I used to think I’d outgrown it.
I wasn’t sure anymore.
When I’d first said yes to Cameron staying with me, it had been out of obligation—to Gary, to history, to the idea of being useful. I’d imagined a few awkward weeks, polite conversation, boundaries drawn yet again in permanent marker.
I hadn’t imagined the way Cameron’s presence would fill the air, how it would rearrange the rhythm of the flat. The way his laughter would stay behind even after he left a room.
I’d forgotten what it felt like to come home and not be alone with the silence, and that terrified me.
I negotiated the escalators, then waited for the next train, my head still turning over my conversation with Max.
What Max didn’t understand—whatno onedid—was that I had rules for a reason. Rules kept me from repeating mistakes, from letting desire turn to chaos.
From becoming the kind of manLukahad been, restless, consuming, cruel in the way people can be when they love without care.
Cameron was too young for that kind of mess. Too open. Too easy to hurt.
And yet every time I walked up to my front door, the same thought hit me like muscle memory.
He’s inside.
Every time I unlocked the door, I felt the same low hum under my skin.
Don’t look at him. Don’t want him. Don’t let him see.
I was failing at all three.
Max’s voice came back again, softer now.You’re falling for him.
Falling was easy. Staying upright afterwards?Thatwas the part that terrified me.
I tuned out the voices of the passengers around me, the clatter of the train, the announcements signalling the next station.
What surfaced was the memory of a smell. It had been years since I’d thought about it, but I could still recall it with startling clarity: old coffee gone bitter on a warming plate, dust in sunlight, the sour tang of a rehearsal space that was once everything before it became nothing at all. The memory was so sharp, it could have been happening in real time.
A door, a laugh, a voice I could pick out of a crowd at twenty paces.
Don’t rush me, Theo. You ruin the rhythm when you rush.
And suddenly I wasn’t squashed on a crowded train but drowning in memories, no longer twenty-six but nineteen, standing in a college music room with scuffed floors and a leaning piano and Luka’s smile, all sinew and certainty, offering attention like a spotlight.
Luka had looked like trouble even while standing still. Not the loud, obvious kind Max tossed around like confetti, but a colder version, deliberate, practiced, honey laced with glass.
The first time Luka waited for me after rehearsal, I’d felt chosen.
He noticed me.The thrill of it had made my hands shake.
“Walk me back to my dorm,” Luka had said, as if I’d been doing that every night for years. “You’re the only one who doesn’t speed up on the downbeats.”
I hadn’t understood what that meant, but I’d nodded, my heart climbing into my throat. We’d walked through the campus half-lit by sodium lamps, Luka tossing out fragments of stories like notes, me listening, laughing too quietly, offering fewer words and more attention. By the time we reached Luka’s building,walk me homehad become a habit, then a rule.
Don’t rush me. You ruin the rhythm when you rush.
I closed my eyes and told myself I was fine. The memory should have been an artifact by now, as brittle and harmless as a pressed flower. But the air in my chest hadn’t quite expanded, and the taste of someone else’s rhythm lingered like stubborn smoke. The sound of the train permeated my thoughts, the safe, ordinary sounds I knew so well.
Luka had not been ordinary. That had been the point.
The first month had felt like oxygen. If Luka was a song, he was one I’d been waiting for without knowing it. Someone whosawme. Someone who saidyou’re not just valuable, you’re vital.