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So she would enjoy it until her time ran out.

27

‘Hello. Earth to Aiden,’ Luc boomed down their cupped hands, breaking Aiden out of his thoughts. He rubbed his tired eyes – bloody Cerberus had kept him up all night again on his wheel – and turned his attention from the pages he’d been staring at back to his friend.

‘Sorry, what?’ Absently, he jabbed his pen onto his page, clicking the nib up and down. The library hummed with life around them, a dozen students clustered around tables and hovering in book aisles. The semester was slowly picking up speed, and it showed everywhere on campus – including Aiden’s classes. Apparently, there was a hell of a lot more to a pottery degree than just creating. The History of Ceramics module was kicking his arse, and his pit-fired gravy boat, inspired by his terribly dry Christmas dinner at Gran’s, didn’t even count towards the grade. Apparently, they’d just camped out for fun, and to learn the techniques, because an essay was required in three weeks’ time about how pottery has developed since ancient times. He wasn’t aware that it even had, really; that’s what he liked about it. Painting was ever-changing, most styles reflective of the atmosphere and social commentaries of the time,easy to match to an era, but he could stare at a vase from thousands of years ago and not know if it had been made then or now. He could recognise the techniques that might have been used by fingers far more calloused and ancient than his.

Of course, that wasn’t what he’d been thinking about before Luc’s interruption, and Luc seemed to know it, too, because they raised a purple-dyed eyebrow. ‘You’re Juniper-dreaming again.’

‘No, I’m not!’ He was. Worrying about her. She was so busy with work, so distant even when she wasn’t. He didn’t know what he’d done this time. And that contest pamphlet in her bag had to mean something, didn’t it? Was she afraid of telling him because he didn’t think he’d support her? That could never be true.

‘At least get better at lying about it.’ Luc dropped their pencil into the fold of their book, silver nose ring winking at Aiden as they leaned into a spot of light streaming in from the ceiling.

Defeated, he slouched as well, kicking his legs out in an attempt to disappear beneath the table. ‘I don’t know what to do. I’ve never been this in my head about someone before.’ He huffed. ‘Have you ever felt like that? Like… I don’t know.’ He didn’t have the words to describe all the feelings Juniper summoned in him, only that he was completely absorbed by her, and everything else came second. And when she didn’t talk to him, when he felt something was wrong but couldn’t reach her to find out what, he felt like he was caught in a whirlpool that never stopped spinning. Of course, his anxiety disorder didn’t help,but he couldn’t meditate away whatever the fuck she’d done to him, and his beta-blockers didn’t seem to target any Juniper-related adrenaline, either.

It was too much. He knew it was. He just couldn’t stop.

‘No,’ Luc answered honestly. ‘I don’t really experience romantic attraction, and honestly, watching you, I’m glad for it. You make it look exhausting. Who would ever want to fall in love?’

Aiden wrinkled his nose at that word, a defence mechanism that, once gone, left him feeling bare and unpleasant. ‘It isn’t love.’

He didn’t sound convincing even to his own ears, and that made his grimace deepen. Shit. Maybe it wasa bitlove, or at least heading there. He’d been rapt by her since that first moment here. Maybe even before. He thought about her, worried about her, all day. He was enduring sleepless nights for the sake of her nocturnal hamster.

Luc cast him a pointed look, one that he wanted to hide from.

‘Let’s not go there,’ he said.

‘You started it,’ they replied. ‘I don’t see why you can’t just ask her to be your girlfriend. You’ve beenboinking, as Tilly put it, for long enough.’

‘I don’t think she trusts me yet. Not completely.’ And he didn’t know how to change that. ‘And stop saying boinking.’

‘No. It’s a good word.’ Luc grinned. ‘Have you given her a reason not to trust you, other than your general fuckboy appearance?’

‘Oi! I’m not a fuckboy!’

‘I didn’t say you were. Only that youlooklike one.’

Aiden scraped his hair off his face as though that, somehow, would change Luc’s mind. He attempted nonchalance, but then looked down at his brown lace-ups with concern. ‘Is it the trainers? I knew I should have worn my Vans instead.’

‘Yes, Vans would have changed everything,’ Luc deadpanned.

‘She’s just always seen me as a rich arsehole.’ When Luc opened their mouth, likely to agree, he jumped in: ‘Yeah, all right, I guess I am, but it’s sort of because that’s who people want me to be. It’s easier to meet their expectations. In fact, it used to get me friends. Shit friends, but friends.’

‘But you must see that now, especially, she probably does notwantto be with a rich arsehole.’ Luc went back to scribbling down notes from their open book on Roman vessels. ‘You are probably a walking reminder for her.’

Aiden halted. ‘What do you mean? A reminder of what?’

‘Of her own struggles.’

He paused. He hadn’t known Juniperwasstruggling. That was why she had a job, wasn’t it? To keep her afloat?

That pamphlet he’d seen on her desk yesterday flickered in his mind once more. The National Ceramics Competition. He’d researched it later, curious about why he hadn’t heard of it himself, only to find it was a prestigious award judged by a renowned potter named Delia Melrose. It intended to boost the careers of new and lesser-known potters with a cash prize and the opportunities that followed. It seemed like a lot of extra work to put on herself in the middle of term, but now…

‘Is Juniper struggling with money?’

‘Ooooooooh,merde.’ Luc cursed in their first language, paling slightly. ‘I thought she would have told you. I did not say a thing, okay?’

‘Luc, I need to know.’