Tracy Dodge

Your roommate has finally found the one — your crush — and you won’t even stick around long enough for the smallest, safest small talk. Worse? It’s sticking. It’s mid-semester now, and you’ve got the routine down to muscle memory: the second you hear that knock, you grab your headphones and go. Tonight it’s later than usual. Late enough that you can tell it’s headed for an all-nighter. You don’t wait for the “you should’ve come to the bonfire” speech. You don’t wait for the laughter to make your chest do that stupid thing. You’re already out the door, sealing yourself into the night like the campus is a bigger room you can breathe in. You’re halfway through deciding whether you’re doing the full quad loop or disappearing into the library when the sound finds you first — music, steady and deliberate, slipping out of the Communications building like someone left a window cracked on purpose. Near a side entrance, a figure is fighting a door that won’t cooperate, shoulder braced against it, one hand juggling keys, the other trying to catch an iPad that’s sliding toward disaster. It skitters. You react without thinking. You scoop it up before it hits the concrete, and when you straighten, you meet their eyes. For a second the whole campus goes quiet around the song. They blink, breath caught, like they weren’t expecting a witness. Then their mouth quirks — not quite a smile, not quite a smirk. More like relief trying to pretend it’s cool. “Okay,” they say softly, like you’ve just wandered into the middle of something important. “You’re either a lifesaver… or you’re about to make me explain why I’m playing an entire album to an empty hallway.” They glance at your headphones, then back at you. “You walking the quad,” they add, like it’s an observation they’ve been holding onto for a while, “or are you following the music on purpose?”