They'll probably be doing it when they're forty, if they both survive that long. Then the stairwell door bangs open and Maddy is there, backpack over one shoulder, coffee in hand, hair escaping from a messy bun in a way that somehow looks intentional. She spots them and her whole face lights up, and Alex feels himself light up too, feels Jian straighten in his chair, feels the whole room get warmer. "Hey losers," she says, sliding into the seat next to Alex. "Who's ready to fail thermodynamics together?"
"We're not going to fail," Jian says, but he's smiling now, that rare real smile that only Maddy seems to be able to pull out of him. "Speak for yourself," Alex says, but he's smiling too, feeling the tension leak out of his shoulders. "I brought my F-game."
Maddy pulls out her own laptop, a beat-up MacBook covered in stickers from hackathons and climate protests and that one time they all went to a rave in San Francisco. "Okay," she says, cracking her knuckles. "Here's the plan. We do two hours of actual work, then we get tacos, and then if we're still alive, we do another hour. But the tacos are non-negotiable. Fuel for the machine."
"Your machine runs on tacos?" Alex asks.