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“She isn’t my girlfriend.”

“She’s spent every night here.”

I throw a guitar pick at him. He catches it against his chest and grins.

The annoying part is, he isn’t entirely wrong.

Whatever Bea and I are doing has moved dangerously close to relationship territory without either of us acknowledging it. We go to class alone. We study alone. We handle the hundred things we’re both supposed to be doing all day.

Then eight or nine rolls around and one of our phones lights up.

Bea

Want to study?

It’s become code.

Sometimes for sex. Usually for sex. Often more than once. The texts are now having a measurable effect on my sleep schedule.

But it sometimes means lying in her bed while she studies and I work on lyrics. Or making food in my kitchen after midnight.

There are lemons in my fridge now.

I fucking hate lemons.

Bea drinks hot lemon water when she studies late. So I’m a man who buys lemons now.

The concept of a girlfriend should feel like a trap.

Instead, I picture introducing her that way and feel proud.

This is Bea, my girlfriend.

Smartest person in any room. Sharp enough to cut through every piece of bullshit I’ve ever used to protect myself. Beautiful enough that I still have moments where I look at her and forget what I was saying.

I like her more than I’ve liked anyone.

Possibly ever.

There’s still LA waiting at the end of the semester, but that doesn’t have to mean anything yet. I can come back. Drew and Mabel are here. Bea is here. She can visit LA when she has time. We can figure it out like adults instead of treating a few hundred miles as an extinction event.

Not that I’m planning to say any of this to her.

Bea takes decisions seriously. If I place the word relationship in front of her too soon, she’ll probably build a spreadsheet assessing our long-term viability and terrify herself out of it.

For now, I’m willing to keep answering the late-night texts.

“You’re doing the face,” Luca says.

“What face?”

“The one where you mentally plan your future and pretend you’re thinking about chord progressions.”

“I was thinking about throwing you off the balcony.”

“You’d miss me.”

“Your flight leaves tomorrow.”