on one padded bench with more than our share of awkward tension, placing as much space between as possible.

I met Quen's patient, inscrutable expression, wishing I could read him like I read everyone else. Here goes.

"I know you think I'm fake. I say that I'm your friend, but then I lie about why we can't hangout. I remember at SciBall, you hated how I pretend with everyone around me. I see your point."

His eyes flickered across mine, the irises utterly dark in the low light of the Pit. His face was impossible to decipher.

"But I'm not fake. So I want people to feel comfortable. So I want people to like me. I wanted you to like me, and I didn't go about that the right way but I swear I'm genuine. Like, once I tried to go to the bathroom and missed. I'm a mommy's girl trying to be her own girl. And these cheekbones? This is just contour."

"How do you miss the toilet?" Quen wondered, familiar humour blossoming against his features. That twitch of his cheek, a hint of what we used to be, looked like redemption.

I huffed, cheeks burning, willing to humiliate myself for the sake of honesty. "You sit too far forward. Viv realised as soon as the trickle didn't sound right, and she saved me. And cleaned it up. Now I owe it to her to at least get drunk once a semester."

"Oh, my God." He laughed. Laughed loud. Things were going to be okay. Even if he rejected me.

"See, I'm really dumb sometimes, Quen, and I don't know what more I can do to convince you that I'm authentic. You hate influencers because they use filters and sell drugs. I've tried the whole semester to change your mind. But I'm influencers. I'm influencers and I like that."

I'm not going to Med school and I like that.

The memory of Mom yelling at me through the phone reared over my head like a tsunami. The back of my throat stung. Quen turned blurry in front of me.

"I get to make money doing fun things. Brighten people's day. Direct awareness to impotent causes," I told him. "Blergh. Words. Important. Important causes."

I wiped the back of my hand under each eye, the skin smearing with eyeliner. I didn't cry. But I sure was close. After today, I never had to justify myself to anyone again. I knew who I was. I liked who I was. But not everyone would.

Quen shuffled closer, his expression guilty.

"I know you're real. You're real smart. You're real kind. You're real funny. You're really real, and I should never have doubted you or your friendship," he blurted. A choked laugh bubbled out of me, relief soothing my emotions.

Quen smiled tentatively, sliding another inch closer. Our thighs nearly touched. "I knew the moment I said it that I was wrong. Just like I knew the day I met you that'd I'd been wrong. And it's not just about you. Even if I met Kylie Jenner tomorrow, I wouldn't make snap judgments about anyone. You taught me that."

I placed a hand on his shoulder. The beginning of his bicep was solid underneath my touch. Wow.

"I'm sorry for freezing you out for months," I said truthfully. "I missed you, too. Can you forgive me, Quen?"

My palm shifted higher to his shoulder. This time I knew I wasn't imagining Quen leaning into my touch.

"Absolutely. Can you forgive me for judging people?"

My hands trailed up the smooth planes of his shoulders, towards his neck, until they rested on his nape. Under my hands, I felt a slight tremor race through Quen's body. He let his head float down until his forehead rested on mine.

"Done," I said instantly. His eyes were too close to focus on. I closed mine.

Quen's hand wrapped around my waist. "Good."

"Great," I murmured back. I was guided only by touch, how his grip was possessive yet tender.

"'Cause I'm kinda..."

The point where our foreheads pressed together shifted, as if his face had angled to close the gap.

"...super in lov—"

"—woah, there, girlie."

Goddamnit, just let me kiss him already!

That's what immediately ran through my head as I was abruptly jerked sideways, right out of Quen's arms by a strong, unyielding force.

Vivian.

She perused Quen and me quickly. Her expression was knowing and highly entertained, lips pursed and eyebrows raised inquisitively. She looped an arm around my shoulders and turned me away from Quen, stepping between us to shield me from his sight.

"She's coming with me. This is not a request. It's an FYI."

And then, in the blink of an eye, before Quen even had the chance to reply, she'd whisked me around the corner. The Pit disappeared from view.

"What's the absolute value of a ground state hydrogen electron's energy? In electron-volts, by the way."

"Forty-two," I answered confidently. That was the answer to everything. I'd read that somewhere, but I couldn't place exactly where.

"Errh," Viv mimicked a wrong-answer buzzer and shook her head. "Incorrect. Negative thirteen point six. Let's go home."

She wouldn't even let me say goodbye. "No, wait!" I protested desperately. "We were talking."

"Yes, it totally looked like that," she rolled her eyes. "Trust me, Kris. You don't want to have your first kiss with him in the Pit."

"But you've been telling me all semester to find a drunken hookup!" I peered at my best friend in shock. "What happened to you?"

"I don't know. I surprise myself, too, sometimes," Viv answered flippantly, throwing her hair over her shoulder. "Also, I've realised you are not me. And Quen is not your equivalent of a drunken hookup. Is he?"

Viv guided me into the stairwell, descending into the crowd of dancing drunkards.

I said immediately, "No."

"So don't treat him like one."

The crowd thinned out as we passed the drinks bar and kept walking towards the door. We left the throng of dancing people. It was no longer necessary to raise my voice, but I still did out of pure distress.

"But I still didn't tell him! I have to tell him," I begged Viv. Fine, so I wouldn't make out with Quen tonight—but at least I could finally say to him what I'd been trying to say for weeks. This was so unfair.

"You can tell each other tomorrow," Viv said placatingly, guiding me by the elbow towards the exit. "Or the next day, or the next. You two clearly aren't going anywhere. Besides, it means much more when you're sober."

What did Viv know? She spent half of her social life drunk. Maybe she'd learned that lesson through negative reinforcement, however, after many nights gone awry. Or maybe a certain twin had something to do with her sudden belief in sobriety.

The cold air of nighttime did feel refreshing as we stepped out of Topaz, clearing some of the fog from my mind. But I would take the heady, overheated air of the Pit if it meant I could be with Quen.

"Party-pooper," I pouted.

"Ha!" Viv snorted. "That's new."

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

When I woke up in the morning, it was to the sound of Quen's voice.

"—always of you."

I didn't remember anything else. I didn't remember that we'd not spoken properly for over a month now, since before my visit to New York. I didn't remember that blurry haze from Topaz last night. And I couldn't even begin to reconcile why I was somehow hearing Quen in my bedroom.

I just knew I wanted him closer.

My head pounded, my mouth was dry as a bone—classic symptoms of a hangover. Tequila-induced, which was even worse. I reached for the glass of water someone had left on my bedside table. The instant the cool liquid slid down my throat, I recalled everything in retrograde.

The weeks of strained interaction. Spotting Joelle and Quen at the mall. Being held in his arms as we slow-danced. Pushing down the pain of thinking I'd been friend-zoned. Watching him play his flute. Learning to code. Sitting down, flustered, next to a stranger who'd offered me a seat.

After Viv had put me to bed—seeing as Riley went home for a relative's birthday this weekend—and ostensibly left me a glass of water, I'd curled up around Kylo Bear. Was that where the voice had come from? I inspected Kylo Bear. I squeezed his plushy body and limbs, alert for a hidden object. There was nothing of importance until I reached the bottom of his left paw and pressed it.

"Hey, Krista," Quen's voice, marred by faint static, filled the silence.

My jaw dropped. There was a small speaker lodged in all the stuffing of Kylo Bear's leg. I must have rolled on top of it, triggering the audio clip in my sleep. In the few months since I'd received Kylo Bear, I'd touched every part of the teddy, but I'd never noticed anything different about it. Stupid, stupid girl.

"This bear is a thank-you for always looking out for me," his recorded message continued. "But it's also a confession. I really like you. If I start listing why, I'm going to fill the thirty seconds of recording space I have." A throaty, nervous chuckle rustled from the bear.

The answers I so desperately wanted—under my nose this whole fucking time! I expected to be consumed in self-loathing anger, but as Quen's messaged played on I just felt happier and happier. He liked me, too. He liked me, too. Maybe for as long as I'd cared for him.

Nothing else made sense still, but nothing else mattered either.

"Thing is," Quen admitted hesitantly, "—one of my best friends feels the same. I just found out last night. Out of respect to him, I think I should hold off on lunch until I know he's alright with it."

He must have been talking about Noah. Quen had cancelled our lunch date out of respect for one of his best friends, directly after the night the three of us met at Topaz. I felt frustrated that somehow Noah and the stupid bro code had invaded the feelings blossoming between Quen and me on yet another occasion. But Quen's sweet, shy, hopeful voice was like a balm for my soul. It washed me clean and filled me with sparks of joy.

"That's if you would want to... take things further? It's completely fine if you don't. I won't push you to tell me your thoughts. Just know that mine are always of you."

I played the recording over and over, scribing those priceless words deep into my heart and mining it for information. It had answered some important questions, but I was left with more in their place. Why did he never bring up the recording? His own feelings? Did Noah know about this? I had to talk to Quen.

I launched out of bed, neglecting to remake the duvets. Within ten minutes I dressed, washed up, and lifted Quen's address from my GPS search history. Never did I think I would be grateful for someone vomiting, but thank goodness he did at Callum's party. Now I knew where to find him.

As I raced past Jamie—brewing a jug of coffee—in the common room, he asked me, "Why are you in such a rush?" But I had no time.

I threw an apologetic smile over my shoulder. "Explain later. Bye!"

I pressed the button for the lift and jumped in with trembling fingers. With each passing second, I felt my nerves fraying with anticipation and excitement, like circuitry wires fried by too much current. I'd been an object of affection for many people in the past but never from the person I admired so deeply. In fact, never had I admired someone so deeply. Period.

It would have been scary if it wasn't so damn wonderful.

Then the elevator opened on the ground floor.

And, somehow, despite all the confusion and crossed wires—

Quen stood in front of me.

He quirked his eyebrows in recognition, visibly surprised to catch me on my way to him. I'm sure his expression mirrored mine. I could hardly believe my eyes. Hardly piece together a response from my tingling, hungover, elated mind, hardly comprehend my good luck.

But I was quicker to recover. "I forgot something last night."

Somehow, knowing he reciprocated gave me endless confidence. Triumph coursed to the ends of every limb of mine, chasing away all my fear and doubt.

"What?" he asked.

I took him by the hand and pulled hard. Quen stumbled into the elevator at the same I walked backwards, his palm landing on the metal for stability.

"This."

Then I leaned onto my tiptoes and kissed him.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Mwahaha. Finally.

Thirty-two chapters until their first kiss. When I say I write slow burn, I write slooow burn.

It's because Krista had a lot of character development to do before she can get her happy ending, and I didn't make any other obstacle for the romance (like jealous exes or her career).

It was difficult to develop a character that started out so strong already (smart, successful, at peace) until I realised Krista has a total want vs. need plotline. She had everything she wanted, but not what she needed.

Now she can get both!

Aimee x