We called it nothing

It's 2023, and Freya has been living in Los Angeles for three years, just a short distance from Calum, Ashton, Luke, and Michael - people who have drifted in and out of her life for as long as she can remember.
She first crossed paths with them back in 2011 in Sydney, when her family lived next door to the Hoods. It was never anything more than familiarity back then -faces that stayed just close enough to recognise but never close enough to define.

Everything shifted years later when she became close with Mali Hood through music, a friendship that slowly anchored itself into something constant as life pulled them into the same cities and the same circles. When Freya moved to London in 2016, and Mali followed a year after, that connection only deepened - and with it, the boys naturally became part of the picture.

Calum, especially, was always just there. A constant she never thought too deeply about, because it never needed to be anything other than what it already was.

There are the parts of her life that don't fit neatly into any of that - things she doesn't talk about, and things no one else ever knew existed in the first place. Small, fleeting moments that never became anything, never needed to become anything, and were never meant to be revisited.

At least, that's what she tells herself.

Because in Los Angeles, old things have a habit of circling back in ways you can't quite control.

And still, in the middle of all of it - between what is new, what is resurfacing, and what was never defined at all - there is Calum.

Someone who has always been there, in the background of everything else.
And maybe that's the part that should scare her more than anything