Chapter 200
Summer's POV
The Friday morning sun slanted through Tatte's tall windows, turning the Cambridge sidewalk outside into a river of gold. I closed my physics workbook with more force than necessary, the satisfying thump making Kieran glance up from his notes. His pencil—always a pencil, never a pen, because mistakes were temporary in his world—paused mid-equation.
"Done already?" His voice carried that particular tone I'd learned to recognize over the past month of tutoring sessions. Not quite teasing, not quite impressed. Something in between that made my stomach flip.
I reached for my phone, fingers hovering over the stop button on my voice recorder app. The little red dot blinked at me accusingly. Forty-seven minutes and thirty-two seconds of Kieran's voice, explaining projectile motion with that low, careful intensity that made even parabolas sound intimate.
"Why do you always record these sessions?" he asked, watching me fumble with the screen.
Heat crawled up my neck. "For review," I said quickly. Too quickly. His eyebrow lifted—just the left one, the one with the tiny scar cutting through it—and I felt my face betray me completely, turning what Mia called my "strawberry pink."
The truth sat heavy on my tongue: I liked listening to his voice when I couldn't sleep. Liked the way he said my name when I got something right, like he was proud of me. Liked having proof that these afternoons weren't dreams I'd conjured up to rewrite a timeline where we'd never been this close.
"Right," Kieran said, but his mouth quirked at the corner. "Review."
I busied myself organizing my color-coded notes—another habit he'd gently mocked until I'd caught him using the same system for his own physics problems. "I've gotten better though, haven't I? At physics, I mean."
"You've gotten better at pretending to be bad at it." He leaned back in his chair, and I tried not to notice how the afternoon light caught in his dark hair, or how his old St. Jude's hoodie had faded to a softer gray that somehow made his eyes look more intense. "Remember when Lily called you out for faking confusion?"
My face burned hotter. "That was one time—"
"You asked me to explain free fall three different ways." His voice dropped lower, almost playful. It was a sound I'd been hearing more often lately, this lightness creeping into his carefully controlled tones. "And I'm pretty sure you could've taught that lesson yourself."
"Maybe I just liked listening to you explain it." The words escaped before I could stop them, and suddenly the air between us felt different. Thicker. The café's ambient noise—espresso machines hissing, students debating Kant, someone's laptop playing indie folk too loud—faded into background static.
Kieran's gaze held mine for a beat too long. "Maybe I liked explaining it to you."
Outside, the perfect August afternoon was rapidly changing its mind. Through the window, I watched clouds roll in with startling speed, turning the golden light to pewter. A woman with a yoga mat jogged past, glancing nervously at the sky. The trees lining the sidewalk began to sway, their leaves flashing silver undersides.
"Looks like rain," Kieran said, but he wasn't looking at the window. He was looking at my tote bag, slouched against my chair leg like an overstuffed puppy.
I followed his gaze to the bag's gaping mouth, where my Zoom H6 recorder peeked out between sheet music and a dog-eared copy of Anna Karenina. Next to it, carefully wrapped in a silk scarf, sat the Chopin études Ms. Robertson had annotated for me—her spidery handwriting mapping out every dynamic shift, every moment where I needed to "breathe with the phrase, Summer, not against it."
Thunder rumbled, close enough to rattle the café's windows.
"Shit." I grabbed for my phone. 10:47 AM. Ms. Robertson's studio was a fifteen-minute walk in good weather, maybe ten if I jogged. In a downpour, with eight hundred dollars of recording equipment and irreplaceable sheet music?
"I have my lesson at eleven." My voice came out thin. "Ms. Robertson will actually murder me if I'm late again."
The last time I'd been late—two weeks ago, because I'd been too busy rereading Kieran's latest physics notes to notice the time—she'd made me play scales for twenty minutes straight while lecturing about "respect for the craft." My fingers had cramped for days.
Kieran was already moving, shoving his notebook and pencil case into his backpack with efficient, economical movements. "I'll take you."
"You don't have to—"
"Summer." He stood, slinging his backpack over one shoulder. The other shoulder, his right one, he kept carefully loose. Always his right side, protecting the hand that didn't quite work the way it should. "I'm taking you."
It wasn't a question.
The first drops hit as we pushed through Tatte's door, fat and cold and promising worse to come. I clutched my tote bag to my chest, trying to shield it with my body, but Kieran had already spotted the CVS across the street.
"Stay here." He pointed to the coffee shop's narrow awning. "Don't move."
Then he was gone, sprinting through rain that was rapidly graduating from drops to sheets. I watched him disappear into the pharmacy, his figure blurring behind the downpour-streaked glass. My phone buzzed.
Mom: Maya wants to know if you're free for dinner Sunday. She's making her "famous" lasagna.
I grimaced. Maya had been circling like a shark ever since the Shake Shack incident—which she'd somehow heard about despite being in New York that weekend. Her texts had taken on a worried, probing quality that made my skin crawl. Just checking in, sweetie. Your mom mentioned you've been stressed. Want to talk?
No. I didn't want to talk to Maya. I wanted—
The pharmacy door swung open and Kieran emerged, plastic bag swinging from his left hand. Even from across the street, I could see he was soaked through, his hoodie plastered to his shoulders, his hair dripping into his eyes. He didn't seem to notice.
He jogged back across the street—carefully, because his right hand made quick movements risky—and ducked under the awning beside me. Up close, he looked like he'd jumped into the Charles River fully clothed.
"You're drenched," I said stupidly.