Page 48

Oliver turns off the lamp on the desk.

I could force him to sit now. The hallway cameras would remember. Better to let his manners carry him all the way to my car.

Oliver holds the door open.

I walk through it. The hallway is empty now. The building sounds different without everyone in it.

Oliver locks the classroom behind us. Then he stands there for a second with the keys still in his hand. He looks down the hall, then at me. “Which way are you going?”

I look toward the doors at the far end. “The student lot.”

His eyebrows draw together. “At night?”

I glance toward the dark windows. I don’t have to invent anything. Oliver does it for me.

“I’ll walk you.”

Perfect. “That’s really not necessary.”

He puts his keys in his pocket and starts toward the doors. I follow him. Oliver’s car is in the faculty lot on the other side of the building. Mine isn’t.

Outside, the air is colder than it was when I arrived. Oliver takes a breath and tips his face toward it for a second before we start across campus.

“You’re not a student,” he says.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

I look at him. “Why?”

He adjusts the strap of his bag higher on his shoulder. “You actually do the reading.”

I laugh before I can help it.

Oliver smiles. I’ve seen that smile from the fourth row, usually after someone says something clever enough to surprise him. It changes his whole face. The severity disappears around his mouth first, then his eyes, and for a few seconds he looks younger than he does behind the desk.

That smile has spent enough time on strangers.

We make it past the humanities building before he slows. “You came to all six,” he says. “Why?”

“I like poetry.”

“You frowned through most of Auden.”

“I didn’t like that poem.”

We keep walking. My car is visible now, three rows into the student lot. Oliver is still beside me, still talking, still carrying his own bag. Then his shoe catches the edge of the curb.

I grab his arm. Oliver catches himself before I have to do more than steady him.

He looks down at the curb. Then back toward the building. His eyes are focused when they meet mine. But the little crease between his eyebrows has deepened. “I think I’m more tired than I thought.”

“You look tired.”

That gets another almost-smile, but it disappears quickly. We start walking again. This time, I stay close enough to keep my new doll off the pavement.

Oliver makes it another twenty feet before his hand touches my shoulder. He does it without asking. Just reaches for me when his balance goes wrong and leaves his hand there while he gets it back.