Before that, Lena had never noticed Josh’s thighs specifically, but the following Wednesday in class her gaze kept drifting down and to the left, taking in the surprising thickness of them. Most boys here, she realised now, had thighs barely thicker than their calves. Their legs giant khaki-cotton-wrapped matchsticks. Josh had thighs like the boys she grew up with. Footy-playing thighs, but without the bent nose and thick neck that usually went with them. Was it horseriding that did that for him? If so, it must be a regular part of his life. Something else that had never occurred to her: that the photo wasn’t a show-off holiday shot, like the one her mum had taken on their only ever trip to Wonderland Sydney, right before it closed for good, her and Will gripping the wheel of the Snowy River Rampage raft with expressions of goofy concentration. Josh on a horse was normal. It was like a picture of her on the stinking 412 bus! What was his life? God.

Also: he dressed exactly like all the other boys from his college, managing to somehow look like he’d just rolled out of bed and put on the first combo of clothes he stumbled over, but also like he could be a men’s style influencer on Instagram. But there was no way Josh was buying his pants at the same places as the other boys. A pair of pants to fit his neat waist and cuppable arse would be burst open Hulk-style by his thighs.

A piece of scrunched paper landed on her lap and she looked up into his leering face. ‘Eyes up here, Harris. Geez.’

Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god. She stared straight ahead at the lecturer, resisting the urge to run from the room. To leave the state!

She slid her silenced phone from her pocket and texted Nic: Josh just caught me perving on his thighs. Now I’m dead and it’s all your fault. Nic wouldn’t answer right away; she’d be behind the register still. Just as well. She’d probably text back something really dirty and Lena would lose it. Lose it worse than she already had.

Her screen flashed. New text. From Josh. Shit. She didn’t even know he had her number. With the most who-gives-a-fuck expression she could possibly fake, she tapped it open.

Oh. God. Help. Me.

A photo. Of his crotch. Wearing the same palest-of-pale green pants he was wearing today. Sitting on the same fuzzy burgundy-coloured lecture theatre seat he was sitting on right now. Evidently taken in this room, today, while she was beside him trying not to think about his thighs. While he had an obvious—proud, even—hard-on.

Lena shoved the phone in her pocket. It vibrated immediately. Fuck. She held it by her side and glanced down. Josh again: Obviously don’t mind you looking …