The library smelled like old paper and dust and the faint chemical tang of photocopier toner. I guided Chloe through the maze of shelves, my hand firm on her arm, feeling the fine tremor running through her like a live wire.

"You're shaking," I murmured, not slowing down.

"I'm not shaking." Her voice was pitched higher than usual, a full octave above her usual dry drawl. "I'm vibrating with confidence."

I squeezed her arm once, quick and reassuring. "You're gonna be fine. He's going to look at you like you hung the moon, and you're going to smile and say hi, and the rest will take care of itself."

She didn't answer. Her coffee cup—gripped like a lifeline, white-knuckled—trembled in her free hand, and I could see the faint sheen of sweat at her hairline despite the library's aggressive air conditioning.

We rounded the last stack, and there he was.

Isaac hunched over a calculus textbook at the corner table, his pencil tapping a rhythm I recognized from Chloe's description—three quick beats, a pause, two more. The same pattern she'd traced on my bedroom wall with her finger while telling me about the boy she'd been watching for months.

His head was down, dark hair falling across his forehead, one hand buried in a bag of chips while the other worked through a problem. He looked comfortable in his own skin in a way that surprised me—not awkward, not performing, just there, existing in his own world of numbers and snack food.

At the same table, Marcus sat with his back to us, his broad shoulders hunched over what looked like the same calculus textbook. His pencil was still.

My heart did something complicated in my chest. I ignored it.

"There," I breathed, low enough that only Chloe could hear. "Told you. Right where I said he'd be."

Isaac's pencil paused mid-tap. His head lifted, caught by the sound of our footsteps or the shift in the air, and his whole face transformed when he saw us.

Not us. Her.

His eyes landed on Chloe and stayed there, and I watched recognition flicker—not the kind that comes from being introduced, but the kind that comes from having noticed someone across a room more times than you'd ever admit. His cheeks flushed a deep, honest red.

Chloe's hand tightened on her coffee cup until I thought the cardboard might collapse.

I stepped forward, pulling her with me, and made the introduction simple. Easy. Nothing that could spook either of them.

"Isaac, this is Chloe. She's been wanting to say hi."

The words landed like a stone in still water, sending ripples through both of them. Isaac's pencil clattered onto the table. Chloe's coffee cup stopped trembling because she'd stopped breathing.

"Hi," Chloe managed, and her voice cracked on the single syllable, and I loved her for it because it was real.

Isaac stood up so fast his chair scraped against the linoleum, a sound that echoed through the quiet library like a gunshot. He flinched, glancing around, then turned back to Chloe with an expression of such naked hopefulness that I felt something soften in my chest despite myself.

"H-hi," he said, and his voice was exactly what I'd expected—warm, a little nervous, genuine. "You're—I mean, I've seen you. At the library. The, uh, the main branch. You sit by the window."

Chloe blinked. "You noticed that?"

"You have a specific way of turning pages," Isaac said, and then looked like he wanted to swallow the words. "That's—that's not creepy. I promise. I just—you turn them like you're being careful with them. Like they matter."

The silence that followed was the good kind. The kind where two people are looking at each other and forgetting the rest of the world exists.

I took a step back. Then another. Neither of them noticed.

I slid into the empty chair beside Marcus.

His pencil had stopped moving before I sat down—had been stopped, I realized, since the moment I'd rounded the stacks. His hazel eyes were already on me, the question in them unspoken but loud enough to fill the whole corner of the library.

I let myself settle, let the moment breathe. The table was worn smooth under my fingertips, a groove carved by years of students leaning on the same spot. The lamp cast a warm circle of light across the open textbook, and Marcus's hand rested near the edge of that circle, his fingers long and still.

"Hey," I said softly.

His jaw tightened, just slightly, before he spoke. "Hey."

No stutter. Just that single syllable, low and careful, like he was testing whether he could trust his own voice.

I glanced over my shoulder. Chloe had taken the seat across from Isaac, her coffee cup finally lowered to the table, her shoulders no longer screaming tension. Isaac was leaning forward, talking with his hands now, gesturing at something in his textbook, and Chloe was smiling—a real smile, not the wry one she used with me, but something softer, younger.

"It worked," I said, turning back to Marcus. "Both of them."

I leaned in close enough that my hair brushed his arm, the silk of it catching on the fabric of his hoodie. I felt him go still beneath the touch, felt the tension that ran through him like a current.

He didn't pull away.

"What do you mean, both of them?" His voice was rougher now, and he cleared his throat, glancing toward Isaac and Chloe before his eyes found mine again. "You set them up?"

"I introduced them." I let my hand rest on the table, close to his but not touching. "The rest is up to them."

He was quiet for a moment, processing. His hazel eyes searched mine, and I let him look, let him try to figure out the puzzle I kept handing him piece by piece.

"You planned this," he said finally. Not a question.

"I told you I was going to introduce Chloe to Isaac." I shrugged, making it light. "I keep my promises."

The words hung between us, weighted with something neither of us was saying. I kept my promises. To Chloe. To Isaac. To anyone I cared about.

To him.

His gaze dropped to my hand on the table, then back up to my face. "And Tony? You said something about Tony, too."

"Mariana's meeting him in the courtyard." I let a small smile play at the corner of my mouth. "I texted her this morning. She's a friend from my psych class—funny, smart, loves comic book movies even if she doesn't read the comics. I thought they'd get along."

Marcus blinked. "You thought—you've been thinking about this?"

"I've been thinking about a lot of things."

His breath caught. I heard it, the tiny hitch in his chest, and I filed it away like a precious thing.

The library hummed around us—the fluorescent lights, the distant shuffle of someone reshelving books, the low murmur of Isaac and Chloe's conversation behind us. A page turned. A chair creaked. And Marcus Hayes sat beside me, his pencil abandoned, his full attention on my face like he was trying to memorize it.

"Why?" he asked, and the question was smaller than I expected. Quieter. Like he was afraid of the answer.

"Why what?"

"Why are you doing all this?" He gestured vaguely—at Chloe and Isaac, at the library, at the whole complicated web I'd been weaving. "Setting people up. Coming to the math room. Sitting with us at lunch. Why?"

I could have deflected. Could have made a joke, or shrugged, or said something about being a nice person. But I looked at his face—at the scar through his left eyebrow, at the way his jaw was set like he was bracing for something—and I decided to give him a piece of the truth.

"Because I like your friends," I said. "And I like spending time with them. And I like—" I paused, let the words sit on my tongue, let him wait for them. "I like the way you look at me when you think I'm not paying attention."

The flush that spread across his cheeks was immediate and vivid, creeping up from his neck to his ears to his face. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.

"I—I don't—" He stopped, took a breath, and I watched him steady himself the way I'd seen him do a dozen times now. "I don't know what you mean."

"Yes you do." I said it gently, the way you'd correct a child who was pretending not to understand. "You look at me, Marcus. And I look back."

The fluorescent hum filled the space between us. A book thumped somewhere in the stacks. Chloe laughed—a real, surprised laugh—and Isaac joined in, his voice warm and pleased.

But at our corner of the table, the air had gone still and charged, like the moment before a storm breaks.

Marcus's hand moved. Just an inch. His pinky brushed against mine on the table, a contact so light I could have imagined it.

I didn't imagine it.

I held my breath, letting the touch sit where it was, letting him decide whether to pull away or press closer. His skin was warm, his knuckle resting against the side of my finger, and the contact felt like a promise I hadn't asked for but desperately wanted to keep.

"I don't know what to do with you," he said, and his voice cracked on the last word, and it was the most honest thing anyone had said to me in weeks.

"You don't have to do anything," I said. "Just—keep looking at me. I'll figure out the rest."

He let out a breath, half laugh, half something else. "That's terrifying."

"Good." I let my finger curl, just slightly, hooking around his. "Terrifying means you're paying attention."

Behind us, Isaac's voice rose with excitement. "No way, you've actually read the Invincible compendium? The whole thing?"

"Three times," Chloe said, and her voice had lost its nervous edge entirely, settling into something confident and warm. "The first time was for the plot. The second was for the art. The third was because I couldn't sleep and it was the only thing on my nightstand."

I smiled at the table, at the grain of the wood, at the way Marcus's pinky stayed hooked around mine.

"See?" I murmured. "It's working."

Marcus's thumb moved, just a fraction, brushing over the side of my hand. "You're scary good at this."

"I know."

He huffed a laugh, and the sound was surprised out of him, like I'd caught him off guard. His eyes met mine, and there was something new there—something less guarded, more willing to be seen.

"I should probably check on them," I said, nodding toward Chloe and Isaac without letting go of his hand. "Make sure they haven't scared each other off."

"They look fine," Marcus said, and his voice was steadier now, more sure. "They look—good."

We both watched them for a moment. Isaac was leaning across the table, pointing at something in his textbook—a graph, maybe, or a diagram—and Chloe was nodding along, her chin propped on her hand, her smile real and unguarded.

"I should go check on Tony, though," I said, and reluctantly pulled my hand back. The absence of his touch felt like a small loss. "Make sure Mariana didn't scare him into a bush."

Marcus's hand stayed where it was, like he was waiting for mine to come back. "He's in the courtyard. Practicing math problems on the bench by the fountain."

"I know." I stood, smoothed down my skirt, and looked at him. "I'll be back."

"I know."

Two words, simple and quiet, and they hit me harder than any grand confession could have. He knew I'd come back. Not because I'd promised, but because he believed I would.

I walked away before I could say something I wasn't ready to say.

The courtyard was bright after the dim library, the afternoon sun casting long shadows across the stone benches. Tony sat by the fountain, a notebook open on his knee, his pencil moving in quick, confident strokes. He was alone.

For a moment, I felt a spike of worry—had Mariana bailed? Had she texted me saying she couldn't make it and I'd missed the message?

Then I heard her laugh, bright and melodic, from somewhere behind the fountain, and a moment later Mariana emerged with two cans of soda, her dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, her smile wide and genuine.

"—and then he said, 'That's not a parabola, that's my lunch schedule,' and I almost choked," Mariana was saying, and Tony was grinning—actually grinning, his whole face transformed by it.

"That's terrible," he said, but he was laughing. "That's objectively terrible math humor."

"Terrible math humor is the only kind of math humor." Mariana settled onto the bench beside him, handing him one of the sodas. Their shoulders brushed, and neither of them moved away.

I hung back, watching from the doorway, a smile tugging at my lips despite myself. Mariana had that effect—she could make anyone feel at ease, could find common ground with a brick wall if she tried. And Tony, who I'd only ever seen animated about comic books and math problems, was talking with his hands again, explaining something that made Mariana throw her head back and laugh.

Another one landing. Another piece sliding into place.

I turned away, giving them their privacy, and let myself feel the quiet satisfaction of a plan executed exactly the way I'd imagined it. Chloe and Isaac, trading recommendations and discovering shared interests. Tony and Mariana, laughing by the fountain like they'd known each other for years.

And in the library, Marcus Hayes, sitting at that worn wooden table with his pencil still and his hand waiting for mine to come back.

I walked back inside, the library doors swinging shut behind me, and let the fluorescent hum settle around me like a second skin. The corner table was still lit by that single lamp, and Marcus was still there, his textbook open but his eyes on the door.

On me.

I crossed the space between us, let myself slide into the chair beside him, and leaned in close enough that my hair brushed his arm again, the way it had before.

"It worked," I said, the words warm against the air between us. "Both of them."