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I look around his apartment.

My textbook on the counter. My mug drying beside the sink. Drew’s birthday written on his fridge in my handwriting.

The small evidence that I’ve started fitting myself into his life.

My chest tightens.

This is exactly how it happens, I think.

I like being here. I like the version of us that exists on this couch, where he writes and I study, and neither of us is asking the other to be anywhere else.

I just don’t know what happens when real life starts. That problem belongs to another day.

Right now, he’s here, and I’m here.

I lean across the couch and kiss him to distract him or me—I don’t know.

He makes a small sound against my mouth, surprised, and then he is kissing me back.

He puts a finger in the dip below my collarbone.

“Cal.”

“Mm.”

“What are you doing?” My skin tingles where he’s touched me.

“E.” he sings.

“What?”

“E. That’s the note that lives there. It’s an E.”

I have, very briefly, no idea what he means.

He moves the finger. Drags it slowly down my sternum.

“A,” he sings.

I giggle. It tickles. “What— what are you⁠—”

“I am playing my new instrument, the Bea-tar.” He gives me a boyish grin, thinking he’s so clever right now.

He puts another finger lower. Then another. He is playing chords, I think. The very ends of his fingers press notes into my skin in a pattern he can hear, and I can only feel, and the feeling is like nothing else. His hands are calloused and make my skin tingle where he touches.

I close my eyes.

“What are you playing?” I manage.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

“It’s the chorus of my new song.”

He moves his hand to his pants. “You want to know what D feels like?”

I snort.