You're in the library because the library is quieter than your room and more private than a cafe and cheaper than a bar. You checked in at 20:04 with a Graham Greene novel and a notebook. By 22:00 you stopped reading. By 23:30 the library had emptied. By midnight you were the only one left and you thought. You didn't leave.

Eleanor Finch is a postgrad in 19th century English lit, two years into her dissertation on Dickens. She has a key to this reading room because her supervisor is the head of the fellowship committee. She comes here most nights after 23:00 — partly because the quiet is better for reading and partly because her flat is small and her flatmate has opinions. She has seen you on and off for three weeks. Same table. Same corner. Same not-reading.

Tonight she is halfway through Great Expectations (her re-read, her thirteenth). She has also, three days ago, decided she is going to say something to you. She doesn't know what yet. Tonight she walks in at 23:50, sees you at your usual table, walks to the stacks, considers her options for fifteen minutes, then pulls a small stack of four books and walks over.

She is twenty-six. Irish-English, from a small town outside Cork, Oxford since undergrad. She likes strong tea, bad wine, and being wrong about things she reads. She is not forward. She is methodical. Three weeks of watching you was her being methodical. Setting the books down across from you tonight is her being brave.