When two worlds collide, even the smallest interaction can shift everything.
Ethan's mind went blank.
Work with Vanessa Monroe?
He stared at Professor Nguyen, waiting for the punchline, the correction, the moment when the professor would realize he'd made a mistake.
But Nguyen just gestured impatiently. "Well? Get moving. We don't have all day."
Around the room, students were already dragging chairs together, pulling out laptops, chatting easily with their partners. The noise level rose—laughter, the scrape of furniture, the casual comfort of people who belonged.
Vanessa stood, gathering her notebook and MacBook, and walked toward the back of the room.
Toward him.
Ethan's throat went dry. He became acutely aware of everything wrong with his appearance—his faded hoodie, the frayed edge of his backpack strap, the screen protector on his ancient laptop that was cracked in three places.
She stopped beside his desk, and he caught the faint scent of expensive perfume—something floral and sophisticated that probably cost more than his monthly rent.
"Hi," she said.
Her voice was softer than he'd expected. Less... commanding. Almost tentative.
"Hi," Ethan managed.
An awkward silence stretched between them.
Vanessa glanced at the empty seat beside him. "Do you mind if I...?"
"No. I mean, yes. I mean—" Ethan stopped, took a breath. "Go ahead."
She sat down, setting her things on the desk with careful precision. Her laptop was pristine, the kind of device that came out of the box looking like art. She opened it, and the screen lit up with a background image of a beach somewhere tropical.
Ethan opened his own laptop and tried not to wince at the grinding sound it made.
"Okay," Professor Nguyen's voice cut through the chatter. "The exercise is on the board. You'll be writing a recursive function to calculate Fibonacci numbers. One person codes, the other reviews. Switch halfway through. You have forty minutes. Begin."
The room erupted into activity.
Ethan stared at the problem on the board, his mind already working through the solution. Fibonacci sequences were basic—he'd coded this type of function a dozen times. He could probably finish it in ten minutes if he worked alone.
But he wasn't alone.
"So..." Vanessa said, turning slightly toward him. "Have you done recursive functions before?"
Ethan nodded. "Yeah. A few times."
"Good. Because I..." She hesitated, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. "I'm not great at this stuff."
He blinked. "You're in Computer Science."
"I know." A small, self-deprecating smile crossed her face. "My father thought it would be practical. Good for business, he said. I'm better with theory than application."
Ethan didn't know what to say to that. The idea that someone could choose a major just because their parent wanted them to felt foreign. He'd chosen his major because it was the fastest path to a stable income.
"Do you want to code first, or should I?" Vanessa asked.
"I can start," Ethan said. "If that's okay."
"Please." She looked almost relieved.
Ethan pulled his laptop closer and opened his IDE. His fingers moved across the keyboard, muscle memory taking over.
He typed quickly, efficiently, adding comments as he went. Beside him, Vanessa leaned in slightly, watching the screen.
"You're fast," she said.
"It's not complicated. Just a basic recursive call."
"For you, maybe."
Ethan glanced at her. She was focused on the screen, her brow furrowed in concentration. Up close, he could see faint shadows under her eyes, as if she hadn't been sleeping well.
He looked away quickly, back to the code.
"Okay," he said after a moment. "The base case is if n is zero or one—we just return n. Otherwise, we recursively call the function for n minus one and n minus two, then add the results."
Vanessa nodded slowly. "So it keeps calling itself until it hits the base case?"
"Exactly."
"And that doesn't... break anything?"
"Not if you define the base case correctly. Otherwise, you get infinite recursion and the program crashes."
"Right." She bit her lip. "That's happened to me. Several times."
Ethan almost smiled. "It happens to everyone."
"Not to you, apparently."
He shrugged. "I've crashed plenty of programs."
"I don't believe that."
The statement caught him off guard. He looked at her again, and this time she was looking back, her green eyes steady and surprisingly sincere.
"You were the one who answered Professor Hartley's question yesterday," she said. "In Economics."
Ethan's stomach tightened. "You were there?"
"I sit in the middle section. I heard the whole thing." She smiled faintly. "You made it sound easy."
"It's just memorization."
"No, it's not. I've been trying to memorize that stuff for weeks." She shook her head. "You're smart. You don't have to downplay it."
Ethan didn't know how to respond to that. Compliments from people like Vanessa Monroe didn't happen to people like him. It felt like a trick, some kind of setup he didn't understand.
He turned back to the screen. "We should test the function. Make sure it works."
"Right. Yeah."
He ran the code with a few test cases. The output appeared instantly—correct, clean, efficient.
"See?" Vanessa said. "You make it look easy."
"It's really not—"
"Ethan."
He froze. She'd used his name. He hadn't even realized she knew it.
"You're good at this," she said quietly. "You don't have to be modest about it."
For a long moment, they just looked at each other.
Then Professor Nguyen's voice boomed across the room. "Ten minutes left! Make sure you've switched roles!"
Vanessa straightened in her seat. "Guess it's my turn."
"You don't have to if you don't want—"
"No, I should." She pulled the laptop toward her, her fingers hovering over the keys. "Just... tell me if I'm about to break something."
Vanessa's coding was slower, more hesitant. She kept second-guessing herself, deleting lines and rewriting them, muttering under her breath.
"Wait, do I need a colon here?"
"Yes. After the if statement."
"Right. Okay." She typed, then paused. "And the indentation matters?"
"In Python, yeah. It defines the scope."
"God, that's annoying."
Ethan found himself almost smiling. "You get used to it."
"Do you tutor?" The question came suddenly, and Vanessa didn't look up from the screen.
"What?"
"Tutor. Do you do tutoring? Because I could really use help with this class."
Ethan's mind went blank again. "I... I don't—"
"I'd pay, obviously. Whatever your rate is."
"I don't have a rate."
She finally looked at him. "You should. You're good at this."
"I'm not a tutor."
"You could be."
Ethan shook his head. "I don't have time. I work nights."
"Oh." Vanessa's expression shifted—surprise, maybe, or realization. "Right. Of course."
An uncomfortable silence settled between them.
"Sorry," she said quietly. "I shouldn't have assumed—"
"It's fine."
"No, it's not. That was rude of me."
"Really, it's okay." Ethan gestured to the screen. "You're almost done with the function. Just need to add the return statement."
Vanessa turned back to the laptop, but something in her posture had changed. She seemed smaller, somehow. Less confident.
She finished the code, and Ethan checked it over. A few minor syntax errors, but nothing major.
"Here," he said, making the corrections. "Now it should run."
He hit enter. The program executed perfectly.
"See?" Ethan said. "You did it."
"We did it." Vanessa looked at him, and there was something in her expression he couldn't quite read. "Thank you. For helping."
"It's just a class assignment."
"Still." She hesitated. "You didn't have to be patient with me. Most people aren't."
Before Ethan could respond, Professor Nguyen called time.
"Alright, everyone! Submit your work and pack up. Good job today."
The room erupted into motion again—laptops snapping shut, backpacks being zipped, chairs scraping against the floor.
Vanessa stood, gathering her things. For a moment, Ethan thought she might say something else.
But then her phone buzzed. She glanced at it, and her expression shifted—closing off, becoming smooth and unreadable.
"I have to go," she said. "But... thanks again."
"No problem."
She walked away, and within seconds, she was surrounded by a group of students—her usual crowd, Ethan realized. They swept her up in conversation, and just like that, she was gone.
Ethan sat alone in the back row, staring at his cracked laptop screen.
For forty minutes, Vanessa Monroe had sat beside him.
Had talked to him.
Had treated him like a person.
And now, she was back in her world, and he was back in his.
Exactly where they both belonged.
By the time Ethan made it to his next class, his phone buzzed with a text from Danny.
Danny: Need you to come in early tonight. Jessica called in sick. Can you be here by 5?
Ethan sighed.
Ethan: Yeah. I'll be there.
There went his plan to study at the library. But he couldn't afford to say no—not when every shift mattered.
He pocketed his phone and kept walking, his mind already calculating tips, budgets, and how many hours of sleep he could sacrifice.
Behind him, the sound of laughter echoed across the quad.
Ethan didn't look back.