Head Over Heels ✓

21 / wet whistle

october, age 18 

When Lucas woke up on Saturday morning, he was struck by the sudden realisation that he had survived his first week of university. For an entire week, he had lived away from home - the longest he had ever been apart from either of his parents - and it had been ok. It had been just fine, really. Granted, it hadn't been actual university. Rather, he had survived freshers' week. That was possibly even more impressive: he had kept his cool for an entire week during which his new flatmates and future friends had been partying and coping with hangovers.

That wasn't his scene at all. Though he didn't mind a house party, when he had his own space that he could retreat to just to get away from it all, he hated going out. One night, on Audrie's advice to let loose and give it a go just in case it was ok, he had headed out to one student night with the five students who now shared his university flat. The music had been too loud, the drinks too expensive, and he had grown frustrated trying to keep track of the people he had come with. As soon as he had made sure that everyone else was ok, he had walked home a little after midnight.

Just a week in, he wouldn't call his new flatmates friends. It took a lot more than seven days of tipsy oversharing to reach that level and though they now knew more about him than Asher did. Or rather, they knew that he was madly in love with his best friend, who had no idea. At least, he hoped he had no idea. That was less painful than the possibility that Asher knew and kept that knowledge hidden, something that he vaguely recalled sharing with two of the girls he was living with after he'd had a little too much to drink.

As he lay in his bed with the gentle autumn sun on his cheeks, October just beginning a couple of days before his first proper term of university would, he could hear voices in the kitchen that the six of them shared. His room was closest to the kitchen, the only social area they had in the flat that had been the cheapest accommodation option, and he was growing to understand people's patterns and habits, learning their voices through the wall.

Four boys and two girls. An unbalanced flat, as though the university housing association wanted to dissuade them from pairing up into three couples. That wouldn't be a problem, Lucas thought: he had no intention of sparking up a relationship when he couldn't get Asher out of his heart, even if Carey was ridiculously attractive, an Asian and Middle Eastern studies student whose various social media accounts painted him as a well-read cyclist with a string of ex-boyfriends. The other two guys, Xavier and Ned, weren't the kind of people Lucas imagined he would ever be more than courteous with. They would share a flat for the year; that was probably it.

Of them all, Lucas had decided that Mira was his favourite. In the group chat they had started a month before moving into their flat, he had thought that he would get on with Hermione the best until he had learnt that she had never read the Harry Potter books or even seen the films and she had no interest in her namesake. That had been a bit of a bump in the road for them. She was a civil engineering student from Edinburgh and he loved the soft Scottish lilt in her voice, but she hated books. That was difficult for Lucas to get past.

Mira, however, had proved to be the right balance of engaging and respectful for him to grow to like her. She was the most interesting of all of them, an international student from Midwest America who had brought a lively sense of American confidence into the house with her. The two hadn't spoken a great deal but Lucas knew she was the kind of person he would get on with: she reminded him of Mawar, a firecracker with a sharp wit and a soft smile.

She was unique, proud of her freckles and her heritage. She was an unapologetic outsider, who made no excuses for herself when aspects of English life confounded her. Lucas liked her honesty and her accent, quietly fascinated by the way she pronounced her words and the ones she changed all together.