hall, my tote bag swinging at my shoulder.

I wasn't unforgivably late today, but being forced to sit at the front—if Quen hadn't managed to hold a spare seat for me—under the subtly irritated watch of the professor was a powerful deterrent. When I rounded the corner to Science 1, the sight made me halt in my tracks.

Quen was leaning against the wall by the door. His right leg crossed over his left at the ankle, which just showed off the profile of his toned calves in his jeans. He smirked when he saw me.

"Krista," he tutted, checking an imaginary watch. "Late as always."

"Not always," I retorted. "I'm not late on Mondays or Fridays," which were the days we also had a Biophysics lecture.

The early morning start on Wednesdays, just after a long shift at work, was asking too much of me, however. Just ten hours ago I'd been entertaining a long line of drunkards fresh from pre-gaming, and five hours ago, pushing trays and trays of glasses through Topaz' industrial dishwasher.

"Sure you aren't," Quen smiled softly.

Today was Day One of Operation Pride & Prejudice.

Quen was far from Darcy—not snobby, also not rich—but he certainly needed his mind broadening. If we could get on closer terms, maybe spending time with me would prove that I was a genuine person, with dreams and flaws like everyone else. And when we were truly friends, we could talk more extensively about his hidden hang ups with influencers. I could convince him he was wrong.

"Why're you waiting? You're going to make yourself late, too."

"I learn better when I can copy off your notes," he quipped. "Much more useful than being on time."

I didn't want to stand there and debate further into the lecture, so we slipped into the class and found two seats. An invincible feeling washed over me when it finally hit me, many minutes later. He had waited for me. He wanted to sit with me—even if it was to sponge off of my notes.

It was the gesture that counted, right?

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Our laptops and textbooks lay sorely neglected.

After our first study session last week, where I learnt the rudimentaries of Python, it had been all too easy to suggest a repeat. Quen had agreed, warning me he had to leave for his usual noon badminton practise, and led me to the library.

"I don't care. I willdie on this hill," I stated, trying to appear serious despite the laughter that pulled my lips upwards. "Faraday is my favourite physicist."

"I'm not criticising your choice, just your reasoning," Quen explained in an animated, hushed voice. The library was saturated with the intense, quiet whispers, clickings, and whirrings of learning and student distress. "You like Faraday because he sucked at maths?"

"Precisely," I smiled, tapping my mechanical pencil against my bottom lip. Quen's eyes didn't stray there, even though I almost wish they did. He only looked at my eyes. "You know, I would have majored in Physics if I had an iota of ability in Calculus?"

"What a loss for our department," he quipped.

I smacked his arm lightly, my Chemistry notes completely ignored on the tabletop. "As I was saying, because Faraday was so bad at math, he sought alternative ways of modelling natural phenomena. He came up with the idea of fields and field lines this way, did you know?"

"I did not know. I guess that makes him a real underdog. But I'm with Einstein."

"I happen to have a thing for underdogs," I responded matter-of-factly. "And your physicist had a framed photograph of my physicist on his wall. So suck it."

Quen's lips twitched at that. "Why did you want to do Physics?"

"It's just the coolest. There's no other field with such scope—from the very big to the very small to the very fast. You'll never know anything in the grand scheme of things, and yet nothing else will teach you as much."

"How poetic," he remarked. "And now you're stuck rearranging people's organs."

"Shut up, Quen. Why are you doing Physics?"

His eyebrows tugged into an expression of sadness, and I leaned in closer despite myself. Was he going to share something personal with me?

"Sadly," then his expression morphed into a sly smirk, "I have several iotas of Calculus ability to spare. Thought it best to put them to use somewhere."

I scowled, and resolutely refocused on my Chemistry assignment.

It was probably for the best that his dumb joke had brought a swift end to our discussion, for neither of us had done much work since we came to the library.

I finally found a new hobby.

I used to have hobbies before this year. I did ballet, joined the debate team, and sat on the student council in high school. In my freshman year of college, I tried to keep fit by doing yoga with Viv. Over the summer before my sophomore year, I had taken an internship at an agriscience company. Mostly they had sent me into the field to take soil samples, nothing special.

When I returned to Halston in my sophomore year, I could not be stuffed with fitness anymore. I ate a balanced diet and relied on my rapid metabolism to maintain my body, and it seemed to be working so far. Junior year, I'd studied and partied occasionally, but mostly the former. Between my jobs and my studying, I had resigned to giving up my me-time.

But now I discovered coding.

If I had told seventeen-year-old Krista that one day she would love coding, she would have actually laughed in my face then tweeted about it. At that age, I was soaking up my fame, going to parties, flaunting my wardrobe, and toying with boys for the fun of it. Building a practical skillset was the furthest thing from my mind.

There were many Python notebooks on the internet that could be downloaded and run. They walked me through different coding skills, with special cells for me to test my own abilities. I had learned how to write functions, plot graphs, and make a gif. Even though I had picked up a lot of skills in a relatively short amount of time, coding was by no means easy.

One tiny punctuation mark could throw the whole program off. An object could be the wrong type, and then the functions wouldn't execute properly. Or I'd have written the code lines in the wrong order, sending the code through an infinite loop. It wasn't like writing articles at all. Writing articles could be done when I was sleep-deprived or writer-blocked. I could slap together my best effort and usually, it made sense. Coding took more planning, more purpose. I had to know exactly what I was doing before I did it. Even then things could go wrong, and then I would have to comb through for bugs.

It was not an art. Art was meant for losing oneself. Coding was made for finding oneself.

I found that I was more adaptable and resilient than I thought I could be. Writing code made me feel powerful and capable.

I had taken inspiration from Quen's idea and written data analysis code for each of my papers this semester. He was right; after the initial writing and debugging stage, each cell block could be tweaked to handle different types of questions.

When I presented my work to Jake and Viv, they were shocked.

Jake was studying Pharmacy, so Viv and I shared a Toxicology paper with him. We did our labs together, even though we were in different class streams. We took the data in those sessions and wrote the reports together. I had already input the raw data into my code and obtained the final answer.

"Kris, you genius. You absolute genius," Jake said. He looked so emotional I thought he might cry. I knew he hated the math work associated with labs, so I didn't object when he immediately started copying down my answers. That was what I had shown them the code for, after all.

Viv slid my laptop over to her and scrolled up and down my code. She fixed me with a pointed, inquisitive gaze. "While you could be getting laid, you chose to pick up programming?"

I smiled proudly. "Yup."

Her nose wrinkled in disgust. "You are..." Then her voice softened into reluctant admiration, "—so unapologetic I have to admit that's kind of badass. I will still do it the manual way, though, and then we can compare."

"Sounds good," I told her. I stood from the couch, leaving the laptop with her. "I'm going to dinner."

Jake mirrored me, stretching his arms happily above his head. "Ooh, I'll come, too."

"Excuse me?" Viv asked him. "Aren't you going to finish the lab?"

"Nope. I trust Kris' brain and your brain. Between the two of you, you're bound to come up with the answer," Jake said.

She glowered, unhappy with the prospect of being left alone to do the work. "You have different data than us."

"Then I'll just put those into Krista's code." Jake peered at me for confirmation. "That is how it works, right?"

"Yes."

Then he was overcome by such relief that he enfolded me in a tight hug, clamping my arms by my sides. "God bless you, Krista Ming."

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The two of us took the elevator down to the ground floor and made our way to the dining hall.

It was not as busy because the dinner service was nearly over. I much preferred the dining hall this way, peaceful and quiet. I chose a turkey leg and potato salad. Jake took the same onto his tray, and we made our choice of the empty tables. After Jake took his first bite, his eyes rolling into his head with pleasure, he gave me a sly smile.

"So how's Physics Boy?"

I dropped my fork. "What the fuck? Who told you?"

"Viv told Jamie, and Jamie told me," he rattled off like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Gotta say, I am surprised he pulled you."

"You don't know him," I pointed out.

"Fair. So, are you gonna make a move?"

"Not until I feel like he likes me back. Otherwise, I'll just make our friendship awkward."

I felt comfortable talking to Jake about this the same way I did with Riley and Viv. Jamie, too, if he actually cared about relationship gossip the way his twin did. Living in close quarters over the last semester with all my floormates had formed unbreakable bonds between us. It felt good knowing that these people would be in my life for a long time. It felt good being able to trust them completely, knowing they would accept me.

Jake gave me a pitying glance. "You don't know if he does yet? That's not a good sign."

"Well, he doesn't like influencers. So that might be holding him back."

"Why does he not?"

"I don't know. I'm working myself up to asking him soon."

"Wow. You really said snail's pace."

"Hey, I'm not familiar with the timelines of relationships!"

I really wasn't, and not because I was relationship-averse. In high school, I had so many boys angling to hook up with me, take me out on dates, or invite me to house parties. All the activities they suggested either had a physical element or an alcoholic element. It was like they couldn't fathom getting to know a girl before sundown, in public, intellectually.

Granted, I wasn't always the most intellectual person in high school. I took advantage of my fame at every opportunity, passing out the occasional makeout session to whatever lucky stranger struck me as deserving or hot enough. It was an era of cringe.

Then I thought back to my last serious relationship, of which there were about two—one in high school that lasted six months, and one in freshman year that lasted two months.

He was someone I'd met on campus. I thought I'd loved him at the time, but after a couple years of complete disconnect, I realised it was just infatuation caused by proximity. Between then and now, I'd made out with a handful of boys when I was drunk and gone home with an even smaller selection of them. In short, major dry spell.

Major.

"I haven't dated in what, three years?"

"Here, I'll give you my sage advice. As a dude, if I like a girl, I will make it obvious. Either I'll be bugging her on social media or in person. I make it clear she's the only one I'm interested in. She won't be able to get rid of me," Jake explained.

I arched an eyebrow. "Sounds kind of persistent, the whole wearing a girl down thing."

"Obviously, you should back off if it's not reciprocated. But that's how I am with Avalon," he shrugged happily. "And she's had more than four years to leave me, but she hasn't."

"Crazily."

"Yup."

That didn't sound at all like what Quen was like. I'd tried twice more to engage him in online messaging conversations, but he was as clipped as the first time. We had great conversations when we met up to study, but verbal chemistry didn't always translate into romantic chemistry. He was nice to me, but I'm sure he was like that with everyone else in his life.

Which meant that he was nice to no-one, in the relative sense.

"Well, Quen's not that expressive. He's independent. Reserved."

"That's a codeword for uninterested." I pretended not to mind that much, but secretly, that was exactly what I feared.

"Thanks for your advice, but just eat your turkey."

"Touchy," Jake smirked.

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Shameless self-promo, but is this the first book of mine you have read?

All of my contemporary novels live in the same universe, and there are webs of connections between all the stories at different points in their lives. I love the idea that a story never ends, there is only a point where we join it and where we leave it.

For example, you could have met Jake (I love writing his POV btw) here, or from Handwritten when he was seventeen. You could have met Viv (also love writing her POV) here first, or from Blackout. Same with Sophie and TGR.

And for those who are super, super observant, I actually introduced Krista way back in 2017 in another story of mine - does anyone know which one it is? She was never meant to get a story, yet here we are!

Aimee x