Ren

I GOT TO creative writing class early on Monday, because I didn’t want to risk seeing Maddox. I took a seat near the front, so I wouldn’t have to see him when he walked in and I could just be blissfully ignorant of his presence.

We hadn’t spoken since Saturday, when he’d had that major freak-out at the restaurant. At first, I’d been really confused by it, because it’d seemingly come out of nowhere, but the more I’d thought about it (more like obsessed over it), I was pretty sure I understood.

It seemed completely unbelievable, and even after hours and hours of analyzing I wasn’t entirely sure I could believe it, but it kind of seemed like maybe Maddox was struggling with some feelings. Some attraction-type feelings. For me.

Even the thought in my head sounded ridiculous and totally laughable. He was the perfect guy. He looked like one of those models on the front of those teen girl magazines with perfect hair always set just into place, perfect blue eyes, and a perfect, athletic body. He probably had girls scrambling to talk to him wherever he was. I’d actually seen lots of girls staring at him hopefully during the spin the bottle game at that party, but he hadn’t seemed to really notice or care for them.

Him most likely being bisexual was one thing. It didn’t really surprise or shock me, since what people looked or acted like didn’t really have any correlation to their sexuality. But the fact that out of all the guys he interacted with on a daily basis, including the crop of fit, good-looking guys on the swim team, it was me he was having attraction toward? I wasn’t anyone’s idea of the perfect guy, that was for sure.

Which circled me back to the part where I almost couldn’t believe it, and maybe I was just wanting for it to be true. I’d never had feelings for a guy before, but then again I hadn’t liked that many girls either. It was becoming more and more obvious that maybe what I was feeling for him was more than just admiration. Still, without him saying all that stuff about being obsessed and thinking about me all the time, I’d never have even considered that he could feel the same way.

I wasn’t particularly hurt by the mean stuff he’d said to me at the restaurant. I could understand why he was upset and maybe kind of scared. I wouldn’t have wanted to have a crush on someone like me either. Plus, I was pretty certain until now he’d probably never even considered his sexuality as up for debate or anything.

I wasn’t hurt, but I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing him again yet. I didn’t know if he’d still be pissed off over the whole thing, or if he’d calmed down. He’d forbidden me from texting him, and he hadn’t reached out to me either.

He derailed my whole ignoring his presence plan by sitting at the desk right next to me just a few minutes before class was supposed to start. He always sat in the back, which was one of the reasons I’d chosen the seat I had. Before I could decide whether I wanted to pretend like I hadn’t noticed him or not, he spoke.

“Refined carbohydrates.”

I opened my mouth, then immediately closed it again. That phrase was not on the list that I’d mentally prepared a response for.

“Refined carbohydrates and sugars cause spikes in blood sugar levels, which can cause mood swings and irritability,” he said. When I glanced over, he was reading off his phone screen. “And studies show that lack of sleep can alter your mood significantly and cause anger and frustration. On top of that, stressful life changes can impact brain chemistry and cause negative mood changes.”

When he was done talking, he looked up from the phone. When our eyes met, I could see remorse shimmering in his. Sympathy flickered in my belly, and my heart thumped in my chest. Okay, so my crush on him was kind of bad.

“So,” he continued. “I spent yesterday thinking about everything that happened and I came up with all this stuff I could blame for the way I acted.”

I wasn’t a doctor or anything, but all the stuff he was saying made perfect sense. We were all under a lot of pressure, but maybe him more than the rest of us, since he had swim club on top of it all. Plus, all the special diet stuff and exercise and getting up early and all that. I could totally understand how all of that could compound into a mental meltdown.

“But,” he went on. “Really, it was just me. Being a complete fucking asshole. And…” He stopped, groaning a bit in his throat. “I don’t really do this whole apology thing, ever.”

Part of me wanted to stop him and tell him to forget it, that he didn’t need to apologize to me. But I was so dazzled by the fact that he even thought I was worth apologizing to that I couldn’t find a way to get my throat to work.

“The stuff I was saying was… Crazy,” he decided on the word. On one hand, he was right about acting crazy. On the other hand, he’d been completely correct about me having a crush on him. I wasn’t sure if that made the whole situation better or worse. “And you didn’t deserve any of that. And I’m sorry. Can we just forget the whole thing?”

“Yeah,” I said instantly. I felt kind of out of breath from staring at him for so long. He was just really, really nice to look at. And I felt like I could listen to him talk all day. Even if it was about what an asshole he was and how mean he’d been to me. “Yeah, let’s just forget it.”

“What!?” He snapped out, giving me an incredulous look. “You’re going to forgive me, just like that!?”

Confused by the sudden tonal shift, I blinked. “Um, yeah. It’s fine.”

“It is not fine,” he insisted. “Stand up for yourself.” When I only nodded, he frowned. “I mean now. Stand up for yourself now.”

“Oh.” I thought for a moment, but my mind was still a bit fuzzy from staring into his eyes for so long. “Um…”

“Tell me I’m an asshole, and that if I do it again you’re not going to put up with it,” he ordered. I hoped he was joking and would eventually say just kidding, but he just kept waiting.

Clearing my throat, I mustered up all my energy. “You’re an asshole.”

“And?” He prompted, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry, I don’t really think that,” I said, instantly contrite. I really didn’t think he was, anyway.

He heaved a sigh. “But I’d really mentally prepared to grovel, and you’re sort of ruining all that.”

“Grovel?” I repeated. Okay, maybe that did sound kind of nice. I’d never been groveled to before. A ridiculous image of Maddox worshiping at my feet as I lounged on a golden throne popped into my head before I shooed it away. Maybe not that much groveling.

“Look, if you’re not going to make me beg for your forgiveness, then let me make it up to you another way. Just so I can stop feeling like such a scumbag.”

“What were you thinking?” I asked, but I would have agreed to anything. So much for standing up for myself.

“You said you wanted to check out the boardwalk, right? So, let’s go. I’ll buy you some cotton candy or something.”

My innocent idea of the two of us checking out the boardwalk suddenly felt as though it held an entirely different connotation. I wanted to say yes, but I wasn’t sure if Maddox was ready for something like that. He’d already flipped out once over a study session. Buying me cotton candy and going on rides together and stuff was way more like a date than that.

“Um, are you sure?” I asked, as gently as I possibly could. I didn’t want to be condescending, but I also didn’t want to get yelled at again for being gay and trying to convert him. “I don’t want you to feel like…” I didn’t finish, but we both knew what I meant.

He shook his head quickly. “Yeah, just forget all that. I seriously didn’t mean it. I…” He paused, sucking in a deep breath, before glancing up at the ceiling. “Like hanging out with you. Or whatever. So just say yes.”

“Really?” The word tumbled out of my mouth without me thinking about it. “You do?”

He looked slightly flustered to have to confirm or deny, but even the mild embarrassment looked so good on his handsome face. He grinned a little, the corner of his mouth perking up just the slightest bit. But before he could say anything, our professor cleared her throat.

“Class has started, gentlemen. Any personal discussion will need to be conducted outside of this room.”

So we shut up and listened to her lecture about writing composition. I regretted sitting in the front now, as I was sure we could have gotten away with talking quietly if we hadn’t been directly in front of her. It was okay, I could handle an hour without communicating with Maddox. Mostly I was just worried he’d change his mind about liking to hang out with me.

I really had no interest in writing, creative or otherwise, so I was pretty sure under normal circumstances a lecture like this would have put me to sleep. But I couldn’t stop glancing over to look at him in my peripheral vision.

Anxiety curled in my stomach. What if he noticed me looking and got upset? I understood now the reason why my crush had exploded when he’d gotten upset and yelled at me in the restaurant. It was because until that moment I’d never have believed he could have any feelings toward me. But knowing there was a chance, even a tiny one, that he could be struggling with the same attraction that I was… It was too amazing to ignore.

When class was over, he stood from his chair and leaned his hip onto the side of my desk, staring down at me. “So? When are you free?”

“Um, anytime I’m not in class, I guess,” I said. It wasn’t exactly true, but it was mostly true. Plus I wasn’t going to pretend that I wouldn’t have been willing to push most things aside to go out on the boardwalk with Maddox. Even if he was maybe going to possibly have another meltdown about his probable bisexuality.

“What about today?” He pushed.

“Okay!” I agreed instantly. I kept forgetting about that part where coming on too strong or too enthusiastically creeped people out sometimes. Gwen used to nag me about that a lot, how I always ended up seeming desperate because I never acted chill about anything.

Maddox grinned a little at my exclamation. “Cool.” It didn’t seem like it bothered him, at least. And I was completely certain that Maddox fit Gwen’s picture of an ideal guy perfectly. So if he didn’t have a problem with it, then maybe I didn’t need to worry so much.

I briefly thought about the conversation I’d finally had with Kelani the night before when she’d been hanging out with Arie. When I’d asked if she had an issue with Maddox, she’d told me that one of the first things she’d been warned about from other girls was to stay away from guys on the swim team.

I wasn’t really sure what to think of that, but I was pretty sure Maddox wasn’t like the other guys on the team. When I expressed that to her, she told me to be careful, just in case, that he might not be as nice as he seemed. It was a little late for me to be careful since I’d pretty much already developed an embarrassing crush on him. I didn’t mention that part to her, though.

We both had other classes after creative writing, so we decided to meet at the front of the school at 4:00 when we were both finished for the day, and walk over. When I got to the front, I saw he was already there waiting for me. He was absorbed in something on his phone, so he didn’t notice I’d walked up. The sun was shining from somewhere behind him, washing over his lightly tanned skin, making a kind of halo around his dark hair.

It was just starting to cool off for September, but it wasn’t cold enough to need a jacket yet. It was a strange and random thought, but I wondered if he had a varsity jacket. Feeling embarrassed and just a little bit shallow for being kind of excited by the idea, I cleared my throat. He glanced up from his phone, shoving it in his pocket when he saw me.

“Hey,” he greeted me.

“Hey.”

“You ready to go?”

“Yep!” I said, taking a step forward. “Oh! I also have this.” I pulled a folded up sheet of paper out of my pocket. “So I went on this website and they have a layout of all the different, like, shops and restaurants and games and stuff.” I handed it to him, watching as he looked it over. “And, um, I highlighted the stuff I want to try. But we can look at the stuff you want, too!”

“Did you print this out?” He asked, raising an eyebrow as he glanced up from it at me. “Like, with an actual printer?”

“Yeah! At the library.”

“And you’ve just been carrying it around in your pocket?”

“Um, pretty much, yeah.”

He laughed, shaking his head as he handed it back to me. “Ren, you are really just the supreme nerd.” I shrugged, not entirely sure if it was a compliment or not. When he noticed my expression, he tilted his head. “It’s not a bad thing,” he assured me. “You’re just different than what I’m used to.”

“What are you used to?” I asked, as we started our walk. It was only a few minutes down the road. We’d walk through the tail end of the historic downtown district the university was placed in, through a small chunk of neighborhood, and then we’d hit the beach where the boardwalk was.

He blew out a breath, stretching his arms over his head for a second. I took advantage of the moment to quickly dart my eyes to where his shirt would lift up from the hem of his shorts, like I always did when he did that. I hoped that didn’t make me a creeper.

“Uh, I don’t really know. My friends in high school were just guys from the team.”

“The swim team?” I guessed.

“Nope. I didn’t really swim until I got here. I mean, I swam for fun sometimes, but not competitively.”

“But you said you’re one of the best on the team, right?” I remembered him mentioning that when we’d chatted at the library.

“Yeah. But it’s just natural advantage or luck or something,” he admitted. “In middle school and high school, I played basketball and football, and I was in a baseball league in the summer. Little League before that.”

“Wow, you must really like competing and all that,” I said, surprised. I knew he was getting his degree in sports medicine, but I hadn’t realized he’d been devoted to playing pretty much his whole life.

“Ah…” He hesitated, looking a bit grim. “I love sports. I catch every game I can.”

“You don’t like playing as much?” I asked, trying to understand. “Is that why you’re going into that field instead of some kind of athlete?”

“That’s basically it, I guess,” he admitted. But he looked embarrassed, like he’d confessed some terrible shortcoming. “I’m good at playing sports. I know that. And I know some guys would kill for the natural ability I have. But I don’t want to do that for my whole life, you know?”

“I mean, you don’t have to explain it to me,” I told him. “Strenuous physical activity is not really on my list of favorite activities. I want a job in the air-conditioning, where I don’t have to sweat all day.”

“You’re definitely on your way,” he said, but he seemed kind of relieved to have the conversation off him and his non-existent sports career. I made a mental note to try not to bring that up again. “What does a software engineer even do, anyway?”

“Well, basically when you’re a software engineer, you work on a team that solves problems for your client. Like if they want you to develop a business app or an operating system, or if they want customers to be able to order stuff from their website. You have to use, like, engineering principles and programming languages and stuff to make everything work.”

“That sounds hard,” he said.

“Well, not really,” I said. “It’s just a lot of math and coding and stuff.”

“Math is hard.”

“I like math!”

He glanced sideways over at me, smirking a bit. He looked criminally handsome when he was smirking. “I bet you do.”

I laughed a little. “Well, I don’t really get football and stuff, so… To me, understanding that kind of thing is hard.”

“Football is simple,” he informed me. “If we turned on a game, I could teach you everything before it’s over.”

“Really?” I asked doubtfully.

“Definitely.”

“I think I’d like that.”

“You want to watch football with me?” He asked, sounding surprised. I’d even surprised myself. I’d never had a single urge to watch football, or any sport, ever. But listening to Maddox explain something he liked for… however long a football game was, it didn’t sound bad at all.

“Um, yeah, I think so! Oh, wait, but that would be kind of annoying for you, right?” I realized. “With me asking questions all the time and everything?”

He stared at me for a few moments before answering. “No. It wouldn’t be annoying.”

When we got to the boardwalk, there was a ton of stuff for us to do. We popped into an old school style arcade, where I absolutely destroyed him in every game we faced against each other in. Then we played a virtual reality one where we had to work together to shoot a bunch of dinosaurs that were trying to attack our Jeep.

“You have good hand-eye coordination,” Maddox commented as we unloaded from the special seats for the game. They had shaken and tossed us around while we were shooting, which had made it even harder. “And you’re pretty tall, too. You should have played basketball in high school.”

“The problem is, only my hands are coordinated,” I said, ignoring the way his offhanded compliment had me feeling completely amped up. “The rest of my body just kind of does its own thing.”

“Does that mean we can skip, uh… Dance… Dance… Revolution?” Maddox asked, tilting his head as he read the name of the game out loud. There were already a bunch of people playing, frantically stomping the neon tiles to the rhythm of the song on the screen.

I laughed at his repulsed tone. “Yeah, we can skip that one.”

He paid for some cotton candy, as he’d promised, which I wolfed down like a starving peasant. Then afterward, as we approached another food stall, I looked over the menu.

“You’re not going to get mad if I eat, like, a corn dog, are you?” I asked.

He looked confused by my question, then when he understood my joke, he scoffed, shaking his head.

“You know I can kick your ass, right?”

“Totally,” I answered, but I couldn’t stop snickering at his expression. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it.”

“As long as you don’t deep throat it, I think we’ll be fine,” he finally said, laughing a little now, too.

I ended up getting a cheeseburger and some nachos, and Maddox ate the healthiest thing we could find in the area, a grilled chicken sandwich and an unsweetened tea. But he seemed happy with it, so I didn’t comment on how miserable I would have been in his place.

While we were looking for a table, he spotted a small group of guys from the swim team. I recognized a couple of them from the other day at the library.

“Christ,” he muttered under his breath, and clapped his hand down onto my shoulder to forcefully steer me away from them. “Let’s find somewhere else before they see us.”

“You don’t want to eat with them?” I guessed, and he let out a single sarcastic laugh.

“I have to eat with them every fucking weekday morning. I’d rather choke.”

When we found a picnic table a good distance away from them, we sat down to eat. While we were munching, Maddox commented on all the seagulls circling the area, and how many signs there were warning customers about dive-bombing gulls.

“Che kind of has one of these things as a pet, you know,” I said. Maddox’s eyes went wide.

“Gross. He keeps it in the dorm?”

“No,” I said. “It lives outside, but he feeds it and it recognizes him and stuff. When he walks out to the quad outside our dorm building, it flies right to him.”

“How does he know it’s the same one?” He wondered. “They all kind of look the same.”

“Well, the one he feeds has a messed up foot. He can walk okay and everything, but one of his feet has a chunk missing out of it.”

Grimacing a bit, Maddox shook his head. “So he thinks this bum foot seagull is his pet?”

“I mean, he feeds it and it seems to like him,” I said, shrugging. I thought it was interesting and kind of cute. “He even named it Eugene, but I don’t think he can tell if it’s a boy or a girl. It’s pretty funny, you should come out there with us some time.”

“What does he feed it, like bird seed and stuff?”

“Um, actually the last time I was out there with them, he was feeding it chunks of salmon.”

“Salmon? Isn’t that kind of expensive?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. I didn’t really know anything about groceries. “Che says the salmon is healthy for Eugene.”

Scoffing again, he heaved a sigh. “The damn bird is eating better than most of the students I know.”

We walked around a bit more once we were done eating, commenting on the various shops and attractions. I caught him staring longingly at a stand with a bunch of interesting flavors of fudge, like pumpkin spice and salted caramel and birthday cake.

“You want to try some?” I asked, and he hesitated before shaking his head.

“Nah, I can’t.”

“It’s okay to have a little treat,” I said, frowning a little. “I’ll split some with you,” I offered. It had worked last time.

“No, I’ve already slacked off too much lately with my diet.”

“Well, maybe next time,” I said, feeling kind of terrible when he glanced back at the stall one last time before we moved on. That mindset was so foreign to me, I couldn’t relate at all.

When we came up to a game where you have to keep aiming your water gun at a little moving target to fill up your balloon the fastest, I paid $5 to play it.

“I’m really good at these games,” I told him, as I settled onto the little stool and waited for other people to pay to enter the game.

“Judging by your score in the dino game, I believe you,” Maddox said.

When I won, I requested the barracuda plushie in a little BBU sweatshirt. A lot of the prizes for the games had BBU branding on them, since we were so close to the university.

“It’s you,” I told Maddox, brandishing my not-so-hard-won prize. He grinned a bit, raising a dark brow.

“I think I look a little better than that,” he said. The barracuda had a big, toothy smile that looked slightly demented.

“Well, yeah,” I said, before realizing that I’d basically called him hot. Sort of. “I mean, no,” I quickly corrected. “You don’t.”

He gave me a dry look before rolling his eyes, but he was still smiling. “You really have a gift for making everything awkward.”

“Ah, yeah. I get that a lot. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said simply. There was something about the way he didn’t linger on it that I liked. He didn’t make me feel like I was annoying, but he also wasn’t scrambling to convince me that I wasn’t awkward. I was, and we both knew it. He just didn’t care.

When we found the sushi pizza truck, I absolutely had to try it. When they handed me a fat slice teeming with raw tuna drizzled with spicy mayo, Maddox looked at me apprehensively.

“Isn’t this some kind of insult to your culture?” He asked, and I laughed.

“Probably. I won’t be telling my grandparents about it, that’s for sure.”

“I can’t believe you can keep eating, after everything you’ve already had,” he said, with a bit of awe in his voice.

“Iron stomach,” I said, as I polished off the last bite. “Okay, we should probably start heading back now.” The sun wasn’t quite setting yet, but it was getting there. I wanted to ride the ferris wheel, but I was pretty sure that was venturing way too deep into date territory for his comfort level. I’d wait to bring it up when things weren’t so weird and uncertain between us.

“Yeah, alright,” Maddox agreed. “But there’s one thing I want to do on the way back.”

It turned out to be another game, this time the one where you throw the basketball into the hoop as many times as you can within the time limit. It was completely effortless for him, he didn’t miss a single shot. I watched the attendant lady’s expression becoming more and more worried as the clock counted down. He’d racked up a lot of points and could pick pretty much any prize available. But when it finished counting down, he asked for something small.

“I thought it’s only fair if you’re represented, too,” Maddox said, as he showed me the prize he’d picked out. It was another BBU-themed plushie, this time a cute and squishy frog with a round pair of glasses covering its big eyes. The frog’s little shirt had the school’s logo on it. “This one is you,” he said, though it was obvious and didn’t need stating.

“They can be friends,” I said, holding my barracuda up so he could give a high-fin to Maddox’s frog. “Wait, do barracudas eat frogs?”

“Uhh…” He pulled his phone out to Google it. “It says they’re opportunistic predators, but I don’t see frogs listed in their typical diet.”

“Phew.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “I think seagulls might, though.”

Maddox clutched the frog to his chest with a look of mock horror. “We’ll have to keep him away from Eugene.”

“He’s definitely well-fed enough, as it is,” I agreed.

It was such a stupid and silly conversation, but for the first time I felt like we were actually kind of relaxed with each other. Was this what it could be like all the time with him? Could I really just be myself and laugh at dumb stuff without worrying about how I sounded or if I was being annoying? My heart gave a hard thump, partly from the anxiety-inducing realization that I was actually imagining us together. Like as a couple. I was definitely setting myself up for disappointment and heartache.

“Did you feel that?” Maddox asked, giving a slight frown. Had he actually felt my heart pound somehow?

“Um… What did it feel like?”

Blinking, he looked up at the sky, and winced a bit as a fat raindrop hit his face. “Fuck. It’s about to rain.”

“Oh!” I realized, relieved. But only for a second. “Oh! Crap!” We weren’t far from the school, but it was a ten minute walk or so. “Let’s go!”

We booked it out of there, rushing past all the people who were headed to their cars, our sneakers smacking the sidewalk as we ran. About halfway there, the sky opened up and poured buckets down onto us.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Maddox complained, though I could barely hear him over the sudden downpour. I whipped my messy, soaked bangs out of my face so I could see where I was going.

“Let’s just head up to my dorm room,” I shouted out over the rain. “You can dry off and wait it out there.”

“Yeah, okay,” he agreed.

When we finally burst through the doors of the building, we were absolutely sopping. Water dripped down off our clothes and onto the tiled floors as we took the elevator up.

Still huffing and out of breath by the time we reached my room, I pushed the door open and headed straight for my little stack of towels crammed into one of the cubby holes that were half mine. Aspen must have still been at work, since the room was empty. Work, or in some other guy’s room. Although he’d once told me he didn’t like to travel much for hookups, since he couldn’t bring any equipment with him. I was pretty sure I knew what he meant by that, but I didn’t want to think about it too much.

Tossing a towel to Maddox, I started scrubbing it through my dripping hair. “Wow, that really started coming down fast.”

“Yeah. Fucking sucks.”

When I glanced up at him, his face was covered as he scrubbed at his hair too. But his shirt had ridden up to the middle of his torso, leaving his defined abs exposed. I stared dumbly, feeling kind of like I was hypnotized. Had I ever noticed a guy’s abs before? Maybe I’d noticed them, but I’d never been turned on by that. But now, suddenly my room felt incredibly small and crowded, and the sound of both of us catching our breath was way too loud.

He pulled the towel down, and I couldn’t look up from his body quick enough. He definitely knew that I’d been staring at him. I felt heat rush to the surface of my skin, but I didn’t know what to say.

“What you said at the restaurant…” Maddox started, looking at me kind of cautiously. “About not being gay. Is that true? Are you really straight?”

My stomach dropped. I had no clue how to answer. I didn’t want to lie to him, but I didn’t want him to feel weird around me either. But if I lied now and it ended up coming out later, it would probably be worse.

“I’m not gay,” I answered definitively. “I’ve had crushes on girls a lot, and like I said I had a girlfriend for a couple years. But… I don’t think I’m straight, either. At least, I’m kind of doubting that lately. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m not.”

“Is that what you meant about how you can like more than one thing?” He asked. He hadn’t changed expression at my answer, and his tone was neutral. I didn’t know how he was feeling.

“Yeah,” I answered honestly. Clenching my fist at my side, I took a deep breath. “Does that, um… Does that bother you?”

He looked away from me, off to the side, but shook his head. “Nah. I’m sorry about what I said, about you… Liking me, or whatever. It was stupid and immature.”

“You already apologized,” I reminded him. “And we said we wouldn’t bring it up again.”

“Yeah, but it’s worse because…” He hesitated. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

“You can say it.”

“I can’t.”

“It’s okay, Maddox,” I said. My heart was pounding in my chest like an earthquake when his eyes finally slid back over to meet mine. “I’m not going to judge you or get upset or anything. I’m not that kind of person.”

“No, I know you aren’t. You’re… You’re great,” he said. He looked so nervous, and he was still breathing hard. I wondered if his heart was beating as hard as mine was.

“I think you’re great, too. I really like being friends with you.”

“Just friends?” He asked, and the heat washing over my skin intensified.

“I mean… Yeah. I do like being your friend.”

“And you don’t want more?”

I wanted to say yes, a thousand times yes. I wanted so much more. But I could only shake my head.

“I… I don’t know,” I managed. “It’s not like I’d ever actually expect someone like you to be into someone like me, whether you were bi or gay or whatever, anyway.”

“You don’t think I could be into someone like you?” He repeated.

“No.”

“Why’s that?” He took a step closer to me. There was barely any space between us now. My instinct was to take a step back, to erase the closeness that he’d deliberately put between us, but I felt frozen in place.

“Because you’re… You’re perfect. You’re the kind of guy that everyone wants. You’re hot and smart and you have actual talents. I’m awkward and annoying and I never know when to shut up.”

“You don’t think you’re hot and smart and talented?” He asked. He’d actually taken another step toward me. My head was spinning, and I could barely remember enough of the English language to answer.

“Uh… I’m smart, I guess. Kind of. I’m bad at remembering history. And geography. And I always mix up celebrity names. And-”

“You definitely don’t know when to shut up,” he confirmed. But his voice was low now, so soft it was like it was only meant to fill up the tiny, almost non-existent space between our faces. “Usually, I don’t mind.”

“Usually?” I echoed.

“Usually,” he repeated, before closing the final, tiny gap between us by pressing his lips onto mine.