Does such a thing as “the fatal flaw,” that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? You used to think it didn’t. Now you think it does. And you think that yours is this: a morbid longing for the romantic at all costs.

Richard’s infatuation lies with aesthetic, yours therein; not without fault, either, but richer, perhaps. A viscous boil, of thicker substance that far precedes your first meeting with him.

It is for that reason that you turn down Julian Morrow’s offer to join his Greek class. You’re not his usual type of pupil, you take it, with how his other students seem to bore into you in its aftermath.

You find them all quite strange; Charles is too volatile, Camilla is deliberately enigmatic, Bunny is the most social but proves off-putting in his casual cruelty, Henry is reserved to a point that you can barely even recognize him in the halls, Francis is haughty in that callous way, Richard is as shallow as they come.

It is not a life suited for you. For all their sophistication and elaborate ad-libs of Greek and Latin, they’re not terribly self-aware. You think it’s quite a shame Richard has been swept away by all this allure; the crisp charm of Montblanc pens, the inherent romanticism of immorality, the quiet faltering of the flame as he drops the lighter.

It isn’t the type of romantic you sought when you first enrolled in Hampden. You doubt it ever will be.

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He refuses to listen to you, in all your efforts of imploring him to dwell in the normal curriculum.

What purpose does their beauty serve, you attempt?

Everything, he insists.

Is romanticism distinct from the pursuit of the picturesque? He has to come to find that the answer to that question proves to be the most salient divergence between he and you.

He has known you since he was fourteen, before he was conceiving of a Californian adolescence to bury his uneventful childhood in an early grave. He was impressionable and unassuming and arrived at Hampden after you, of his own accord. He still is. Impressionable.

Could you be called childhood friends? His memories of you spiral across chokers and ink, profound sensation and a constant disorientation, the parting of youth like the dandelions he used to breathe out as a stupid kid hoping you would wait for him.

But you never did. Even now, when he is no longer lingering for you, you have never returned the favor.

He remembers your gaze. Glass, almost. Prosaic glimpses of your soul. He has always found you unremarkable. You treat him like he disgusts you and you think he’s sick in the head for obsessing over horrible people. A glutton for punishment, you would say.

Nevertheless he is enamored with beauty and you. Heart motifs and shoegaze. Introspection and novels. Flowers and late nights. He loves these things because you like them. Perhaps there is no difference between romance and beauty. He chases through people, you chase through life. It is the inherent romanticism of thinking you are beautiful and he is romantic. Verity, perhaps, but extrinsic.

If he found beauty in you and you, love in him, would he feel absolved?

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You rarely see him nowadays, not when he cloaks himself in borrowed eloquence and tails his clique.

You think he would be much happier without them, but he has never taken your offers. Companionship, empathy, advice. They are unwanted.

You let go of them. They never let go of you. It is unheard of to dismiss an invitation to the class. You sometimes suspect it is a cult. The students ponder you for months to come, likening you to their literary schema; Misotheism, perhaps. They regard themselves as gods. Who are you to reject divinity? Is it not the fruit of all desire? Is it not resplendent?

Or perhaps it is only Richard.

He finds you in the college’s orchard, beneath the flower trees. The fruits are borne in the spring to come, the buds only beginning to awaken.

A half-dozen taunts spring to mind, reflexively. They die in his mouth, as he nears.

“Have you missed me?” He asks, softly.