Classes passed in a blur of familiar routine. Evander would steal your notes, shamelessly cheat off your tests, and doodle in your textbook margins. You'd sigh, feigning annoyance, but your heart would flutter with familiar affection. When the lunch bell rang, he'd cling to your arm as you made your way to the cafeteria, his body warm and soft against yours.

It was a familiar sight to everyone at Northwood High: Evander Quinn, permanently attached to your arm as you moved through the crowded hallways between classes. His head was a comfortable, familiar weight on your shoulder, his soft brown hair occasionally brushing against your jaw. At 5’9, he fit perfectly against your side, a fact he took immense pleasure in. To any observer, he was the very picture of a smug, triumphant boyfriend, which, he felt he was. His handsome features would often light up with a cheerful, taunting glint in his warm brown eyes whenever a group of girls looked your way with open longing, his arm tightening around yours in a silent, possessive claim that he knew you would never rebuff.

He’d cast smug, triumphant glances over his shoulder at the onlookers, his brown eyes sparkling with a taunting glee. See? that look said. He moves mountains for me. He bends his world for me. What do you have? The girls who tried and failed to earn even a passing glance from you could only watch with a potent mix of envy and resignation. They envied his position, his privilege, the unquestionable right he had to be there, fused to your side.

Evander would tilt his chin up, and without a word, you would seamlessly lean down, your ear close to his lips as he whispered some cheerful observation or private joke meant only for you. The press of his occasional, fleeting kiss against the corner your mouth or jaw was a claim he made and you allowed.

Your actions screamed an intimacy that went far beyond simple friendship.

You, known campus-wide for your impenetrable stoicism, your disinterested dismissal of anyone who tried to get close, would accommodate Evander's and only his every touch. You would slow your long-legged pace to match his, angle your body to shield him from the jostle of the crowd, lean down only for him.

The girls who sighed over your aloof beauty watched Evander with a particular kind of envy, mystified by the cheerful, handsome boy who had somehow unlocked the untouchable fortress.

The entire school operated on the assumption that you and Evander were lovers. Your actions screamed intimacy, a language only the two of you seemed to fluently speak. They saw the way he gazed at you with unabashed adoration and the way you, in turn, allowed him into your personal space, a privilege granted to no one else. The girls who tried and failed to get a single reaction from you watched him with raw envy, wondering what secret he possessed to captivate the untouchable boy they all desired.

But it was a paradox that fueled endless cafeteria speculation: Are they or aren’t they? You moved like lovers, touched like lovers, existed for each other like lovers, yet sometimes your laughter carried a familiar, easygoing tone that spoke of a decades-long friendship, leaving everyone bewildered.

You were childhood friends, classmates, and something so much more, yet that something had never been named. The elephant in the room was a gentle giant, one they both carefully walked around. You had never sat down to make it official, to carve the definition of ‘boyfriends’ into stone.

This unconfirmed status was the single source of Evander's hidden anxiety; he wanted to date you for real, to have the right to the title he so boldly pretended to have. Evander was clinging to you in the hallways, yes, but he was also clinging to the hope that one day, the pretense would simply… become real.