look hot.

I would say he made it look inexplicably hot, but that was not true. As I watched him warm up for the marching band rehearsal, I found I could very clearly explain why I found it so attractive.

Callum and I had speed-walked to the Arts' Choral Hall. Even though Callum was bragging all the way about the drumline needing very little warm-up time or maintenance, he was still cutting it close to the hour. Plus, I had enough band friends in high school to know that there was unpacking and even tuning required of percussionists.

We parted ways when the Choral Hall came into view. He marched quickly through the main door, as he normally would, while I circled around to the back entrance. The door was still unlocked; all the doors on campus automatically locked from the outside at seven, except those select buildings in which there were night classes.

I slipped through the door and found myself backstage. The marching band had set up onstage, four rows of chairs arranged in a semicircle around the conductor, who was currently flipping through her sheet music. Quen was in the front row, and I stopped in my tracks behind the weighty black fabric of a wing.

He was running through his scales. His fingers flew in a blur over the silver body of his flute, which glinted in the lowlight. Every other musician was doing the same routine of warming up, and they filled the theatre of the Choral Hall with a massive, reverberating cacophony of asynchronous melodies. But somehow I could pick the sound of his flute out.

His notes were clear and rapid. It made me think of dipping my hand into the stream at the top of a mountain peak. Cool, crisp and beautiful. His music had a similar effect, too, for I found myself immediately calmed just following the rise and fall of Quen's playing.

Following Callum's instructions, I walked to the stage door at the corner of the wall and into the stairwell. It led up to the mezzanine seats, which had a solid wooden balustrade that I could easily hide behind. Plus, no-one ever looked up past their line of vision. I'd read that somewhere, I was sure.

From up above, I could admire Quen all I liked. He sat straight in his seat, though that made his head stick up above all the rest of his bandmates. The navy t-shirt he wore emphasised his toned shoulders and arms. After he did his scales, he started playing through the melodies of his sheet music.

I felt like Quen would have totally been a band geek in high school. No-one in my high school had considered band geeks hot. There were the jaded, tattooed bad boys that skipped class to smoke and do drugs. Everyone found them hot.

But now—three years out of high school—I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. If I'd met an apathetic, unmotivated rebel at twenty-one years old, who skived their responsibilities to self-medicate, I would be disgusted. That sort of attitude wasn't attractive to me anymore.

You know what was? A man who had passions. A capable, hard-working man. Someone who respected his commitments. Quen was an amazing musician, and I could see the dedication radiate off him from the solid set of his jaw and the slight furrow of his eyebrows as his eyes skimmed the music.

When the conductor asked first flute to play the melody at bar eighty-one, Quen immediately launched into a solemn and haunting tune. And he did it alone. That showed he was confident, and the way he played — my God, those smooth ribbons of sound — made it irrefutably clear he was damn near an expert.

I was in paradise watching him. The music was stunning. Quen was confident and hard-working, which were two definite levels higher than just being the bare minimum, as Viv had said. And the boy knew how to use his fingers. No complaints there.

Resting my arms on the balustrade, I let my chin rest on them and sank peacefully into my seat.

I was very, very glad Callum had invited me along.

After the rehearsal, I made my way to the main entrance of the Choral Hall.

I knew Quen and Callum would exit from there. Three minutes later, I was not disappointed.

Quen walked out with his backpack strung over one shoulder and his compact flute case in his hand. Callum smiled at me, and it was then that Quen noticed me leaning against the pillar. His eyebrows shot up and he gave me a surprised smile.

"Krista."

Callum and I locked eyes for a split second, but his encouraging smile finally made it click in my head. He was wingmanning.

"Hey, Quen, I got to dip." He waved his hand. "See you tomorrow."

Quen's head turned in Callum's direction, his friend already down the stairs and speeding away. "But—"

I fell into step beside Quen, noticing the way he slowed his long strides for me. He was so tall that he could cover a far larger distance than me. "Sorry for crashing the rehearsal," I apologised softly, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. "But I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised."

Quen seemed to have forgotten all about Callum by now, as we walked down the brick footpath towards the Quad. He arched an eyebrow curiously at me. "Were you really?"

"Immensely. How come you didn't tell me you played the flute when we talked about our hobbies?"

Quen dropped his gaze bashfully.

When our eyes met again, he gave me a wry, lopsided smile. "Compared to fictional men who defeat empires and-or stab their fathers with light sabers, playing the flute kind of pales in comparison. Plus, it was your moment."

A surprised laugh bubbled from my lips. "I would take a skilled musician over a bad boy any day. Platonically, of course."

"That's— that's like the opposite of what you said this morning. For like an hour. Very emotionally," Quen deadpanned. "What happened to they're so tortured, isn't it heart-wrenching? I thought women liked danger..."

My memory flicked back to this morning in the library, when I had unabashedly ranted about the fandoms of which I was a part, which characters I thought deserved redemption arcs, and which ones I melted over. Perhaps I wasn't supposed to rave about other men in front of the one I liked, but when it came to Quen, I felt no need to play by the stupid rules of dating.

I didn't want to wait a certain amount of time before replying to his rare messages to make myself seem aloof. I didn't want to boost his ego by dumbing myself down or making him think I had no other male icons in my life. I didn't want to play hard to get. Especially because I had no idea how he felt about me, I wanted him to be my friend before anything else.

Friends didn't hold back. Friends trusted each other. I told Quentin everything about my days, my nights, my childhood, my family. He did the same. Even when we disagreed, we respected each other. I knew my heart was falling more and more securely into his hands with each passing moment.

And if Quen could only receive it with friendship, that would be such bliss already, because his friendship was kinder and sweeter than every other man's romance.

He was unlike anyone I'd ever known.

"—or cigarettes and leather jackets. And getting into a fistfight with another dude over them? Is that what women are into?"

"Troublesome women, maybe," I scoffed. I nudged my elbow playfully into his torso as we walked. "The things I like in a narrative sense don't translate to real life, Quen. I mean, I love reading science fiction. That doesn't mean I want to be enslaved by AI overlords tomorrow."

That made him laugh. He nodded his head in acknowledgement. "But you have to admit," he returned, "the appeal of bad boys survives the test of time."

"I will admit that. But I don't buy into it."

"Huh," was all he said.

I cast a sideways glance at him. He was silent but not distracted. I could tell from the way his eyebrows furrowed that he was turning things over in his head. The golden evening sunlight fell on the thousands of blades of grass on either side of the footpath.

Quen parked in the same car park every day. He'd pointed his car out to me one day as we were walking out of the Biophysics recitation class one day. This car park was on the route back to the dormitory, but I tried slowing my pace so that we would have more time before we had to part.

I elaborated, "I honestly feel bad for bad boys now. I know too many women who think it's special that they're the only one who sees their man's demons, or are proud of being the one to save him. But it's just unhealthy."

"What do you mean by that? Aren't couples supposed to have this special secrecy between them?" he asked lightly. "Things that no-one else but them knows."

"Those secrets are supposed to be precious secrets. Like embarrassing birthmarks. Not destructive ones."

"Sage words, Krista," he said pompously. "Maybe Natural Affairs needs to add a lifestyle column for you to publish your relationship advice."

With exaggerated despair, I draped my hand over my forehead and complained, "But then I would have bad boys flooding my email every week saying I ruined their relationships, and I can't deal with that level of angst."

"That level of angst is only reserved for fiction, right?"

"Exactly."

"Well, that's good to hear," Quen smirked. "I thought I was going to be your most boring friend if I didn't have some sort of emotional baggage."

"You don't have any? That's impressive."

Quen suddenly paused in his tracks, placing a hand on my shoulder to stop me. I turned to face him as he raised his pinky finger to me, an intent expression on his face. "Pinky promise you won't tell anyone, Krista."

I rolled my eyes, but hooked my pink through his anyway. "Promise."

He announced, "I have some insecurities."

"Let me guess," I quipped, "You wonder if you're good-looking enough, and you wonder if you're the least-liked of your friend group."

"How did you know?" he asked, eyes wide with surprise.

"Love," I drawled flatly. "Everyone is insecure about those things. Even me, even fucking celebrities. It's the mark of the twenty-first century."

Quen seemed a bit taken aback at that statement, but it was true. Whenever I ran Q&A campaigns on my Instagram profile, whenever I had to console drunk, hysterical women in the bathrooms of Topaz, and whenever Viv, Riley and I shared our deepest emotions with each other, these two things came up without fail.

Looks and relationships. It never changed.

I remember first being shocked that nearly everyone—no matter how beautiful or popular—felt these insecurities, and then overwhelmingly comforted that I wasn't alone in feeling this way. Quen seemed to feel that way, too.

"Go figure," he said with a soft smile. "Well, other than that, I think I'm one stale, cookie-cutter, well-adjusted male specimen."

"How horrible," I pouted, when he was the exact opposite of horrible to me. "And here I was hoping you would barbeque-skewer your father sometime soon."

"Sorry to disappoint. Maybe at Thanksgiving, though. We'll see."

We laughed between ourselves, before falling silent. The campus was magnificent when it wasn't overrun by frantic students. The tall brick buildings, the occasional monument, all surrounded by lush green grass. An occasional squirrel darted across the lawns. I breathed in the cool evening air and felt gratitude sweep over me because plantlife and wildlife weren't common appearances in my home city.

I looked at the man beside me. His face was in profile to the setting sun, the dimming light of which illuminated the graceful slant of his nose and strong jawline. Quen looked back at me when he felt my eyes on him.

I told him sincerely, softly, "But, just for the record, you're very good-looking and your friends love you dearly."

His lips stretched into a cheeky grin that belied how his eyes softened. "I almost thought you were going to say my hair looks brassy and I should buy some hair vitamin gummies using your special discount code."

I would have predicted a sentence like that would ruin the mood, but I could see Quen hiding the way I'd hit him somewhere vulnerable, and I could see a halo of orange emanating from behind his head as he came between me and the sun, and I could see that he had only teased me because he knew me.

Like, really knew me. Knew who I was under the fame, under the resume padders, and under the charm. He knew the fangirl with all the common insecurities who wanted to do right by the people in her life.

And the moment got even more perfect than I could have thought possible. "Fuck right off, Quen," I shot back, smiling wide. "I won't let you copy off my Biophys notes next lecture."

"Alright, I take it back," he laughed, mirroring my grin. "Thanks, Krista. That's nice of you to say. But you're not hitting on me are you?"

The car park came into view, followed by the familiar silhouette of Quen's car. In the background I could see my dormitory building, with all its rectangular windows lit up from within. We would say goodbye soon.

"No, you raging narcissist." I punched his arm lightly, as grass turned to concrete. "If I were hitting on you, you would know."

(He would not know.)

When I travelled to the States for the first time and saw my first campus squirrel, I melted. It was at Michigan State. We called it Chipmunk ironically. I had never seen a squirrel in real life before because NZ has none, and editing this scene makes me long to travel again.

But I am grateful and aware that NZ has it great in terms of Covid. I hope everyone is taking care and safe and sound.

Aimee x