“Peteable! I’m glad I ran into you.”

She had on a pink top Pete hadn’t seen before and she looked fresh like she’d just stepped out of the shower, but Sophie brought a sour smell that must’ve followed her from the cluster of blue recycling cans in front of the bar up the street.

She sat at the cast iron table, tossed a leg over her knee.

“I wanted to apologize for the other night, Peteable.”

The way she said his name—first and last mashed together, like the two ends of the university’s accordion buses—marked a change in the way she thought of him. Rather than someone she’d slept with during orientation, and twice more their first semester, he was now the kid brother she’d give life advice and hand-me-down Looney Tunes sweatshirts to.

“The other night?”

“At Mica’s. Remember? You were telling me about your paper—on British imperialism in literature. I got a call and just walked away. That was rude of me.”

Two girls—so young they had to be freshmen—flung open the café door and tumbled out onto the sidewalk. They held Frappuccinos topped with whipped cream, the tall one with a wide mouth, the other tall one squinting into the glare of the sun. Sophie drew a bead on the girls. When they stopped at the bus stop, Sophie smirked, flipped her short hair.

“So you weren’t offended, Peteable?”

“No. Not really.”

And he wasn’t.

Most of what he remembered of that night was feeling squirmy and staring up at the ceiling which was sprayed with popcorn finish like Albino crocodile skin. He’d been caught staring at Mica’s girlfriend one too many times.

“That’s good,” said Sophie. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Her eyes rested on the frat boy at the next table—his popped collar, the spiky hair that’d been styled to look disheveled. Just by his vibe Pete guessed he was the type to neg girls, exaggerate little flaws until the ones keen on being teased slap him on the knee and say, OMG, I’m not that way at all!

A car playing music from open windows stopped at the light. Sophie seemed bored. I should’ve made something of her apology, Pete thought. Not that he was mad she took the call and walked away at the party, but because sitting beside him at the table she appeared ready to unhinge her jaw and let out a terrific mammalian yawn.

Then Sophie did yawn.

She said, “So what’s new? Anything?”

In a blunder that’d later cause his burgeoning Tourette’s to flare up, (Shit! Fuck!) Pete blurted, “Do you still want to hear about my paper? I just turned it in this morning.”

And without waiting for a reply, he straightened in his chair, outlined the pro- and anti-Empire factions. He pointed out the authors who didn’t care about African tribesmen or Hindu cultures, then quoted a line from A Passage to India, the theme he’d hastily cobbled twelve pages around—beyond the remotest echo, a silence.

Sophie nodded and massaged the top fold of her ear.

“That’s interesting, Peteable.”

“I hope the professor thinks so.”

“He will, Peteable. It’s really interesting.”