“No, that’s okay.” Karina, humiliated, forced a smile. “I’ll be fine.” She limped off by herself into the night, feeling as awkward and unlovable as James had now seen her to be. There wasn’t a single bandage in her room; she was too superstitious to have any of her old supplies around. Stephanie went to the residence assistant to borrow the first aid kit, then cleaned and bandaged Karina’s wound.

“Wow, girl.” Stephanie smiled. “Where I come from, if you come back from a date with blood on you, we send a posse out for the guy.”

“It wasn’t a date.” Karina grimaced as she climbed into bed. Her phone buzzed with a text message from James: Hope you’re feeling better ☺. Despite the pulsating, searing pain through her leg, she felt a flutter of excitement.

* * *

The next morning, when Karina was leaving for class, James was standing in the same place she’d left him the night before.

“Still hurts, huh?” He grimaced as he saw her hobbling across the street.

“It’s not bad,” she lied.

“Liar.” He pushed his bike alongside her on the sidewalk. “Well, at least we’ll have a good story to tell one day.” His smile sent something warm flowing through her body. As they parted ways on campus, he said, “Dinner Friday?”

“Sure,” Karina said. “Should we ask Sophie?”

James paused before stepping onto his bike. “No, just us.”

* * *

On Friday evening James picked her up, walked her to his car and opened her door. She assumed they would go to one of the casual places just off campus, but he drove them downtown to a nice Italian restaurant where they were the youngest patrons by at least a decade. He smiled at her in the yellow glow of the candlelight warming the table. “You look nice,” he said, admiring the dress she’d spent an hour picking out from Claire’s closet.

“Thanks, so do you,” she said reflexively.

“No, I mean it,” James said, holding her eyes with his, not looking away when it was uncomfortable for her. “You really look beautiful.”

Karina felt herself flush and gave him a genuine smile before looking down at her menu.

Over salads and pasta, James told her about his family. He and two brothers had grown up outside San Diego, in a pleasant suburb called Carlsbad. His father was a patent attorney with a big firm, and his mother was a special education teacher. She taught at the high school James and his brothers had attended and drove them all together. James described how embarrassing it was to be hanging out with his buddies, worrying his mother might walk by. Karina sympathized, but really she wondered if it would be that bad to have your mother so present in your daily life that she wouldn’t miss anything, much less everything. James’s older brother had followed in their father’s footsteps and was attending his first year of law school at UCLA. His younger brother surfed obsessively, and alternately threatened to drop out of high school or join the Marines instead of going to college. James spoke about his brothers fondly and referred in passing to their family vacations skiing or camping. The fabric of his life was clearly solid without holes in the center, without even so much as fraying at the edges.