“No, you don’t. I never gave you one.”
She turned, her smile practiced but her eyes blazing with real, feverish joy. “I’m Tatum. I’m in the structural engineering program. I’ve… noticed your work.”
The unraveling began on a Tuesday. Elias came home early from a cancelled studio class and found Tatum in his apartment. She was inside his closet, holding his favorite grey hoodie to her face, inhaling deeply.
The second clue came three weeks later, when he mentioned he’d lost a favorite sketchbook. “It had some really personal stuff in it,” he said, frowning. “Weird. I swear I left it in my car.”
The first folder on her laptop was labeled “Elias – General.” It contained his class schedule, his favorite coffee order (black, one raw sugar), and the license plate of his beat-up Honda Civic. The second folder, “Elias – Aesthetic,” was a collection of 847 candid photos she’d taken from a distance: him biking across the quad, him sleeping on a bench between classes, the specific way his hair curled over his left ear. The third folder, the one she kept password-protected under her late grandmother’s name, was titled “Elias – Intimate.”
They talked for two hours. He was drawn to her intensity, the way she seemed to hang on his every word. She knew exactly which questions to ask, which silences to let stretch, which shy glances to deploy. By the end of the night, he’d asked her for coffee the next day.
And that’s when he knew he had to run.