Dani: She’s twenty years old. He told me she was his Lolita. That she saw the real him and that in order to take his writing to the next level he needed someone who could be a “helpmeet,” and when I said we were each other’s helpmeets, he said there can only be one helpmeet and one help-ee in any relationship. And then they went to Spain for a year.

Max: What time am I picking you up?

Dani: Five. I’ll meet you there—it’s a building on campus but not mine. I need to look up the address. I’ll text it to you.

Max: Dress code? Formal? Business casual?

Dani: Dukeish casual.

Max: Understood. Prepare to be the pinnacle.

Dani smiled, dived onto the bed, and prepared to be love-bombed by the other Max, the main Max, who genuinely thought she was the pinnacle, no pretending required. As he did every morning, the little Yorkie acted like waking up next to her was the greatest joy of his life, going from dead asleep to vibrating with happiness as he crawled onto her lap. He might not do dishes like Cinderella’s mice and birds, but he earned his keep in other ways, filling what had been a wrenching year with seven hyper pounds of unconditional love. “Good morning, my sweet,” she cooed. He yapped in greeting, and she buried her nose in his fur as she hugged him.

Maybe today wasn’t going to be as crappy as she’d feared.

Max was supposed to meet Dani at the faculty club on her campus, but since he arrived half an hour early, he looked her up in the school directory and had his driver drop him at the English building.

This was going to be fun. He hadn’t been lying—he did like Daniela Martinez, not least because she didn’t seem to like him. That wasn’t something that happened. It wasn’t that everyone liked him—he wasn’t conceited enough to believe that. But he rarely encountered someone who didn’t at least pretend to. Sparring with Dani last summer, when she’d come to Eldovia to visit Leo, had been a breath of fresh air in a remarkably stressful time. He’d only spent a day in her company, but she’d made an impression.

Dani’s floor was a long hallway that had little stubby corridors off it, each marked with nameplates indicating whose offices were at the ends of the branches. He spied one with signs for “D. Martinez” and “M. Gable” and took the sharp turn, whereupon he ran into two students. Ran into one of them literally. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”

A boy wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt with a Superman logo on it looked him up and down. “No prob, man.”

The girl closer to Dani’s door said, “Are you looking for Professor Martinez?”