Chapter 10 Gio
Gio
She holds steady. Her eyes stay on the page at first. Her pencil keeps moving—precise, relentless—the graphite whispering across paper like my voice slides past her as background noise. The refusal is deliberate. First line of defense.
“You’re loud when you don’t mean to be,” she says, eyes still on the page.
“I came to get to the point.”
That does it. She stills just long enough for the point to land, then lifts her head. Her gaze snaps to mine—sharp, assessing. No surprise. No relief. Just calculation, like she’s already slotting me into a column she doesn’t like and deciding how much damage I’m allowed to do there.
“Then you should probably get to it,” she says. “People are staring.”
The lights hum overhead, too bright, too exposed.
I glance toward the glass wall. Late enough now that the hall is alive—class traffic, backpacks, loud shoes, movement that turns any pause into an audience.
Two students slow as they pass, phones hovering at chest height like they’re pretending to browse their screens instead of recording.
Curiosity dressed up as innocence.
I keep my body open by the glass, refusing to shield her. The sightline stays clean. Let them see it. Let them decide what they want.
“Good,” I say. “Means it lands.”
Her mouth tightens. Calculation. “To you.”
She sets her pencil down carefully—too carefully. Controlled, but tension threads through it, like she’s locking something in place before it spills.
“You’ve been circling since yesterday,” she adds. “If you’re here to apologize for something, don’t.”
Yesterday. After the first post. After my name started moving through mouths like it belongs to them. I’ve been in her orbit longer than she’s ever acknowledged, but I don’t hand her that.
“I’m here for a reason.”
“Good.” She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t soften. “I don’t accept them.”
I step closer. Controlled. Careful. Intentional enough that the space between us changes without either of us naming it. Close enough to see the faint smudge of graphite on her fingers. Close enough that my body registers the shape of her stillness like it’s a dare.
My hands stay at my sides anyway.
“This is about leverage,” I say.
Her eyes narrow a fraction, like she’s adjusting a lens. “Everything is about leverage with you, Rossi.”
I don’t deny it. The silence does that for me.
“That rumor,” I say. “It’s not slowing down.”
“That’s what rumors do.”
“It’s escalating.”
She leans back in her chair, crossing one booted ankle over the other. Controlled. Deliberate. A redistribution of weight that changes the room. She knows exactly what that movement does to a gaze and doesn’t pretend otherwise.
The boots are a choice. Everything about her is.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asks.
“Because it’s about to start costing people who didn’t earn it.”
Her gaze sharpens. The calculation shifts. “Meaning me.”
“Meaning anyone standing near me.”
I let the silence stretch. The lights hum overhead. Somewhere down the hall, someone laughs too loud, like the world hasn’t realized it just leaned closer to a fault line. The smell of graphite and fixative hangs in the air—sharp, chemical. Clean. A room built for focus and control.
Two things I’m not allowed to keep right now.
Outside the glass, one of the phones lifts higher. The crowd decides it doesn’t need permission.
I feel it in my shoulders first—that shift where I’m no longer choosing the terms of my own proximity.
The hallway is.
She tilts her head. “You’re assuming I plan to stand anywhere near you.”
“You already are.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“It will be.”
Her fingers tap once against the table. A warning disguised as habit. “Careful.”
“You’re visible,” I continue. “Competent. And you’re exposed. No donor shield. No legacy cushion. Just you and what you’ve earned.”
She lets out a quiet snort, sharp and unimpressed. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you underestimate how fast they’ll punish you for being near the wrong headline.”
Her eyes lock on mine, hard enough to hold. “And I think you didn’t come here to warn me.”
She’s right.
I don’t correct her. Correction would be concession.
“Say it,” she says.
The words hit like a hand on my throat—because she’s the one person on this campus who won’t let me hide behind omission. She’ll cut straight through it and leave the pieces on the floor.
I hold the line. Let the pressure build instead of releasing it. “Say what?”
“What you actually want,” she replies. She gestures between us without looking, like she doesn’t need to see it to define it. “Because this is a play.”
“It’s timing,” I say. “And optics.”
The air shifts. Not dramatically.
Precisely.
Like something just aligned in a way that doesn’t reverse.
Her posture straightens, irritation bleeding through control. “You don’t get to talk about optics in my space like that.”
“I just did.”
“And you think that ends well for you?”
“I think ignoring it ends worse.”
She stands. Slow. Measured. The chair slides back an inch. She puts the table between us like a boundary she expects me to respect—and knows I will, which might be worse.
“You’ve got a problem,” she says. “I don’t.”
“You’ve got a system,” I counter, “that punishes women faster than men.”
Her jaw tightens. Recognition. Like she’s tasted that truth enough times to know the shape of it. “You don’t get to educate me on that.”
“I’m acknowledging it,” I say.
She studies me longer now. Not my face—my posture, my restraint, the fact that I haven’t moved even though I could have. The stillness is a choice, and she clocks it.
“People are connecting dots,” she says quietly.
I let the silence sit where it belongs.
Outside the glass, a third student slows, head turning like a compass needle finding north.
She keeps her eyes on mine when she continues. “That’s what this is, isn’t it. You need the dots rearranged.”
“I need noise redirected.”
Her laugh is short. Sharp. “You don’t redirect noise. You give it a better story.”
“Yes.”
She steps closer now. Not retreating. Not defensive. Meeting me halfway. Close enough that the air between us tightens, awareness spiking whether either of us wants it to or not. I catch the heat of her through the space—like the room itself is watching how steady I can stay.
“And you think I’m that story.”
I look at her and it hits anyway—irritating, involuntary. The way she holds her ground like it’s owned. The way her mouth stays hard even when her eyes sharpen.
My pulse doesn’t speed up like a crush. It locks in like a target.
“I think your reputation holds,” I say, “and mine bleeds.”
Her gaze flicks over my shoulder toward the glass wall again. Phones no longer pretending. The audience has decided we’re worth the pause.
“People will talk,” she says.
“They already are.”
“And you standing here won’t help.”
“It will if it’s consistent.”
She stills. “Consistent how?”
“Public proximity,” I say. “Straightforward. Unforced. Just enough alignment to complicate what they think they know.”
Her mouth tightens. “You’re asking me to stand next to a fire.”
“I’m asking you to decide whether you want to control where it spreads.”
Silence.
It costs me this time. I feel it in my shoulders, in the stretch as her response takes long enough to matter.
In the fact that she doesn’t shut me down immediately.
She walks past me, boots clicking sharp against the floor, and looks out the glass like she’s measuring fallout in real time. No flinch at the phones. Instead, she registers them the way she registers everything—cataloged, filed, accounted for.
“They’ll assume things,” she says.
“Yes.”
“They’ll resent me for advantages I don’t have.”
“Yes.”
She turns back to me slowly, the movement deliberate, like she’s deciding whether to cut or cauterize. “And you’re fine with that.”
“No,” I say. “I’m realistic about it.”
Her eyes search mine like she’s checking for the lie, for the hesitation that isn’t there. “You don’t deny much.”
“I don’t waste energy on it.”
She exhales once. Controlled. “You want my reputation,” she says.
The words land clean. No accusation. Just fact.
I own it. Keep it raw. Stay put. “Yes.”
“And what do I get in return,” she asks, voice calm enough to be lethal, “besides being the girl who got close to the mess and got burned for it?”
There it is. The real negotiation. The part she refuses to let me skip.
My face stays blank. My chest stays tight anyway. Pressure. Jurisdiction math.
“You get insulation,” I say. “A layer between you and the people who decide doors stay closed. You want a foot in the right room? I can put it there. The kind of designer who doesn’t take cold emails. The kind who answers a name.”
Her eyes don’t widen. She doesn’t show interest.
But something in her gaze recalibrates—like she’s measuring the offer for leverage, not hope.
“And you think you can pay that,” she says.
“I can,” I answer. Because my name still has weight in the places that matter, even when it’s being dragged through the places that don’t.
She stares at me for a long moment, expression unreadable. Then she reaches for her bag, sliding the strap over her shoulder with a snap that sounds like a loaded chamber.
“I need to think about it,” she says.
My jaw locks. “Zoe—”
Her gaze cuts into mine, warning and control in the same breath. “Don’t.”
I stop.
She steps toward the door, then pauses with her hand on the handle. No softness offered in the look back. She looks back like she’s setting terms.
“The price of your association just went up,” she says. “If I do this, you don’t get to let it spill onto me and call it collateral. You don’t get to disappear when it gets ugly.”
My throat tightens once. Constraint.
“You won’t be the one paying alone,” I say.
She holds my gaze like she’s deciding whether that’s a promise or another form of omission.
Then she pushes through the door, the heavy steel swinging shut behind her and cutting off the view.
I stand alone in the studio, surrounded by the smell of graphite and the silence she leaves behind. Outside the pane, the hallway shifts again—people moving, devices lowering, interest recalibrating to the next thing.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, a low, rhythmic pulse against my thigh. I don’t have to look to know the noise is getting louder.
I told her I needed the dots rearranged.
She just named the price of moving them.