It wasn’t the plan. I stood from our table at Loudons expecting to go our separate ways. It wasn’t premeditated, the way I tugged at his shirt and asked, “Hey, there are usually rowers on the river at this time, on Saturdays. Want me to take you?”

He did. We went. Sat on the grass a little off the walkway and criticized the rowers’ form. “I can’t believe the angle of their grip on the paddle,” I said, disgusted. “So amateurish.”

Conor turned to me. Took off his sunglasses. “Do you know anything at all about rowing?”

“Nope.”

It earned me a deep sigh. His hand grabbed my hood and pushed it over my head and all the way down my face, and I laughed and laughed even though I felt breathless.

Then there was a castle, and while we walked through the stone staircases I told him all about my feud with otters and similarly shaped animals. It was followed by another castle, and I found out that he almost got a PhD in biochemistry, and as he told me about his project, he sounded like such a consummate nerd, I couldn’t help teasing him, even as he wondered out loud “whether you’d fit through the arrow slits, Trouble.”

After pressing him for about ten minutes, I discovered that in his spare time—“Which I do not have, Maya”—he enjoys playing grand strategy wargames. “You are a nation,” he explained. “And use its resources to craft a military strategy.”

“Conor Harkness,” I tutted. “You walking red flag.”

“I’m a man in finance in my midthirties, talking to a twenty-year-old about his lifelong hobbies. I’m surprised you didn’t notice before.”

“Are we talking…Risk?”

“I’d rather not elaborate.”

“Or wait—is that computer games?”

“This conversation is over.”

“Are these war games you speak of just glorified Excel spreadsheets, Conor?”

“No comment.”

He’s so much older than me, our age gap could apply for a driver’s permit. But he listened when I tried to articulate that as much as I love physics, I’m not certain that’s the career I want. Problem is, I’m also not certain that I don’t. Which…Whatever. I’ll figure it out.

“Why do you do that?” he asked.

“What?”

“Interrupt yourself before finishing a thought.”

I remembered trying to express the same doubts to Alfie. “Um. Usually people interrupt me first, anyway?”

A scowling glance. “You need to find better people, then.”

It was fun, spending time with him. All the things we have in common. The people in our lives. The shared language of Austin, with its love for H-E-B and the profound hatred for I-35 traffic.

Maybe, I thought, I miss home more than I realized.

He received a lot of calls throughout the day. Most he declined. Some, he sighed and said, “Sorry, I have to take this.”

One of them was from my brother. “Guess who I’m with?” he asked as he picked up.

“I don’t know.” I immediately recognized Eli’s voice. “Is it the police? Have you been arrested for stabbing your father?” I realized that Conor was going to tell Eli that he’d flown here to see me, and…