesters behind it. He pushed his glasses up with one finger and walked toward the building.

I stepped back from the window.

The door opened four minutes later. He was slightly out of breath — stairs, not elevator, three flights up. He looked like someone who made that choice automatically.

"Hadley Trask?"

"That's me."

He sat across the table, set his bag on the floor, didn't reach for a handshake. I was grateful. My palms were damp and I didn't know why.

He'd brought two coffees. Slid one toward me without asking, angling it so the handle faced my hand.

"Spencer. I've got your syllabus from Dr. Ostroff." He pulled out a scratch pad. "You're behind on mechanisms."

"I'm behind on everything."

He looked at me. Not with pity. Not with the rehearsed brightness of someone who'd read a pamphlet on tutoring techniques. Just a look, direct and without agenda. Something about the steadiness of it made my mask feel thinner than usual.

"Okay," he said. "Tell me what you remember."

I didn't remember anything. Or I remembered everything, but it was locked behind a door I couldn't find the key to. Eight months of grief had colonized the part of my brain that used to hold reaction mechanisms. In its place: static.

"Not much," I said.

He nodded. No reassurance, no visible concern. He drew a carbon chain in four strokes.

"This is your nucleophile. And this one's your electrophile." He tapped the page. "The geometry's right, the charges line up — and the reaction still doesn't go. You know why?"

I looked at the diagram. I actually remembered this. Barely. "Steric hindrance?"

"Steric hindrance." He circled the central carbon. "Everything that should work, works. The electron donor, the charge gradient. But there's too much in the way. The molecule can't get to where it needs to go."

His hands were steady. Long fingers, no hesitation in the lines. On his left hand, a white gold band caught the fluorescent light.

I looked back at the carbon chain. The woman in the parking lot. The kiss.

"So it just — stops?" I said.

"It stops. Sits there with all the right ingredients and does nothing." He flipped to a new page. "Which is why you have to identify the blocker first, before you try to force the reaction."

For a second I thought he was going to say something else. He didn't. He just moved on.

The session lasted fifty-eight minutes. He didn't rush me. He didn't fill my silences with encouragement. When I got something wrong, he waited. When I got something right, he moved on. It was the most comfortable I'd been in a room with another person in eight months, which I immediately decided not to think about.

Then, near the end, he reached for his scratch pad and knocked his pen off the table. It rolled under the bookshelf. He got down on one knee to retrieve it and said, mostly to the floor: "I lose that pen at least once per session. I'm extremely impressive."

I didn't laugh. But the urge was there, which was more than I expected.

At 7:58 he said, "Thursday?"

"Thursday."

I packed my textbook. At the door, I paused and looked back.

He was still at the table, scratch pad open. Hadn't packed up. His left hand was flat against the surface, the ring catching the fluorescent light, and I registered — with the particular clarity of someone who notices things too much — that he wasn't looking at the chemistry.

He was looking at the window.

I walked down to the parking lot. Found my car. Sat in the driver's seat without starting the engine.

I was reaching for my keys when I saw it.

Up on the third floor, framed in the study room window: Spencer standing, backlit, messenger bag over one shoulder. He wasn't looking at the parking lot. He was looking down at his left hand.

He slid the ring off his finger.

Put it in his bag.

I watched him zip the bag closed. Then I started the car and drove away.

I told myself I hadn't seen it. That I'd imagined the whole thing.

I didn't believe it for a second.