1. Syllabus Week #2
He showered fast, dressed in jeans and a Wolves quarter-zip, and left with the brownie tin under one arm and his backpack over the other shoulder.
Outside, September sunlight hit bright and thin across campus.
Students moved in swarms—new backpacks, campus maps, eager confusion.
Syllabus week. The annual performance of pretending a semester was still clean and manageable before deadlines and weather and disappointment got their hands on it.
Halcyon Academic Services sat in an older brick building that always smelled like toner, dusty vents, and coffee that had been abandoned too long on hot plates.
Noah took the stairs two at a time, nodding at a couple of students who recognized him and did the quick, bright double take athletes got on campus.
He was halfway down the east wing when his phone buzzed.
Mom.
He almost let it ring out, then answered because that was another habit he’d built too young.
“Hey.”
“Noah, sweetheart, are you in class?”
“Meeting.”
“Oh, quick then. Did you talk to Arjun?”
Noah slowed outside a row of office doors. “About?”
A sigh. “Your uncle is being impossible about Sunday.”
His eyes closed for one beat. “Mom.”
“I know, I know. You’re busy. But you’re the one he listens to.”
No, he thought. I’m the one who smooths it over enough that nobody has to change.
Aloud he said, “I’ll call him later.”
“Thank you. And how was practice?”
“Fine.”
“You sound tired.”
He shifted the brownie tin to his other arm. “Long morning.”
“Are you taking care of yourself?”
The question almost made him laugh. “Sure.”
“All right. Don’t forget to eat.”
“Okay.”
She told him she loved him. He said it back. By the time he ended the call, the old pressure was already settling between his shoulder blades, familiar as his gear bag.
He pushed through the glass door into the writing support suite without knocking.
And collided full force with a woman carrying a stack of folders and a paper cup of coffee gone cold.
The impact cracked through both of them. The cup jerked sideways. Brown liquid sloshed over the lid and onto her wrist. Noah caught the folders before they hit the floor on instinct, but the brownie tin slipped, clanged against the baseboard, and spun.
“Shit—sorry.” He grabbed for the cup too late. “I didn’t see—”
“I noticed.”
Her voice was low, controlled, and edged sharply enough to cut tape.
She stepped back, balancing the coffee, then took the folders from his hands one by one as if reclaiming evidence.
She was not what he expected from “mandatory writing support,” which, if he was being honest, had usually translated in his mind to overworked staffers with cheerful lanyards and a dangerous willingness to let athletes charm them.
This woman looked like she had built a life around not being charmed.
Dark hair twisted up at the nape of her neck in a way that had clearly been neat before his shoulder hit her.
Slim gold hoops at her ears. A cream blouse with a coffee splash darkening one cuff.
Navy trousers. No university-logo fleece, no apologetic smile.
Her expression was cool, direct, and utterly unimpressed.
Behind her, a marker squeaked against a whiteboard in some nearby office. The building’s old radiator hissed. Somewhere a printer coughed out pages.
Noah bent to retrieve the tin. “Really, I’m sorry.”
She looked at the dented lid, then at him. Recognition flickered and flattened almost immediately. “Of course you are.”
That landed.
He straightened slowly. “Have we met?”
“No.” She adjusted the folders against her hip. “But your face is on two campus banners and half the athletic department’s fundraising materials. It would be difficult to miss you.”
There was no flirtation in it. If anything, it sounded like a criticism of architecture.
Noah blinked, then huffed a reluctant breath through his nose. “Fair.”
She set the coffee on a side table and reached into her tote for a packet of tissues. Efficient. Unruffled. Very nearly icy.
He took in the nameplate beside the open office door.
Dr. Talia Shah, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of Educational Policy and Student Integrity.
Student Integrity.
Something in his spine went alert.
She caught him reading it. “Can I help you?”
He lifted the brownie tin an inch. “Mandatory writing-support check-in. Hockey.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m aware.”
The answer was clipped enough that he glanced down the hall, half-expecting a camera crew. “That sounds ominous.”
“That’s because you’re hearing tone correctly.”
He had spent years defusing tension with a grin, with warmth, with the public version of himself that made boosters clap him on the shoulder and little kids ask for autographs near the concourse. He offered a milder version now. “I brought brownies?”
Her gaze dropped to the tin as if it might contain a weapon. “Are you attempting to bribe university personnel?”
He actually laughed then, surprised into it. “No. They’re stress brownies.”
“I don’t eat food from students I’ve just met.”
“I’m not your student.”
“No,” she said. “You’re exactly the kind of complication I don’t need on a Tuesday.”
That stopped the smile at the corners of his mouth.
Inside the office, two first-year players sat at a round table looking like they desperately wished to be elsewhere. Dylan was one of them. He saw Noah and mouthed, What did you do?
Noah ignored him. “You’re running the meeting?”
“I’m running this review.” Talia picked up her coffee again. “And before you ask, yes, attendance is mandatory. Yes, I know practice schedules are demanding. No, that does not exempt anyone from academic policy.”
Noah shifted his backpack higher. “I wasn’t going to ask any of that.”
“No?” One brow lifted.
“No. I was going to ask if you wanted a fresh coffee, because that one’s on me.”
For the first time, something changed in her face—not softness, exactly. Assessment. She glanced at the stain on her cuff, then back at him. “That’s unnecessary.”
“It was my fault.”
“And replacing a coffee does not replace time, paperwork, or the fact that you came around a blind corner like you were late for your own legend.”
The two first-years at the table both made choking sounds that might have been swallowed laughs.
Noah looked at her for a long beat.
Most people on campus either met him halfway with easy familiarity or overcompensated into awkward reverence. She did neither. She stood there with coffee on her sleeve and treated him like an administrative problem with cheekbones.
It should have annoyed him more than it did.
Instead, to his own inconvenience, he felt the first spark of interest land low and clean.
“Okay,” he said. “That one was good.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, as if this response had not been in her preferred script. “Take a seat, Mr. Mercer.”
“Just Noah.”
“Not in here.”
He almost smiled again. “Right.”
He took the last open chair at the round table.
The room was too warm, the overhead lights too bright.
A whiteboard behind her had been sectioned into neat categories in dark blue marker: ATTENDANCE, LOGS, AUTHENTICITY, ACCOUNTABILITY.
There was a stack of forms on the table, each clipped to a yellow folder.
Authenticity.
That word sat badly.
Talia remained standing. “For those of you who have not yet read the email sent by Academic Services, this is a compliance review of writing-support records and coursework verification procedures for several athletic programs. You have been asked here because your names appear in tutoring logs from last semester that require clarification.”
Dylan raised a hand like they were in middle school. “Clarification how?”
Talia looked at him, not unkindly, but without any softness. “As in whether you attended the sessions logged under your name, whether the work submitted under your student account was your own, and whether any support you received complied with university policy.”
The room got quieter.
Noah leaned back in his chair, watching her. “This is bigger than writing support.”
She met his eyes. “I’m not discussing the scope of an ongoing review.”
“Is hockey specifically under investigation?”
“I’m not discussing—”
“Right. Ongoing review.”
There was challenge in the exchange now, quick and bright. Not loud. Not messy. The kind that made every nerve sharpen.
Talia rested one hand on the table. Her nails were short, unpainted. Practical. “If you’re here to perform confidence for the room, save it. I’m not interested.”
Dylan shifted beside him. Noah felt the kid tense, that familiar ripple of younger-player panic. Here it was—the point where he usually stepped in, absorbed the heat, made things easier.
He looked at Dylan. “Answer what she asks. If you don’t know, say you don’t know.”
Then he looked back at her. “We can do that.”
Something flickered again in her expression, smaller this time. Approval? Surprise? Gone too quickly to name.
She passed out forms. “Start with these. You’ll list every tutoring or writing-support meeting you personally attended last spring.
If you did not attend a session that appears in your records, you will indicate that.
If someone advised you to sign for a meeting you missed, you will indicate that too. ”
One of the other players swore under his breath.
Talia didn’t flinch. “I suggest honesty. It ages better.”
Pens scratched. Paper shifted. Noah looked down at the form in front of him.
Session date. Time. Tutor initials. Student signature. Notes.
His own name repeated down the page in an administrator’s clean print.
He remembered some of the sessions. Not all.
A few had been late-night check-ins before away series.
One he’d signed after practice while half his brain was still on a blown coverage.
Another he had definitely not attended in full because he’d been pulled into a coaches’ meeting, but someone had waved the sheet at him in the hallway and said just initial here, we’ll fix the time.