Dal raises an eyebrow at me as soon as I appear from the stairwell. 'You're grounded, blud.'

The warning doesn't make me slow or stumble on my path to his open apartment door, but I do narrow my eyes. 'Do you and my mum often talk about me behind my back?'

'Yes,' he answers, unfazed. 'The one thing we have in common is not wantin you to die.'

I wedge past him and kick off my trainers, ensuring they end up as far from each other as possible. 'Well, can you like not tell her I came here?' I exaggerate my annunciation.

Unbelievable that Dal grassed on me to my mum, and probably has been for years. I thought he was anti-authority or something.

He kisses his teeth at my attempt to berate him. 'I ain't your therapist. We ain't got no confidentiality. I'm allowed to tell your mum whatever I like.'

'What if I phoned your mum and told her what you're doin here?'

He's unimpressed. 'First, you ain't gon be phonin nobody cause you're a kid and you're a fool. Second, you ain't know her name. Good luck finding her number.'

I scowl but admit defeat. Striding into the flat, I open the fridge and pour myself a glass of orange juice. Dal nudges one of my trainers with his foot until it's aligned with the other.

'Ain't you supposed to be studying anyway?'

I shake my head. 'I could recite all my textbooks from cover to cover if you asked.'

With a sigh, he sits at his table where he has his laptop open. He slides on a pair of reading glasses to peer at the screen and I gawk. Never in the seven years I've known him have I seen him wear glasses. Honestly, I can't blame people who supposedly can't recognise Clark Kent; if Dal passed me in the street like this, I wouldn't look twice.

'How was therapy?'

So he knows about that too.

'Terrible.'

It's been two days and I'm still recovering. I always get exhausted but somehow it's especially bad now; I've barely slept since. My brain is a hive of nocturnal bees with hundreds of workers ready to set flight the moment I close my eyes.

How am I supposed to just be okay with not understanding things? Is that something people do, just not care?

'She told me I don't need to feel bad about rejecting Oxford.'

'You don't,' Dal confirms. His eyes leave the laptop screen to affix onto me. 'When you gon tell your parents though?'

'When are you?' I bite back.

Wishing I could retreat into my shoulders like a turtle, I take a sip of juice. I shouldn't be so harsh on him. I hate that they compare notes about me, their unified surveillance waterproof, but I can only blame myself.

'Later,' I answer his question.

Still standing in his kitchen, I turn to the window and drink my juice slowly. The flow of people below lulls my eyes out of focus until I jerk awake. Miles has his hands buried into the pockets of his hoodie, his head bowed like he's trying to avoid being recognised.

Well, too bad — apparently I've developed a sixth sense for his presence.

I watch him walk past Under the Dryer, Sainsbury Local, and a bakery until he jogs up the stairs to the library. What is he doing in the library? Whirling around, I leave my glass, still half-full, on Dal's table. 'See you.'

I'm out of the flat before I even have my shoes properly wedged on and the bent heel of one of them blisters my skin as I bound down the stairs. I hop forward on one foot as I fix it.

At the library door, I wait for someone else, who turns out to be a trio of middle-aged women, to enter so that I can slip in behind them and hopefully not be noticed, but the front desk turns out to be empty anyway. I speed walk past it before a receptionist reappears and kicks me out.

The Sufsdale library isn't particularly big; it doesn't take me long to find Miles in the children's and teenage section. He's reading the blurb of a novel with a purple cover. There's no one else in sight.

Before I have any chance to consider a hiding place, he looks up. I go to duck only to stop myself and end up lurching like I've been electrocuted. He's looking right at me — it's too late and running will only make this more obvious.

'Don't talk to me,' I snap before he can get a word out. 'I watched Pride and Prejudice three times yesterday.'

His brow knits, struggling to make the connection. 'Okay...'

'So I'd like to be left to yearn in peace.'

A grin flashes on his face. 'You're the one that's following me.'

I flush. 'I'm not following you,' I scoff and immediately grimace.

If I want to go unnoticed, I probably shouldn't be talking so loud in a library. The burning under my cheeks deepens.

'Sure.' Miles has the common sense to speak quietly.

His voice is just above a whisper, scraping an unsteady bass from his vocal cords. It must vibrate in his throat. Would I feel it through his skin if I pressed my fingers to his neck?

'But you never leave your house. So I'm s'posed to believe you happened to go on a stroll today... to the library... that you've been banned from... because you cut up the books?'

'How d'you know that? Are you stalkin me?'

'I thought we'd established that you're stalking me.'

He pushes the book back into the shelf, browses for a moment, and takes out Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman. I edge closer to him as he reads the back cover.

'What're you doin here anyway? I didn't think you could read.'

Miles shrugs. 'Can't really. I think my six-year-old cousin has better reading comprehension than me. But Iris refuses to sleep if I don't read to her, so...'

I am not charmed by him reading his eleven-year-old sister bedtime stories though that's probably an age most parents would deem too old. I am not charmed by that at all, even if he must have things he'd rather spend his evenings doing. I wonder if he does different voices — he must be a good reader if Iris still insists he reads to her.

Keeping Northern Lights in his grip, he turns back to the shelf. I lean against it, watch his eyes glide over the spines. I wish he would read to me... For research purposes!

'You read a lot.'

My eyes narrow. 'What is that supposed to mean?'

'Nowt... Just that you read a lot. Whenever I see you, you're reading. That, or staring into space.'

I flush again. Tearing my eyes from his, I jab the books on the shelf nearest to me, trying to align their spines so they're all half a centimetre from the edge. His gaze leaves a syrupy residue on me: sticky, but sweet.

'I guess. Dal buys me books,' I say without any explanation of who he is. 'I think he's tryin to indoctrinate me into Pan-Africanism.'

'I dunno–' Miles clears his throat, all the near-whispering snagging phonemes into it '–what that is .'

I part my lips but words melt on my tongue. He's watching me so intensely. And he's listening. Why is he listening to me? Whatever the reason, I don't like it.

I talk so much Dr Colas is the only person who listens and that's because it's her job. Dal, Iya, and Baba all zone out of my rambles sometimes, which has rusted my own filter and seduced me into a false sense of security about being able to say whatever my mind cooks up with no consequences. I don't even know how a sentence will end when I start it. Sometimes I talk just for the sake of talking. Sometimes I talk just so my head won't explode. But even I get bored by it sometimes.

To Miles, it's still interesting. It'll get exhausting eventually.

'It's, um, a movement for solidarity between all people of African descent. Like, against colonialism.'

'Sounds good to me.'

We share a smile.

'Anyway, he buys me books so I guess I read a lot. Can't use the library anymore so...'

Miles nods as he slides out another novel. I watch his eyes stumble over the lines of the blurb. Is he reading it trying to gouge what Iris's reaction would be, placing aside his own thoughts to see through the eyes of another person? Tears well in my waterlines and I look away.

He loves her, not out of obligation but choice.

Miles's gaze is tacky on my skin even if I refuse to meet it. 'Why would you cut up library books?'

'Because I'm a criminal. Mind your own business,' I bite, ignoring the friendly curiosity he asked with. 'How do you even know about that?'

'I work here.'

My artillery slides off my body. 'Since when?' I speak so loud that Miles hushes me. Grimacing, he glances around but this section is still vacant. We're the only people here.

We're the only people in the world.

He turns back to me. 'Since like eight months ago.'

My jaw falls to the floor. There is no way he has worked here for eight months. I would know! Though I refused to talk to him until three weeks ago and I'm not allowed in the library so maybe I wouldn't. Maybe all the times I thought he was at parties and doing whatever rich nonsense Lysander and Tristan do, he was actually just at work... in the library, of all places.

Maybe I really am judgemental and jump to conclusions. Maybe I really do just need to spend more time with him and then I won't be so confused. Maybe he and Dr Colas are right and I really don't know anything about him...

If he has a job, he must be here at least a couple times a week. And he reads his sister bedtime stories every night. And apparently often cooks and washes their car and everything.

'When exactly do you study?'

'See, the thing about that...'

'You're gonna fail all your A-levels.'

Miles nods. 'Probably.'

My gut twists. He wasn't supposed to agree. 'No, sorry. That was a joke.'

'But I probably will. And my grandparents will make me pay them back the tuition I never wanted, my mum will disown me, and my dad might come back as a ghost just to haunt me for the rest of my life. It'll be grand.' His face curls like his saliva has turned bitter. He pins up a smile before I can process it. 'I were just born in the wrong generation. Should've been a caveman or summat.'

I force a laugh.

I've been perfectly happy to call him stupid in every possible way but somehow it punches my chest when he does it himself.

Has he always done that? Because if he has, I have not been listening. I called him arrogant and self-obsessed on Monday, but he doesn't seem self-obsessed at all now.

I think I'm the one who's self-obsessed...

At some point, I realise Miles has stopped looking for books and is instead returning those that have been left out or misplaced by others. 'You're not working right now are you?' I ask and he shakes his head. 'So you're giving them your labour for free? You know that's wage theft, right?'

'Or it's me being nice.'

In the name of being nice, I Indicate to the two novels he seems to have decided to borrow, Northern Lights and Black Unicorn. 'I can hold those.' With his hand free, he can squeeze books back into their places easier.

'I've been reading some manga Sonia recommended to me,' Miles says, squatting to organise the shelf at floor level. Sonia? Do the two of them hang out, like, outside of tutoring? When I say nothing, he asks, 'So you read non-fiction?'

'Mostly. Fiction makes me anxious — too many jump scares.'

I have to root myself to the floor when he looks up at me so I don't collapse. He's quite... pretty. Which is bizarre because he has always been ugly before.

He shaved his hair again and something about the curve of his skull enchants me. Have his lashes always been this dark? They're short but so full that it almost looks like he's wearing eyeliner, even on the bottom.

The hyperpigmentation at the corners of his mouth emphasises its curve as it stretches into a grin. 'Jump scares? There ain't gonna be jump scares if you read romance or summat.'

'Yes, there will. Because I don't know the characters or what they'll do or the plot–' I cut myself off at his poorly-contained laugh. 'It's stressful! I need someone to hold my hand or I'll start panickin.'

'So that's why you watched Pride and Prejudice three times yesterday, no jump scares?'

Warmth blooms in my chest until terror tears it up. 'Exactly,' I squeak. I never gave him permission to start inferring things. I thought he was too stupid to do that.

'I do that too. Well, not three times a day, but fall back on familiar stories.' He offers me a gentle smile.

There isn't a single bit of cracked skin on his lips; he puts on lip balm every time he's bored which seems to be often. They must be soft. They would be soft to kiss, I imagine.

Mine wouldn't — they'd probably feel like sandpaper. The cracked skin finds its way between my teeth even now. Not that I know how kissing works anyway.

I could feed him fruit. I may not know how to kiss, but I know how to cut a pineapple without wasting a bit of flesh, I know how to pick the sweetest oranges at the shop. I could peel one for him, cut each segment into little triangles, and feed them one by one past his lips.

His phone vibrates and I flinch. How long did I stare for?

Miles stands up to get his cell out of his pocket and his face instantly sags. 'Sorry, I have to...' His voice tapers with each step he puts between us until he presses the cell to his ear. 'Má?'

Miles retreats to the wall, a good ten meters away from me, but this is the library; his words carry over unobstructed. 'It'll be okay, Má. You won't lose your job, you moved all the way from Leeds for it.'

I look away and try to think really loud. Just block it out. I don't want to eavesdrop on this. Block it out.

But it's impossible. No matter how much I try to scream inside my head, my brain insists on picking up his words even when they're uttered below a whisper. 'I promise you'll be fine. No, you're upset, you shouldn't drive. I'll be there in ten minutes. I promise it'll be fine.' After a few more placations, he pockets his phone. He doesn't even stop as he walks past me. 'I gotta go.'

'But–' I watch him disappear between the shelves, feeling oddly empty. I kind of like talking to him.

No, I don't.

But yes, I do.

I look down at the books in my hand. I wish I could borrow them for him, do something "nice"...

Notes

Grass: A snitch/to snitch

Nowt: Nothing

Má: (Vietnamese) Mum