More than anything

She's not sure how much help she might truly be when it comes to the apple crumble, and for a tense moment, that almost sets her off: the acute awareness that whatever happens, she will not be doing him any favors. If anything, she's likely to make his evening significantly worse than it would have been if he hadn't run into her.

But she can't subject him to the more immediate disaster of an emotional breakdown in the middle of a bloody grocer's. She just... refuses to be that much of a mess, and she ruthlessly tamps down the sorrow and self-pity that threaten to swamp her.

Once she's certain she has ahold of herself, she takes his arm. Her own smile is little more than a cursory twitch of her lips, hardly convincing, but that's already a lost cause. "How are your studies?" she asks. As long as they don't talk about her, she should be able to at least make it to his apartment without falling apart.