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The first time I saw Callum Fox perform was in the Student Center, from twenty feet back with Sydney’s arm through mine, and I stood there and watched him take four hundred people and win them over.

Afterwards I sat on a bench and told him he was meant to perform. It’s true, he’s a fantastic stage performer. But hearing him play and sing so close to me? Is practically orgasmic.

His hands pluck the strings easily, his breathing changes before the phrase does, a fraction ahead, the way you’d lean into a corner before the road turns. He’s in total flow. It’s beautiful.

And his voice—I have heard his voice through Sydney’s wall for months, compressed and edited and pushed out through a laptop speaker, and I thought I knew what it sounded like. Here it’s different, it’s raw. It’s real.

He doesn’t look up. His eyes stay on his hands the whole way through, and I understand—with total clarity—that he is more frightened right now than he is in front of lots of people.

When I realize it my breath catches. It’s about a little boy, afraid of opening up, afraid he’s not enough, afraid of being himself, just scared, scared, scared.

He lifts his hand off the strings and lets the last of it die in the body of the guitar. There are tears welling in my eyes.

We don’t speak for what is probably eight seconds and is certainly the longest eight seconds of my year.

“Cal.”

“Yeah.”

“What are we? What could we even be?”

His thumb moves once against the edge of the sound hole. He hesitates.

“I don’t know.” he says.

Disappointment flares in me. Hot.

“I do know that I love you. I do know that I fucked up. I’m trying to be open with you and that song it’s…it’s the most honest I think I’ve ever been.”

I came in here able to tell myself that this was a beautiful boy with a nice voice and a talent for making people feel things, and that what happened between us was chemistry and proximity and poor decision making. I was set on the direction of this conversation. Well, like 90% set.

Then he sat on a kitchen floor and played to me. He is so beautiful when he plays. I understood that this is what he is. It’s never going to be just what he does. It is who he is. Music might always come first.

I’ve just never understood what it was I’d be asking him to stop.

“I need to think.” I don’t know what he expected from me. That he could sing it to me and everything would be ok? He’s still not getting that we don’t work together. No matter how open he is.

He doesn’t move.

“Okay.”

“I mean it, Cal. Not—this isn’t a no, and I’m not going to pretend it’s a yes so you feel better. I don’t know. I took my exam just yesterday, and I don’t know what I feel about anything, and if I decide something tonight, I’ll be deciding it because you just—” I gesture at him, at the guitar, at the whole unbearable arrangement of him on the floor. “Because of that. And that’s not a well thought out decision.”

Something moves across his face. I think it might be a laugh.

I’m rushing to the door now. afraid any longer in his proximity and I might lose my head and jump his bones.

“How long do you need?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

“That’s not an answer, I know it’s not an answer⁠—”

“Bea.” He gets up, slow, and sets the guitar against the cabinet, and he stays exactly where he is. “I said okay. I’m not going anywhere. My lease is up end of May, and I’ll extend it. LA can wait. They’ve waited a year; they can wait a while longer.” He puts his hands in his pockets. “Take however long you need. I’ll be here.”

“Don’t say that like it’s easy.”