s e v e n

came into school before classes had started.

The swimming meet the day before had been pretty successful. Oliver and Reed had both managed to place first in one of their events, Bailey second in hers, and Charlie had bagged a third. Spirits had been high on the ride back to school where they were dropped off and, in the confusion, Oliver had forgotten to grab his school bag from the changing room on the way out. It wasn't a big deal – any homework he had could wait – but his history essay was in that bag and it was due in for first period. H texted Adam to let him know he wouldn't need a ride and arrived at school while it was still practically empty, aside from the odd teacher or student on the grounds. He headed straight for the changing room, found his bag easily enough, and was about to leave when he heard the distinctive splash of water.

It could have just been Coach Wallace, setting up for lessons, but it sounded like someone was actually in the pool. Oliver stepped out on the poolside to see someone already in the water, swimming laps up and down the length of the pool. Oliver recognised Reed easily enough. His pale hair gleamed under the bright lights and the deft sure movement of his limbs were as familiar to Oliver as his own. He was more surprised at his lack of surprise that Reed was here before school hours, for who knows how long, swimming as if they didn't have practice that afternoon after school. Reed could be confusing, one of the most confusing people Oliver had met, but there was one thing that would always make sense about him – his love (see: obsession) to swim.

Oliver leant against the wall with his bag slung over his shoulder and waited for Reed to notice him. It didn't take long. He caught the edge of the poolside at the end of his lap and lifted his head out of the water, pushing his goggles up over wet hair to look at Oliver.

"What are you doing here?" Reed asked.

Oliver gave him an appraising look. "I was going to ask you the same thing. I forgot my bag last night," he said, when it was clear Reed was still waiting for an explanation. "Your turn. What are you doing here?"

"Swimming."

"Glad to see your sense of humour is still intact," Oliver said dryly. "Does Mr Jeffries know you're here?"

"Yeah. He gave me a key so I can get in before the cleaners, if I want to."

"Why?" Oliver asked curiously.

Reed just shrugged. "Because I asked him to."

Oliver knew Reed stayed behind after practice occasionally, to do extra laps in the pool, and he didn't question it. It was all part of his single-minded personality; Oliver just hadn't realised it extended this far. He hadn't missed that Reed didn't catch a lift with them to school in the morning sometimes, but he'd just assumed it was because he was running late or his dad would give him a lift or whatever other reason. Now that he thought about it, Reed wasn't in the car in the morning more often than not and he must have been already at school on those days. He was equal parts baffled and impressed by the amount of time and effort Reed dedicated to swimming. Oliver didn't think there was a single thing in the world that he felt so passionate about that he could have a life revolving around it.

There was just one thing he didn't understand about it.

"But you don't need extra practice," Oliver pointed out. "Reed, you were one of the fastest swimmers at the meet yesterday – "

"No," Reed interjected, "you were."

Oliver frowned. "Fine, we both were. It doesn't change the fact that you're already more than good enough."

"Good, maybe. Not good enough. Can you ever be good enough if you can always be better?" Reed shook his head in frustration at Oliver's puzzled expression. "You wouldn't understand. You've always had natural ability."

"So have you."

"Maybe, but just to be as good as you, I have to train so much harder. It always came easier to you," Reed said, but there wasn't any bitterness in his voice. He looked more thoughtful than anything and Oliver said nothing, scared to say something to snap him out of his reverie. He hadn't had a conversation with Reed like this, a truly honest one, since coming back and he'd missed it. Even if the honesty only extended to discussing swimming. Baby steps, Oliver thought, his new favourite mantra. "I never really minded. I had to train so much harder than you but swimming was always something more to me, more than just a fun hobby. The more I swim, the closer I come to being the best. Maybe perfection is impossible to achieve but I still want it."

"How do you decide when you're perfect?" Oliver wondered aloud. "Swimming isn't a measurement. There isn't a scale to judge it by. You swim as fast as you can and if you win the race, you were fast enough."

"I guess I'll know when I'm perfect," Reed said, with a shrug. "It'll just feel right."

"Does it not feel right now?"

Reed's eyebrows furrowed, as if he hadn't thought about that. "Right now, it's just a distraction."

Reed yanked his goggles back on and pushed off the wall with a powerful kick before Oliver could even think about replying. He watched as Reed cut through the water, swift and strong and fast, faster than anyone else on the team. Except Oliver. He was right – Oliver wasn't exactly lazy, he rarely skipped practice or ditched dry training, but he never put in the extra hours Reed always did. He had never needed to in order to keep up with Reed. It had never occurred to him that, all these years, Reed had been the one keeping up with him. He wanted to ask Reed what he meant about swimming being a distraction but the other boy didn't give him a chance to pose the question.

Five laps passed, then ten, then twenty, with Reed showing no sign of pausing for longer than a second at the end of each lap before twisting in the water to continue. He wasn't swimming fast for once, as he always pushed himself to do in competitions, but with a consistent stamina that was almost more impressive. Oliver eventually gave up on waiting for his tireless energy to flag and turned away, to head back into the locker room. He wished he'd responded, when Reed had told him he was waiting for it to feel right, that it should already feel right. That something was wrong if it didn't.

Oliver had already been dubious, but he was seriously wondering how the hell Adam and Clair managed to make a relationship work.

It wasn't that he didn't think opposites couldn't attract. Him and Reed were a testament to that, although he wished he hadn't used the word attract in the context of their friendship, it still felt too soon. They were as different as two people could get, in appearance and personality, yet they'd gotten along great. Bar the past five years, but that was more to do with Oliver fucking up than anything to do with their differences. It was more that he thought only certain opposites could attract, in the same way only certain similar personalities could get away without clashing heads. Reed and Oliver had been the perfect kind of different. Oliver would draw Reed back when he got riled up too easily and Reed would draw him out of his quiet, reserved shell. They tempered one another's flaws in the best way.

Clair and Adam, however, couldn't have been a worse kind of different. Clair was boisterous and sociable and a little self-involved. Adam was aloof and disinterested and the extent of his social charm was giving someone a lift, not exactly the kind of attention a high maintenance person like Clair needed. She took his desire to be alone personally and he found her need to know everything about his life irritating. How did Oliver know all of this stupidly tedious information about their relationship? Not from Adam, fuck no. Trying to extract any information from Adam that was even remotely to do with emotions or feelings was a little like performing brain surgery – a long and complicated process which could go wrong with one small misstep. No, Oliver was given this information he certainly didn't volunteer for from Clair.

They shared the same English Lit class and from the first lesson, Clair had assigned herself to the seat next to Oliver's. English Lit was the worst class to have with someone who talked as much as Clair. Half the lesson was spent in "discussion with your peers" about the literature they were studying and you can bet that 100% of the time, that was not the subject Clair was discussing with Oliver.

"Half the time, it's like he doesn't even want to talk to me," Clair huffed, clicking her mechanical pencil restlessly against the table. Oliver watched with detached fascination as the piece of lead continued growing from the end and wondered when Clair's angry clicking would cause it to snap off. "I get it, he's busy with school and writing his personal statement and all that, but I'm his girlfriend! He should make time for me. He should want to make time for me."

Oliver just nodded absently. Next to him, one girl was trying to convince the guy she was sharing a desk with that Nick Carraway was, irrevocably and conclusively, gay. Never mind that the book they were looking at this period was One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, not The Great Gatsby. It sounded like a far more interesting conversation than the one he was having.

"I swear, sometimes I think we should have just stayed in a strictly friends-with-benefits relationship," Clair said. "Things were simpler then."

This got Oliver's interest. "You guys were friends-with-benefits?"

"For a few months, yeah. That was how we started out." The mechanical pencil had wound out its maximum capacity of lead and still hadn't broken. Clair caught the end between her manicured fingernails and snapped it off herself. "Well, I mean, I don't actually want to go back to that. I like being his girlfriend, I want to be his girlfriend, but it's just hard sometimes. Dating Adam is hard, harder than I feel like it should be. Don't you think?"

"Sure, yeah." Oliver watched her twirl the snapped lead between her fingers and realised from her expectant gaze she was waiting for something more from him. "All relationships are hard sometimes. That's how you know they're important, if you're willing to work to keep them."

Clair tilted her head curiously. "Are you in a relationship?"

"No."

"Then how do you know so much about them?" Clair teased. "If you aren't in one?"

Oliver had a couple of exes back in London but in all honesty, he hadn't been thinking about them when he'd doled out that advice. He'd been thinking about Reed. He could have returned to Manchester with the mindset to avoid Reed, pretend they didn't have any prior connection, and he probably would have managed to stomach the icy hatred from Reed's end over time. It wouldn't have been easy but it would have certainly been easier than putting himself out there in a bid to earn that friendship back, knowing full well Reed could have made it so much worse by snapping that extended olive branch in his face. It had worked out for the best – they weren't best friends, it wasn't that simple, but Oliver would venture to say they could at least be called friends again – but it could have gone very wrong.

Their reunion had certainly been hard, messy and complicated, but Oliver had willing to work at it. Because Reed was definitely worth it.

Unwilling to spill this piece of self-reflection to Clair, Oliver just said, "Coaches don't play."

"Of course you would say that," Clair said, seeming delighted by that. "You're so mysterious, Oliver. How can you not have a girlfriend?" She said it as if being enigmatic, if you could even call Oliver that, was the only characteristic required to acquire a girlfriend. As if mystery was all a girl needed in a boyfriend.

"I don't know," Oliver shrugged. "I only moved back a month ago. I guess there isn't anyone I like."

"Really? No one?"

"No," Oliver said slowly, feeling a little like this was a trick question. Conversations with Clair felt like that sometimes. 90% of the time she was more than happy to fill the silence with her own issues but when she flipped the spotlight on you, there was a sense that she was waiting for you to trip up on her barbed words. "No one."

"Shame. Imagine if we were still dating," Clair laughed, but her hazel eyes were keen despite her flippant tone. "Wouldn't that be interesting?"

"What, from year eight?" Oliver said in disbelief. "Everyone knows dating, if you can even call it that, back was nothing more than passing time. An expected rite of passage. No year eight relationship would survive to now."

"Are you saying I was nothing more than passing time to you? How rude," Clair remarked, but he was sure she was joking. 80% sure she was joking, anyway. "I'll have you know those few months I could call you mine were life changing."

"Really," Oliver said, not quite a question, amused and a little wary. The gleam in Clair's eyes didn't bode well for anyone.

"Really! It was poignant, significant, pivotal..."

"I'm pretty sure we never got past holding hands for longer than ten seconds."

"We could change that," Clair said, so casually that Oliver almost didn't follow her meaning until she flicked the piece of lead she'd been rolling between her fingertips over her shoulder and held her hand out to him, palm up. "This time we'd do it properly. Start with prolonged hand holding, of course, and then kissing. Followed by prolonged kissing. I think we can all guess what comes next."

Oliver just stared at her. He would've dismissed it as a joke and followed it up with a joke of his own, if not for the entirely serious expression on Clair's face. Her hand was still stretched out towards him. Then her expectant look dissolved into a laughter and she gave him a light punch in the arm, with the hand she had been offering up to him only seconds ago.

"I'm just kidding! You should've seen your face," Clair chuckled, shaking reddish curls from her face. Oliver rolled his eyes, feeling like an idiot but also a little relieved. He didn't seriously think she would try anything but it was hard to get a proper read on the girl. "Anyway, enough about what we almost were. Maybe after Adam and I break up. What about this McMurphy guy, huh? I like that he's a redhead. It's nice to get a little representation in literature."

She did that, often enough that Oliver noticed, throwing in a passing remark about breaking up with Adam as if it was inevitable. There was no if, no possibly, it was always when and after. Oliver wondered whether to mention something to Adam but that felt a little too much like meddling in something that was none of his business. Maybe this was just how Clair was as a person, talking about hypothetical scenarios as if they were reality, and anything he said to Adam would just be seeds of doubt that could ruin the relationship in itself. Whether Clair wanted to end the relationship or not, there was nothing Oliver could do to change her mind. He'd just have to let it play out naturally.

"Do you think Clair and Adam will last?" Oliver asked Reed later, at swim practice. What he really wanted to talk to him about was their conversation that morning and what exactly Reed was distracting himself from, but it felt a bit too personal to dive straight into. "Long term, I mean?"

"No. What?" Reed said, at Oliver's surprised look. He hadn't been expecting such a swift and unhesitant answer. "I'm not going to bullshit around the truth. I don't think any high school relationships will ever last, but certainly not theirs."

Oliver thought was a little harsh of a statement to make considering his own high school girlfriend was standing only a few feet away but he was more interested in the final comment. "Why not?" he asked.

"Too messy. Both of them, as people. In a relationship, you can only afford to have one messy person," Reed said, as if he was reciting from some kind of factually accurate romance guide. "The other one is there to hold it all together, pick up the pieces. Clair is too all over the place and Adam is too stuck in his own head. No one to clean up all the mess."

Oliver wasn't sure he understood, but he asked, "Who's the mess in your relationship?"

Reed's blue eyes were unreadable. "Who do you think?"

Oliver wouldn't have called Reed messy, not in the literal sense. He was one of the most organised, tidy people Oliver had ever met – his locker was always in perfect order, his bedroom had always been neat in a way no teenage boy's bedroom ever was, and even his handwriting was carefully looped in a perfectly legible manner. Again, Oliver was the opposite to him in that sense. He frequently lost things in the mess of his bag, locker, bedroom, anything that could be untidy was, and his handwriting was an illegible scrawl that undoubtedly left his teachers weeping over his essays. Oliver was perfectly content living in this somewhat constant state of chaos because it was ordered chaos, chaos that made sense to him.

But for Reed, with his temper and guarded gaze and inexplicable anger at the world, it must have been completely different in his head to the orderly persona he presented to the world. Oliver would never claim to fully understand what went on inside Reed's head no matter how close the two had been at one point, but this conversation brought back a memory he'd almost forgotten about. It was before they knew Adam, back when they were in primary school, sprawled on beanbags as they played with the tiny plastic figurines which were the craze back then. Gogo's, Oliver remembered they were called.

"Your room is always so tidy," Oliver had remarked, as Reed studied the collectibles he'd exchanged that day at school. "I think this is what my mum means when she says clean your room, not dumping all my stuff in the cupboard and under the bed out of sight. How do you keep it like that?"

Reed had shrugged. "It's just easier to find things, isn't it?"

"I suppose, but I can't even keep my desk drawer at school clean. You never have any mess."

"When there's mess, it makes me feel out of control," Reed had said, almost thoughtfully, as if he'd never considered that was why he made sure to always pack his bag the night before and put his toys away the moment he was finished with them. "It's like swimming. My room, my desk drawer, how fast I swim...those are all things I can control. I know where everything is and exactly what is going to happen next. I can't control everything, obviously, but it's nice to have it with what I can."

"What can't you control?" Oliver had asked, thinking he would say what the dinner ladies would be serving for lunch at school. He would always pray for it to be pizza but it never was.

"When mum gets sick and has to go into hospital. How it makes Elsie and dad sad." Reed was staring down at the yellow GoGo in his hand, turning it over and over between his fingers, his blue eyes a little downcast. Oliver remembered he felt bad for making him unhappy and wished he hadn't said anything. "How it makes me sad, or angry, or...or something else. A mix of both of them. It's even worse when I can't figure out exactly what it feels like, or what words can describe the feeling, but it isn't nice."