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‘Well, believe it or not, I didn’t come here just to piss you off.’ She had the nerve to implyhewas arrogant? Aiden couldn’t help that they’d wound up in the same place at the same time. God, he hadn’t even thought of Juniper since sixth form. All right, maybe sometimes, when scrolling through Instagram or looking through old Facebook memories. With that disarming presence, she was hard to forget.

‘Whydidyou come here?’ she shot out, her knuckles turning white around the badge-covered strap of her backpack. He recognised a few logos there – bands he quite enjoyed himself: Sleep Token, Linkin Park, and then an LGBTQ+ flag badge and Van Gogh’sStarry Night, which he thought was a little too obvious for an art student, but everybody had their tastes. Some of them he remembered seeing on her old school blazer, which had resulted in plenty of detentions. Not that she’d ever cared about those.

He pursed his lips, without an answer. At least, one he could stand to give her. ‘I don’t owe you an explanation, just like you don’t owe me one.’

‘What about Elmington?’ she pried.

The back of his neck began to prickle. The last thing he wanted was to think of his last stint at university and the way it had seemed to tear everything apart. Nine months down the line and his dad still hadn’t spoken to him. He didn’t know if he should be glad about it.

‘Wasn’t for me,’ he replied. It wasn’t a lie, but there was far more to it than that. Things he wasn’t sure he could ever admit to another person, let alone someone who was looking for more reasons to unravel him.

Juniper’s scoff dripped with twice as much venom this time. ‘Right, that world-renowned uni, where most artists in the UK would die for a chance to even be considered, justwasn’t for you. Do you understand how ridiculous that sounds?’

His hands began to shake, and he curled them into his pockets roughly. ‘RACA isn’t that much easier to get into.’

‘Yeah, and unlike you, I’m not going to throw this opportunity away, so just stop with all…’ She motioned vaguely towards him, and he felt her eyes drag over his body like sharp fingernails. Felt his gut and something a little further south react in response, because he liked it when she looked at him. It was far better than when she ignored him altogether. That just made him feel cold and restless andwanting. Her attention felt rare, valuable, and he liked being valued – even if it came in the form of scorn. ‘This,’ she finished after a beat too long.

‘I would consider it if I knew whatall thiswas.’ He arched his brows. ‘You’ve had a problem with me since you barrelled so gracefully into the classroom.’

‘Andyou’veenjoyed it!’

‘I’m not going to deny that.’ He pinched his smile between his fingers. Maybe it made him terrible, but he liked to see her riled up and red-faced. It left wrinkles at either side of her nose, and she kept biting her lip in a way that made their heart-shaped plumpness hard to ignore. It helped that she was much shorter than him, that he had to look down to see it. What she lacked in height, she made up for in temper.

‘Stop!’ she repeated harshly.

‘Then tell me what the problem is!’ He rubbed his thumb across his brow roughly. ‘Jesus, Juni, I know we weren’t really mates, but I was actually…’

When he trailed off, she demanded, ‘Actually what?’

‘Well, it wasn’t that unpleasant to see a familiar face here.’ He shrugged, dipping his head to hide his embarrassment.

That seemed to make her falter. She took a step back, forehead crinkling a little like her collapsed clay creation. ‘You really have no idea, do you?’ she muttered quietly.

‘That is what I’ve been trying to tell you, yes.’

Somehow, his cluelessness only seemed to anger her more. Her lip curled, and she ripped her gaze away so he could no longer meet her eyes. Her ponytail swung with the rest of her, a shaggy mix of copper and gold. He’d always liked watching her curls when he’d sat behind her in art: untethered to the rest of her, moving even when she didn’t. They’d snuck his way into some of his coursework paintings in subtle ways: a flicker of red in brown soil, pale gold highlights in the dark.

‘I just don’t like you, okay?’ she said finally.

‘You don’tknowme,’ he fixed, and now it was his turn to get annoyed. ‘Jesus, are you still the same person you were at seventeen? Because I’m not.’

Another waver of her resolve. For a moment, he thought he’d gotten through to her, but then her features shuttered again and she was somewhere he couldn’t reach.

‘The things I don’t like about you aren’t things that seem to have changed,’ she decided flatly.

‘Or maybe you’re just bitter that you mucked up your first day and you need someone to blame,’ he suggested.

He knew it was the wrong thing to say immediately. Her chin wobbled, and she recoiled just a little bit further.

‘See?’ she whispered. ‘Still the same twatface.’

She turned on her heel, leaving him to stew in the smell of her: leather and something rich, sweet, like chocolate and cherries. He watched her stomp over the grass, ignoring the path entirely,and wondered why, even at a distance, she could still pull his focus along with her.

That rope holding him hostage finally snapped when she turned at the library and disappeared, and he rubbed the place where he felt it most, his lower ribcage. Exhausted, he could only shake his head, his jaw so tight that he was surprised it didn’t stay locked there. He convinced himself to stop thinking about her and headed the other way.

A friendly face at least greeted him when he neared the exhibition gallery. Sat by the steps, Luc winced, making it clear they’d witnessed the whole thing.

‘May I give you some advice?’ they asked as they fell into step, the two of them heading towards the great arched doorway. When Aiden had mentioned his plans to visit earlier, Luc had invited themself, a fact that Aiden was both uncomfortable and glad about. Uncomfortable, because he hadn’t had many friends around since dropping out of Elmington, and he’d gotten too used to his own company in recent months. Glad, because he wanted to change that. He’d liked himself most in high school, when he’d been surrounded by people who paid attention to him. When he’d been so busy enjoying their company that he hadn’t stopped to think about the future and the things he wasn’t supposed to want.