Holly is sitting in class when she decides to take Karen up on her offer.

She's set the class an essay, which they are doing their absolute best to ignore, and Holly has completely run out of patience for telling them off.

She had seen David only the night before, watched him walk out almost immediately after collapsing, heavy and slick with sweat, on top of her. She'd felt a cold, hardened knot in her gut as he left her, the sheets still a mess, and she'd tried to ignore it, but it's quite clear that she hasn't yet been able to.

Karen notices; she notices everything about Holly. Its obvious her heart isn't in it today- the class is hardly even trying to appear as though they're working. It has gotten increasingly louder and Holly has just ignored them more and more fervently.

She's seated at her desk in the front of the class, staring out the window, thinking about David and Karen, and seeing a student outside of class.

In her head, she's already made up her mind; it's wrong. Karen is sixteen. She can't possibly meet her outside of school, even for art club. In her head, she thinks, David is married. It is unreasonable to want him to stay and spend the night with his illicit lover.

Holly's ability to analyze a situation with logic like this is both a gift and a curse- she can rationalize her behavior, and others', but it hurts all the same.

And then she glances up, and catches Karen looking at her, and all of a sudden, her head is overruled. Karen doesn't look away, she just blinks and a slight blush grows in the apples of her cheeks, but she keeps looking. She chances a smile.

And suddenly, everything Holly had just logically sorted into little boxes comes rushing at her. Anger at David, and loneliness, and a more than mild curiosity about Karen, and all of a sudden her heart is beating far too fast and far too hard for an average day in her classroom.

The bell rings and she nearly jumps out of her chair. She sits through the mad rush of the students to hand in their work and leave, and when most of them have filed out, she looks up at Karen, her decision made.

"Karen, can you hang back for just a moment, please?" she says. Karen's friends give her weird looks- she's a model student, particularly in this class, and they have no idea why she'd be held back, but she just nods at them to go on.

"Um, I was wondering," Holly murmurs, suddenly feeling cowardly in the face of the moment, "Wondering if you still wanted to go to that art exhibition," she finishes. She'd stuttered a bit there. God, she'd actually stuttered.

But Karen hadn't seemed to notice- she seemed to actually be glowing.

"Yeah, of course! Do you want to go?" she asks, a bit of a lilt to her voice, a hopeful tone that she can't hide. And that tone gives Holly pause; this isn't a friendly, teacher-student trip to the art exhibition for Karen.

And then she sees the look in Karen's eyes. It's a look that says she's been waiting for this for who knows how long. She's got a shine in her eyes that speaks to an immense amount of hope, the kind that if it fails you, it'll crush you under its weight. And suddenly, to know someone feels that hopeful about being with her, even for an afternoon at an art museum, Holly's pause is abruptly over.

"I'd love to."