"Mm-hm, I should be done around eight?"

"Yes that works." ....Lucien does his very best to specifically not think about her smile. His best isn't very good today, apparently.

"See you." And off she goes with her careful gait.

Lucien flops on his bed, cries, and calls his parents. It is not a short call.

She is done around eight and drifts in the indicated direction!

"-yes I'd love your help on my economics homework in person dad, but I don't think that's actually sufficient reason to visit, and if I did I'd still feel guilty for having a crush on her and she'd feel worse for not having me around and I'd feel guilty about that as well and it would all be worse."

- wait what does he have a girlfriend -

- no, that is not the actual implication of the -

- why did he have to say something like that -

- she is going to march out of earshot and sit on that bench under that tree and cry into her knees.

It's going to take Lucien another few minutes to wrap up his call, at which point he'll manage to get out of bed and notice that for some reason his roommate left the window open again, which explains how cold it is.

- oh no it's 8:02.... And still no sign of Isabella but that's no excuses for him being late. He throws on his coat and goes to wait for her outside his dorm.

She's over there, if he looks around.

.... that expression he can read and it's not a good one!

"Is-um. Everything okay?"

"I was going to wait inside but your window is pretty close to the door - and you were still on the phone -"

"-and my roommate left the window open."

"Mhm."

"Um. Did you hear.... Uh." It is sort of obvious given that there's really only one thing she could have heard.

"Mhm."

"Sorry."

"You didn't do anything wrong, it's just - it's going to wear off after it's been a week, so -"

"Yeah." And then she'll hate him. Which isn't as bad as the part where he's being terrible to her right now but is still pretty bad.

"But right now I'm pretty upset about the prospect of abandoning you when that happens."

"Oh. I um. Will be okay? If that is what you are worried about?" Eventually. He assumes.

"I hope so. I mean, probably. People get over crushes all the time, just."

"I'm um. Not really sure what comes after the just in that sentence. I don't think I'm very good at modeling what you are thinking about.... any of this. But if you would rather not talk about this we could also just not talk about this."

"Okay."