The moment the words left her mouth, Ares's internal systems went into overdrive. Maybe over dinner tomorrow? She'd said it so casually, as if suggesting they sync up on a code merge. But her heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs that felt anything but casual.
Why had she asked him?
The question echoed in her mind as she walked away from the library, the setting sun doing little to warm the sudden flush she felt on her cheeks. She replayed the scene on a loop: the brush of his hand, the electric jolt that had short-circuited her usually impeccable composure, the way he'd looked at her afterward—not with panic, but with a warm, hopeful confusion that had made her stomach flip.
It had been an impulse. A glorious, terrifying, uncalculated impulse.
And that was the problem. Ares Peterson did not do impulse. She did risk assessments. She did cost-benefit analyses. She had five-year plans and contingency plans for her contingency plans. Asking Kairos Trevor on a second date, especially so soon after the first, was a deviation from the protocol. It was a bug in her personal source code.
She re-entered her apartment, the quiet a stark contrast to the noise in her head. Selene was on the couch, but she took one look at Ares's slightly dazed expression and muted the TV.
"Okay," Selene said, turning to face her fully. "What did he do? Did he try to pay the bill in loose lines of code? Did he explain the romantic symbolism of a well-optimized database?"
"I asked him out," Ares blurted out, dropping her bag by the door as if it were suddenly too heavy to carry.
Selene's eyebrows shot up. "You… you asked him? On a second date? The day after the first one?" A slow, impressed grin spread across her face. "Look at you, breaking your own algorithms. I'm proud."
"It was a miscalculation," Ares insisted, pacing the length of the living room. "It was too soon. It reeks of desperation. I've introduced an unnecessary variable too early in the process. I've potentially compromised the entire…" she flailed a hand, "…the entire thing."
"The 'thing'?" Selene repeated, amused. "You mean the dating? The thing normal people just do without writing a technical spec for it first?"
"It's not that simple!" Ares stopped pacing. "He's my project partner. This is… messy. If this goes wrong, it doesn't just affect… this. It affects our project, our grade, our professional rapport. The risk is enormous."
Selene patted the spot on the couch next to her. "Sit. You're giving me a headache."
Ares sat, perched on the edge of the cushion, her posture rigid with stress.
"Okay, let's do this your way," Selene said, adopting a mock-serious tone. "Risk assessment. What is the worst-case scenario?"
"He says no," Ares stated immediately. "He realizes this was a mistake, that he got swept up in the moment, and he politely declines. Then every meeting for the rest of the semester is unbearably awkward. Our project suffers. We fail. We end up hating each other."
"Dramatic, but noted," Selene said. "Scenario two?"
"He says yes, but out of obligation. The date is awkward. We realize we have nothing in common outside of a shared hatred of leaky pipes. The magic is gone. The project suffers. We fail. We end up hating each other."
"I'm sensing a theme. You're very concerned about hating each other."
"It's a valid concern!"
"Scenario three," Selene continued, undeterred. "He says yes because he wants to. The date is even better than the first. You have a wonderful time. The project continues to thrive because you're a brilliant team who actually like each other. You live happily ever after, building apps and judging pigeons together."
Ares stared at her. "That's… an improbably optimistic outcome."
"But it's possible," Selene pressed. "Isn't it? Based on the data from last night, wasn't the 'vibe'…," she said, making air quotes, "…positive?"
Ares was silent. The data was positive. Overwhelmingly so. The laughter. The easy conversation. The way he'd looked at her when she talked about Selene's cooking disasters. The simple, perfect text goodnight.
"The data was… inconclusive," she said stubbornly. "A single data point is not a trend."
"So you need more data," Selene said with a shrug, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Hence, a second date. It's not a bug, it's a feature. You're iterating. You're gathering more user feedback. This is what you're good at."
The reframe was so simple, so utterly Selene, that it left Ares speechless. She wasn't being impulsive; she was being agile. She wasn't introducing risk; she was testing a hypothesis. The hypothesis being: Is whatever this is with Kairos replicable outside of the context of a single, successful dinner?
Her phone buzzed on the coffee table. She snatched it up.
Kairos: Electoral integrity is very important. I know just the place. It has… acceptable bread basket protocols.
A laugh burst out of her, tight and relieved. He'd said yes. And he'd made a joke. A good one. He wasn't running. He was… iterating with her.
She looked up at Selene, who was watching her with a knowing smile.
"Well?" Selene asked.
"The user feedback is… promising," Ares said, a real smile finally breaking through her anxiety. She typed back, her fingers feeling lighter.
Ares: I'd expect nothing less.
She put the phone down, the frantic energy replaced by a steady, thrilling resolve. She had asked him. He had said yes. It was no longer an impulsive error. It was a calculated risk. And for the first time, the potential reward felt infinitely greater than the fear of the crash.
She had a second date. And this time, she was going in with a proper test plan.