"I hope I'm not imposing," Nik said, in an odd demonstration of formality, when we were all crowded on the steps of the front door, just as Ansel was unlocking the door. He paused with the key in the keyhole and Lux scoffed.

"What are you saying? It's not like you're strangers, for heaven's sake." But her gaze flickered towards me even before she'd finished her sentence.

"No," Ansel said, finding his tongue after too long a beat, "it's no trouble."

It would be too bloody late even if it was, an irritable part of my mind groused, but I kept the thought to myself. There was no point in picking a fight now – all I wanted was for the night to be over with quickly so that I could get home and catch some sleep before the consultation with my mentoring professor in the morning. I'd wait for Nik to drag his suitcase into Ansel's guest room before I found an excuse to leave. Nadine's disapproval wouldn't stop me this time.

Ansel finally unlocked the door and stepped in, then turned around to hold it open for everyone else. "So," Nik said even as he nodded his thanks on his way in, "you live alone?"

"Yeah."

"Any girls who'll drop by unannounced that I need to worry about?" Nik asked half-jokingly. It sounded like a casual, throwaway question, but there was something in his voice that said otherwise. From the corner of my eye, I saw a frown come over Nadine's face.

"Nope." But Ansel glanced at me quickly as he said this. I knew what he was thinking, but I could've assured him that I definitely wouldn't be doing much of the 'dropping by' variety now that Nik was living with him.

Nik's eyes darkened. He was still smiling faintly, but I had seen that flat angry blue of his eyes enough times to know what it meant.

My chin lifted a notch. Even though Nadine had claimed not to have fed him the cock-and-bull story about my relationship with Ansel, she had probably let something slip. I could've cleared the air right then, but why would I do them the honours of that? Let him stew, I thought in a moment of pure defiance. Let them all think the worst of me.

Nik had no right to begrudge me my closeness with Ansel. He had taken the other three; Ansel was all I had left.

"So," Lux said faux-brightly, "where's Nik's room?"

"In here." Ansel moved past all of us and turned the corner that I knew led down the hallway connecting both his own room and the usually empty guest room. I stood by the wall and waited for everyone else to follow Ansel down the hall, intending to bring up the rear so I would have a quick escape route later.

Nik spoilt my plan when he hung back as well. He eyed me knowingly, "Planning to bolt?"

"What? Of course not."

"You still have your coat on," he pointed out.

"Maybe I'm cold," I said.

"In an apartment with all the windows closed and the heat turned up high?" he asked disbelievingly.

Damn it, four years and he still hadn't learnt when to leave things well enough alone.

"Nik!" Nadine reappeared around the corner, eyeing the both of us suspiciously. I absently mused that she was like a hawk. "What are you doing? Everyone's waiting. Come on."

She hooked her arm through one of his and started pulling him down the hall. He obliged, following her with a laugh. "You're more excited than I am," I heard him comment teasingly as they disappeared from view.

Nadine replied with something that I couldn't catch. I was left standing alone in the living room, considering my options.

After a moment's hesitation, I shrugged out of my coat and hung it up.

When I entered the guest room, only Ansel turned to look at me. Lux and Nadine were crowded around Nik and his suitcase, which lay open on the bed. Wolf, as always, was standing a little apart from all of them. I hovered near the doorway, wondering if it would have been better if I had slipped out the front door after all.

Ansel, who had been standing near the center of the room watching them bemusedly, meandered over. "Took you long enough," he said lowly, leaning his head closer to mine so he could speak without being overheard. "I thought you'd run away while no one was watching."

I couldn't help smiling. "I seriously considered it for a while there."

"Good thing you didn't," he mock-growled. "I may have had to kill you if you'd left me alone with them."

"Poor baby," I whispered, looking him over with an arched brow, "you were alone with them for five minutes and you still look pretty fine to me."

The corner of his mouth twitched at the double entendre.

"Careful there," he murmured back. "You never know if anyone else will take this the wrong way."

I felt my nostrils flare. "Let them."

He shook his head at me, but there was a smile dancing on his lips.

I looked up and froze when I met Nik's eyes. Lux was talking to him, commenting on what little luggage he had brought with him, but he was looking over her head directly at me.

I turned my face away, refusing to be drawn in by his gaze. He still had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. They were a vivid light blue, so clear that the colour looked almost translucent. They had, so unlike their owner, always reminded me of the colour of the sky on a warm spring day.

Nik himself was probably more of a hailstorm than a spring day.

"I shipped the rest of my stuff over," I heard Nik explain to Lux. "The boxes will probably arrive in, what, two, three weeks?" Then his tone turned three shades cooler, "Would that be okay?"

This last question was directed at Ansel, who replied just as coolly, "Fine by me."

"I'll probably be out of your hair by then," Nik continued in the same detached tone. "I'll start looking for my own plane on Monday."

"I'll let you know when they're here," Ansel responded, then turned his back on Nik, effectively dismissing him.

I snuck a glance at Nik and saw that his face was impassive, but his gaze had darkened in annoyance. Then Lux asked him another question, drawing his attention back onto their conversation, and he smiled at her.

"It's getting late," I said, deciding that this was as good a time as any to get a move on. I hadn't spoken a word since entering the room, and they all turned in my direction now.

My mistake was in meeting Nik's gaze. He was looking at me knowingly. And all of a sudden, because I knew he was expecting me to leave, I found myself defiantly wanting to stay, just to prove him wrong. I wanted him to know that he didn't know me anymore.

I turned to Ansel. "You still got that beer?"

Ansel stared at me for a long moment. I could tell he was trying to figure out what I was up to and coming up short. "Sure, help yourself."

"Anyone else want one?" I asked challengingly, almost daring them to ask.

Nik spoke up. He was leaning against the wall beside the head of the bed and watching me with that same half-smile he'd used on Wolf earlier. "I'd like one, thanks."

Lux tossed her hair over her shoulders. "I'll get my own," she declared, flouncing out of the room without another word.

"I'll get one for you, Nik," Nadine said, exiting the room hot on Lux's heels.

Nik stared after her in mild amusement.

"Heck," said Ansel in disgust to no one in particular, "just help yourselves."

I didn't want to have to navigate the kitchen with the two people who hated me the most breathing down my neck, so I stayed where I was. I would go after they came back.

But when they returned, they were carrying a six-pack between them. Nadine and Lux took one each, then went around the room passing out the beer. I couldn't tell if it was deliberate, but they started on the other side of the room, proceeding in an anti-clockwise direction so that I would be the last. First was Wolf, who was leaning against the wall on the far right of the room, then Nik, now seated on the bed to the left, and finally Ansel, who was standing less than an arm's length away from me.

Nadine was frowning when they handed Ansel his.

"Oops," Lux said lightly, holding up the empty cardboard holder. "Look at that."

It was then that I realised they must have taken the pack I had opened just two days ago. It had been on Wednesday afternoon when I'd grabbed a bottle from the pack before flopping onto the couch in the living room to watch Ansel try to beat his own high score on Mario Kart. He'd asked me to get him one, too, but I'd refused because I had been too lazy to get up. In the end, we'd ended up going out for dinner and he apparently hadn't had a beer since.

"I'm sorry," Nadine said, and I knew from the chagrin in her tone that she truly had forgotten. This wasn't some petty trick to make me feel left out – she had a part to play in front of Nik, after all. "I didn't realise there were only five."

"Yeah," Lux said, popping the cap of her beer with a well-practised twist against the edge of the dresser. She wasn't looking at me. There was a smug lilt to her tone that told me while Nadine had missed it, Lux hadn't.

I shook my head in disgust. I saw Ansel start to turn towards me, but Nik was up and standing in front of me in two strides. He pressed the bottle into my hand. "Here, take mine."

I took it without thinking. His grip on the neck of the bottle didn't loosen immediately, even after I had closed my hand around the bottom. We stood like his for a long moment, connected by the brown glass bottle between us.

"Thanks." I was looking anywhere but at him.

He finally let go of the bottle and stepped away. "No problem."

"There's more in the kitchen," Ansel said drily, taking a swig from his bottle.

"I'll go get another," Nik said, leaving the room.

Nadine waited until Nik's footsteps were out of earshot before hissing at Lux, "You knew."

"What?" Lux asked in a bored tone.

"The beer. If you knew, why didn't you get another one for Tamy? Now Nik's going to think something's off."

Lux shrugged. "You're the only one here who cares whether Nik knows what happened or not, remember?"

"There's an unopened six-pack in the kitchen," Ansel said in a tone of deep censure. He was leaning languidly against the edge of the dresser, but his eyes were hard. "You could've just taken that."

"Sorry," Nadine said bitingly, "it wasn't like we went around looking through everything in your kitchen."

"It was right there on the counter," I said snarkily. "Do you need to get your eyes checked?"

She turned her glare on me. "Not everyone spends as much time as you do here. And you were supposed to be behind us."

"I was supposed to get one for Nik, too, but you claimed that dubious honour," I pointed out.

Lux chortled. "Look at you two, fighting over who gets the beer for a boy."

"Like you haven't been practically stuck to him the moment he arrived," Nadine shot back.

"Oh, please," Lux rolled his eyes. "Stop being such a jealous shrew. You don't stand a chance with Nik and you know it. He still can't keep his eyes off Tamy – anyone can see that."

"Shut up," Nadine gritted out.

"Anyway, haven't you heard the things he said to Ansel? He already knows something."

"Not from me," Nadine denied.

"Maybe he isn't as dense as you seem to think he is," I said sharply.

They both ignored me.

"Nik doesn't need your protection," Lux said to Nadine now, even though, throughout the whole conversation, she had kept her voice low enough that Nik wouldn't be able to overhear from the kitchen. Subconsciously, she was still helping to keep Nadine's secret. "You know, I've always wondered... Why all the secrecy? Why didn't you just tell him the truth? You've been talking to him, what, almost every day, even when he was over there?"

"Why don't you tell him, then?" Nadine challenged, then turned on the rest of us. "Why don't any of you?"

"Enough," Wolf cut in. Both Nadine and Lux fell silent at his quiet command. I regarded him with new respect. As much as they couldn't stand each other, they both obviously cared about what Wolf thought.

We all stood in silence after that, sipping our beers as we waited for Nik to return. But Nadine's last question was ringing in my mind.

Why didn't we tell Nik the truth? Why didn't I? I didn't care what Nik thought of me... Besides, it would end this farce. I'd be able to leave and never have to see any of them again. It was surprisingly easy to fall out of someone's life even when you lived in the same city. According to the population statistics, there would be a 1 in 613,392 chance of running into any one of them on the streets. I would take that chance over being forced to spend time with them like this.

So why hadn't I revealed Nadine's little ploy for the lie it was? Why did it matter if Nik found out we were no longer friends? If he thought I had cheated on him with his best friend?

Then Nik walked back in through the door, smiling a little oddly at us, "You guys are awfully quiet."

This was the perfect opening. Judging from the looks on everyone else's faces, they knew it too. I saw Ansel glance at me out of the corner of his eye.

It would be so easy – to open my mouth, push the words out...

I couldn't say it.

When no one said a word, Nadine replied, casting a furtive glance at the rest of us, "Everyone's just tired, I guess. It's been a long day."

Nik laughed. "Don't I know it."

"You're not going to bed, are you?" Lux demanded. "We've got to stay up all night."

"Why's that?" Nik teased.

"Because you're back, duh," Lux said in the tone of one stating a fact taken for granted. "We're going to celebrate the entire night."

"Good thing I'm still jet lagged, then." Nik was smiling fondly at her. I found my thoughts echoing Nadine's words from earlier – I hadn't known they were this close.

"What time would it be now, over there?"

"They're seven hours ahead, so..." He glanced quickly at the clock sitting atop the dresser. "Almost eight in the morning."

Lux was agog. She'd always been fascinated by time zones, by the idea of people living different parts of the day, all at the same time. "That means, theoretically speaking, you've already been up all night!"

As I listened to them converse like old friends, it hit me anew that I was no longer part of this group – if the group even existed still. Before he'd left, Nik and Nadine had always been a special unit, but for some reason, he now seemed to be closer to Lux. And although Nadine and Lux both hated me, their relationship with each other appeared to be equally hostile. I also thought that Wolf was probably the only one who had kept in contact with everyone – everyone but me. And Ansel and me... We were the only ones who knew the truth behind the story of our so-called cheating.

What a mess. We were a mess.

I gripped my bottle tightly, glaring down the neck at the diminishing amount of beer inside. What was I doing here? Why was I letting my own sense of rebellion push me into staying? I had walked away without a second glance three years ago – why shouldn't I do it again?

"Shouldn't you be exhausted, then?" Ansel asked casually. I knew he was hoping that Nik would plead exhaustion so he could get everyone else out of his apartment with the least amount of hassle possible.

"Not in the least." Nik shot him a mocking half-smile. I had a feeling that he would stay up for forty-eight hours consecutively if he was sure it would piss Ansel off.

Deciding I was sick of participating in this farce, I downed the rest of my beer and slammed the empty bottle on the surface of the dresser.

"Easy there," Ansel warned softly, "that's my furniture."

"I should go," I said quickly, before I could change my mind again. "I've got to get up early tomorrow."

"On a Saturday?" Nadine asked, her voice dripping with disbelief.

I didn't owe her an explanation, so I didn't bother to elaborate. "Yes."

"I thought we were all going to stay through the night to help Nik settle in," Nadine sounded almost accusatory now. I raised an eyebrow at her tone. If this went on, her little charade was going to fall apart really quickly.

I, on the other hand, was under no obligation to help her keep up the pretence of playing happy families. The sentimental part of me might not want to expose her ploy outright, but I wasn't about to pretend to still be best friends with people I couldn't stand, either.

"Some of us have appointments to keep," I clipped out. "It wasn't like I scheduled it on purpose."

Actually, I had, and from the look in Nadine's eyes, she knew it too.

"Fine," she said, as if giving me permission to leave. "We'll be fine without you." Left unsaid was the suggestion that I wasn't particularly welcome, anyway.

I chafed at her imperious tone. "Besides, how many people does it take to unpack one suitcase?" I sniped.

"That's not the point," Nadine snapped. "The point is that Nik is back and we're staying for him."

"It's fine," Nik spoke up. If I didn't know better, I would almost think he was trying to mediate. "You guys don't actually have to stay."

"I know we don't," Lux said, tossing her head, "but we want to." She shot me a look, "Some of us do, at least."

I barely refrained from rolling my eyes. Right, because she was such a good friend.

"Whatever," I muttered, deciding it didn't matter. They could think whatever they wanted, because I would be steering clear of all of them except Ansel after tonight. Coming had been a bad decision born out of a weak moment of sentimentality. I should've known well enough to leave the past in the past.

I stalked out of the room wordlessly. I would have to stop visiting Ansel for a while, at least until Nik moved out.

I was shrugging on my coat when I saw that Ansel had followed me.

"I'm leaving," I told him.

"I know," he replied, sighing. He looked pleadingly at me. "No chance you'll change your mind?"

"Nope." But I couldn't help smiling at the look of resignation on his face. Ansel was no more a fan of the gathering than I was, but the difference was – they were in his apartment. He couldn't leave even if he wanted to. I patted him on the chest, whispering drolly, "You'll be fine."

He glared at me in response.

Then a chorus of footsteps flooded into the living room, signalling that the rest had trailed out after me. I briefly wondered at their apparent concern, until I saw Nik at the head of the group.

Of course. Wherever Nik went, the others followed.

I turned away from the sight of them, looking instead at Ansel. He had come to stand beside me and was reaching for his own coat. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm walking you home," he said, his dry tone suggesting that the answer should have been obvious to me.

I was honestly bewildered. "What for? The train station is right down the street. I'll just take the train like I always–" Then I remembered that it was way past the timing for the last train and the train service wouldn't start until five in the morning. I would have to walk back.

"It's almost one o'clock," Ansel pointed out. "It's not safe for you to be walking around alone."

"The host leaving his guests alone in the apartment?" Nik asked lightly.

"Why, are you going to steal all my silverware in my absence?" Ansel returned just as mildly.

There was an undercurrent here that nobody could fail to grasp.

"Tamy lives, like, five minutes away," Lux said, sounding irritable for the first time since Nik had gotten off the train. "She'll be fine walking home herself."

I lived more than five minutes away, but she was giving me an out. "Yeah," I agreed, already turning towards the door, "I'll be fine."

"Your place is more than five minutes away." It was Ansel's turn to sound irritated. "It's all the way in the next district."

"It's fine," I said dismissively. "I've walked back from here a million times."

"Not alone in the middle of the night," Ansel said. It was an old argument, one that came up every time I stayed late at his place. He would usually bully me into staying over in his guest room, but that would be impossible tonight with Nik's presence.

"I could walk you home," Nik offered out of nowhere. My eyes snapped up at his suggestion. He was looking at me, blue eyes steady on my face.

"Nik, don't you need to unpack?" Nadine asked sweetly. I would never have thought to equate Nadine with any positive emotion, but I felt almost grateful for her intervention just then.

"No, you should stay," I managed to squeeze out without revealing the horror that had gripped me at the thought of spending time alone with Nik. "I'm sure you all have tons to catch up on."

"Yeah," Ansel said drily. "We can't have a welcome back party without the guest of honour, can we?"

Nik turned his head and coolly stared Ansel down.

Wolf had been hanging towards the back, silently observing the tensions rising across the room, but now he stepped forward. "I'll walk her home."

***

The walk home with Wolf was silent. He made no effort to converse, just strode along quickly and quietly. He was walking slightly behind me, hands in his pockets, hunched against the freezing wind. If not for his dark figure lingering at the corner of my eye, I could've made-believe that I was alone.

"So," I said, the silence eventually getting the better of me, "how have you been?"

There was a pause in which I thought he was going to ignore me, but then he said, "So-so."

Cheered by the fact that he wasn't being outright hostile like Nadine, I pressed on. "You're, what, working now?"

He let out a noncommittal grunt that could have meant anything ranging from 'yes' or 'no' to 'I trashed my university degree and decided to join a circus'. "Yeah," he finally decided to put it into understandable words after a moment.

Getting a little annoyed at how closed-mouth he was, I asked, "Where?"

"Siemens."

"What was your major again?" I tried, to see if he would continue giving one-word answers even if I asked a longer question.

"Engineering."

When no further elaboration was forthcoming, I decided it was all I could take. "I was just being polite, but it's fine if you don't want to talk to me," I snapped, before subsiding into an offended silence.

"Look," he said, "You don't have to make small talk."

"Fine," I said defensively. "I know you only offered to walk me home to stop that dog-in-the-manger fight Nik and Ansel had going on. God forbid we should at least try to act like civilised people now that we're alone."

As usual, Wolf's reply was slow in coming. It was like he had to mentally weigh every single word before he let it out of his mouth. "That's not what I meant."

"Forget it. For a moment there, I forgot you were on Nik's side."

"There are no sides here, Tamy," he said.

I just shook my head in exasperation. "Just forget it, all right?"

"You haven't changed at all." This was said quietly, with no malice in his tone, but it still rubbed me the wrong way.

I stopped abruptly in the middle of the pavement. Still back-facing him, I asked the one question that had been floating through my mind since the beginning of the night, when we had seen each other for the first time in three years and he had looked at me like I was a stranger. "Okay, I'm just going to come straight out and ask. Do you hate me or something?"

His footsteps petered away more slowly, only stopping entirely when I felt him at my shoulder. I kept my head down, not wanting to look up and see the expression on his face.

"I don't hate you, Tamy," he said in a low voice. I felt relief I didn't want to feel flood through me, only to drain back away at his next words, "But I can't say I particularly like you, either."

"Great," I said, my voice coming out a little more wobbly than I would've liked. Mechanically, I started walking again. "You're just like the rest of them, then."

We were halfway down the next street before he responded. "Just like the rest of them?"

"I'm sorry," I said insincerely. "You don't like being lumped in with Nadine and Lux? Wait – I forgot. At least you don't hate me like they do, huh?"

"They don't hate you."

I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn't see. "Were you not there tonight?"

He said nothing, only the sound of his footsteps letting me know he was still present behind me.

"Nadine believes she has plenty of reasons to hate me," I said after a while, "but you must know the truth if you still talk to Ansel."

"We don't talk about anything like that."

"So you believe Nadine, then?"

He fell silent, which I took to mean that he privately did.

I had never been close to Wolf, so when he'd fallen off the grid at the time of Nik and my big split, I'd taken it for granted that he'd joined the enemy side like Nadine and Lux had. The news that he had kept in touch with Ansel all that time, though, had thrown me for a loop.

It seemed that, unlike Nadine and Lux, Wolf saw me as the only villain in this story.

The remainder of the journey was made in total silence. I made no more effort to break it, instead revelling in it as we turned off Palace Street onto Johannes Street.

The building I lived in stood right at the end of Johannes Street, near the square that had gotten its name from the poet Friedrich Hölderlin. It was six storeys tall, with an attic in the only gable wall visible to us from this side of the street. The façade of the building was an organised mix of pale pink at the top levels and a layer of limestone overlaying the wall to the bottom storeys. I made my way to the side entrance without looking to see if Wolf had followed.

"Is this it?" Wolf finally spoke, the first sound he had made in the past three minutes or so.

"Yes," I replied shortly. That was the extent of our conversation as I led him up the three flights of stairs to the door labelled '23'.

He stood in silence while I busied myself with unlocking the door. Then my manners chose to reassert themselves about the time I twisted the door handle and pushed the door open. "Thanks for walking me back," I muttered in what was possibly the most ungrateful and insincere thanksgiving on this side of the country.

Before I could step into the sanctuary of my room, Wolf spoke quietly from behind. "Don't hurt Nik anymore."

My lip curled at that. Any pretence of civility forgotten, I whirled around to face him. He was standing with his hands shoved into the pockets of his winter coat, watching me warily.

"How would I dare?" I asked flippantly, my tone at odds with the glare I was sure was on my face. "Between you, Nadine and Lux, it's like he has a contingent on his side. Funny, though," I added, letting the scorn I'd been feeling all night bleed into my voice, "Seems to me like all of you are more concerned about me hurting him than he is. Is this his battle, or yours?"

He stared at me pensively for so long, I could almost see the gears turning in his mind behind his silent gaze. "You saw it tonight. It's not over for him."

"You're seeing things," I said stoically. "And even if that were true, it's none of my business what he thinks. Why don't you go warn him off instead?"

"Because it's not over for you, either."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's been three years," Wolf said calmly, ignoring my denial. "Maybe it's time to let it go."

"Well, what about you?" I shot back, "Why don't you practise what you preach?"

When he didn't reply, I took great pleasure in slamming the door in his face.

***