Of course.

"...sure," he said after a pause.

"Great!" Naomi was thrilled. "Where to? My- um, my favorite is the taco place on 14th. But we can go anywhere!"

Naomi had caught herself. She almost said "my treat" before she remembered that some guys get insecure if they don't pay for their first date. She was starting to get in the rhythm of anticipating his needs. It helped that nothing mattered compared to Davin.

"Sure, tacos sound good. Walk or drive?"

Naomi quickly did the math. Davin seemed like a walker, but she didn't want to put any pressure on him. At the same time, she didn't have a car and she wasn't sure if he did. Although he asked about driving, so that meant he probably had a car.

"Uh, what do you want?" She tried to sound casual and noncommittal.

Davin laughed again, that sparkling sound. It was the audio equivalent of a homemade cookie fresh out of the oven. "Naomi, you just sat outside my class and waited for like an hour! Seriously, your choice."

She was desperately trying to reason out what would be better for Davin. Only after a second did she consider actually doing what he said and giving her opinion. She almost forgot she had one. "Walk?" she asked tentatively.

"We should! Not a cloud in the sky!" He smiled and they set off towards the northeast end of campus. Naomi was grateful for some time to probe Davin for details.

"So Davin, what are you studying?" she asked.

"Physics for now," Davin said. He explained that he was a junior but was starting to doubt that physics was for him.

"...and it was mostly fine till we got to diffeq. Dr. Mehdi is only available for office hours on Mondays and Fridays and I am just swamped by this stuff. I mean, my buddy Ryan is a math major and he swears that it's easier than physics. I might switch."

Naomi had never paid such close attention in her life. She hung on his every word, trying to think of ways to soothe him, reassure him, take away his anxiety. Of course, to reassure him, she acted normal.

"You never know," she said with a bat of her lashes. "Sometimes you try something new and you don't really like it. Other times, you find it's your new favorite thing."

He chuckled nervously. "So, Naomi, what are you studying?"

"Math," she said with a wink. "I'm doing my study abroad here. I'm attending the Henri Poincaré Institute in Paris."

"You don't sound French."

The poor guy was genuinely surprised. Naomi only had a faded whisper of a memory that she hated when people said that. She laughed flirtatiously and put a hand on his arm. He was responding well to the flirting.

"Nope, Tacoma born and bred. My mom was Parisian and we spent a lot of summers there. Fell in love with the city and now I'm going to school there. I'm living in the same little flat in the 5th arrondisement my mom grew up in! Or was living there, I guess."

He looked startled and Naomi realized she had tripped up again. "What? You're leaving?"

"Yeah," she said with a nervous chuckle. She smiled, thinking of the night they celebrated her admission to the Sorbonne. It was like she had won the lottery. "Sometimes you just wanna come home, you know?"

"Not really," he said with a laugh. "If I had a flat in any arrondissement I'd never leave. That sounds amazing!"

Her carefree grin never faltered as she calculated how much she could plausibly offer him. Her instinct to give him the deed to the flat was probably overkill.

"Well, you could stay at my place-"

They were interrupted as they passed a group of students and she brushed against a freshman girl. She gasped like she's gotten punched in the gut. Forget Davin, that girl was the most important. She had already forgotten what she and Davin were talking about.

Then she felt a hand on her arm and it was Davin, thank God it was Davin and suddenly she was struggling not to cry as her mind got blurry and everything shook loose and the girl was glancing nervously back at her as she stood gawking at her from the sidewalk.

"You ok?" rang out like a chime and she turned to see Davin. Her Davin. She let out a loud choked sob. Composure, she thought. For Davin.

She took a deep breath and looked up at him. "Can we go someplace private?" she asked. "To talk."