I walked into the kitchen early that morning—well, okay, not early, but ten-thirty kind of counts as early on a Saturday. My mother and Ryan were there, waiting for me. “Ryan’s here to see you,” Charlotte, my mother, said without looking up from her newspaper.

“Sorry, man,” I told Ryan. “You should’ve woken me. How long have you been hanging out with her?”

“Don’t be mean, Adam,” Ryan reprimanded, smiling his big smile. “Charlotte’s cool.”

“Yeah,” Charlotte agreed dryly. “Me and Ry are homies now.”

“Ew, mom, shut the hell up. Never say homies ever again.”

“Whatevs you say, homie.”

“Oh my god.” I shook my head. “Come on, Ry, let’s get out of here. Wait, where were we going?”

Ryan raised his eyebrows. “The mall? Remember? To get Katie a birthday present?”

“Oh, right, Katie.” I had almost forgotten about our other best friend’s birthday. “What do eighteen-year-old girls like?”

“Porn,” Charlotte said unexpectedly. Ryan and I looked at her. “Well? It’s true.”

“Yeah, but we can’t buy porn,” Ryan argued. “First of all, we’re too young. Second, if we buy porn for Katie, that makes us look kinda gay to the store clerk. You know, buying male porn.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Ryan, you two are kinda gay.”

“We are not,” I interjected, “and it’s rude of you to say so, mother. Goodness. Aren’t people from your generation supposed to be prudish?”

“I hate to break it to you, Addie, but we were technically born in the same generation.”

“That’s disgusting, you ho. Don’t even remind me.”

“That’s no way to talk to your mother,” she said, lacking any emotion in her voice, except perhaps a little amusement.

“Yeah, my mother who’s fifteen years older than me.”

“Don’t remind me of my mistakes,” she ruffled my hair. “Because you’ll always be the biggest one.”

“Yeah, but I’ll always be the best one.”

“True, that,” she agreed, finally looking up at us. “I kinda screwed my chances of a proper eighteenth birthday, because I had a retarded three-year-old on my hands, but I would’ve wanted something nice. Just something that meant something, you know? And if I had two best friends like Katie has you guys, I would’ve wanted them to get me something I wanted, not what they thought they were supposed to get me.”

“Do you know what her best friend gave her for her eighteenth birthday?” I asked Ryan, who shook his head. “A boyfriend.”

“And how did that work out?” Ryan asked dryly.

“Well, I married him, didn’t I?” Charlotte smiled.

“You married… Dan… when you were eighteen?” Ryan asked, his eyebrows raised.

Charlotte shrugged. “Seemed appropriate. I had a kid, he wanted one. I was beautiful, he was handsome. I loved him, he loved me. And now he won’t get his lazy ass out of bed and I have to cook him and his son fucking breakfast.”

“I’m not his son,” I said, raising my hands in the universal ‘don’t shoot’ gesture.

“You might as well be, the way you two sleep in for ages.” Charlotte smiled again. “You boys go have fun now. Find something Katie’ll appreciate.”

“You know,” I said as Ryan and I stepped out the door into the cool winter sunlight, “we could always find Katie a boyfriend for her birthday like Susie did for Charlotte.”

“I don’t trust your taste in guys,” Ryan said plainly.

“You little slut,” I said, affectionately ruffling his shaggy brown hair.

He gave me the official “Ryan Look,” the one where his eyebrows shot into his bangs and he looked at me out of the corners of his honey-colored eyes, and his mouth twisted into a cross between a smile and a reprimand. “You have bad taste in guys, actually.”

“I do not,” I said. “I have perfect taste in anyone and everyone I do and do not decide to look at.”

Ryan muttered something that sounded like, “Bi-curious whore,” before smiling a little. But there was something wrong with the way that smile was. I didn’t press him, though, because Ryan didn’t like when people asked him what was wrong. He’d always just say, “A lot of things are wrong. Can you fix them?” And whoever it was would just mutter, “Weirdo,” under their breath and walk away. And Ryan would sit there, smiling triumphantly, like he had completely outsmarted them. Which, in a way, I supposed he had. People just learned to stop asking him what was wrong. So, while we were walking to the mall, Ryan just tightened his blue and grey striped scarf around his neck and continued, “We’ve known Katie for like, fifteen years. I think we could find a guy who’d date her that she’d like.”

“He’d have to be smart,” I said.

“And good looking,” Ryan added.

“Blonde,” I said.

“With green eyes,” he agreed.

“Maybe a soccer player,” I thought.

“Or hockey,” Ryan amended.

“So… let’s go to the ice rink.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“As a freakin’ heart attack, Ry-Ry.”

“So you want to go to the ice rink to check out the hockey players.”

“Uh… yeah, pretty much.”

I was sure I heard Ryan mutter, “Bi-curious whore,” again, but he turned it into a cough, so I couldn’t tell. Then, he said, “For Katie, though, right?”

“Who else would we be finding a hockey player for? Everyone knows I’m into musicians.”

Ryan rolled his eyes, his face flushing a little. I loved embarrassing him. He just reacted so well—it was just too much fun. “Yeah, well, I’ll beat you over the head with my fucking guitar in a minute if we don’t get going. Are we really going to do this? What if he thinks we’re hitting on him?”

“Relax, Ry. We’ll show him a picture of Katie—she stuck like, ten in my wallet, by the way—and ask if he’d go on a date with her. And then if he says yes—”

“But that’s just if we even find the guy. What are we going to get her if we can’t?”

“A Starbucks gift card.” We crossed the overpass that led to the mall.

Ryan snorted. “A lovely compensation prize.”

“A date with me, then,”

“Even better,” Ryan said sarcastically.

“A date with you?”

“This is Katie we’re talking about. She’s never liked either of us. Never will. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not into her, either.” He laughed, suddenly. “Oh, I bet you are into her. You’re just into everybody, aren’t you? And I totally mean that in all possible meanings of the phrase.”

I scowled at him. “Jeez, Ry, sound like a jealous girlfriend much? You know I’m a virgin. And besides, I’m not into everyone. I’m not into anyone.” Which wasn’t strictly true. But I wasn’t telling Ryan that.

“And I know you’re not lying, how?” Ryan raised his eyebrows, his honey eyes glaring at me.

“Because I’m your best friend, maybe? I’d tell you if I’d had sex or whatever—look, can we just go to the fuckin’ ice rink?” I pushed past him on the narrow sidewalk of the overpass, before exiting onto the street below. We walked the rest of the way in silence. We climbed the stairs of the parking garage before entering the mall’s ice rinks. The temperature, surprisingly enough, was not very different outside and inside, but I saw Ryan tighten his scarf again.

“Look, Ad, I didn’t mean… I just… I’m sorry, about…”

“It’s okay, Ry,” I said. “That’s why we’re cool, right? We don’t act like girls when we argue, we don’t hold grudges and shit.” I nudged him a little with my shoulder. “Hey. Cheer up, okay?”

Ryan gave a mini-smile. “’Kay.”

We walked to the bleachers where parents and coaches would stand when their twirl-girls were practicing on this rink. “Looks like free skate time,” I commented.

“You think there’s hockey practice on the other ice?” Ryan asked.

“Let’s go see.” We walked through the side doors that led to the other rink. A group of boys were, in fact, skating around wearing pads and holding sticks. We stood in the back of the rink until their coach called that practice was over. They took of their helmets and skates, drank water, and fooled around, running and swearing and cracking terrible jokes.

“There he is,” Ryan said somewhat evilly. “Come to us, blondie.”

I chuckled. “You’re so strange.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Look, he’s going to walk right past us out… Hey,” I said to the blonde guy. Ryan was right—he was perfect. Green eyes, muscular shoulders, and a straight-up no-nonsense look to his walk, like he was too good for acting like he was too good for everyone.

“Do I know you?”

“No. But see, our friend Katie is turned eighteen today, and we didn’t know what to get her. So after careful consideration, we decided to set her up on a blind date. You fit our criteria. How about it?”

The guy looked thoughtful. “Not that it matters,” he said shyly, “but what does she look like?” I pulled out my wallet and handed him one of the many pictures of Katie. The guy’s green eyes widened. “Oh,” he said. “I, uh… I dunno.”

I frowned and watched as Ryan did, too. Katie was maybe the prettiest girl in the world. She had golden-brown hair that fell past her large breasts, and in that picture was wearing a Hawaiian lei round her neck and a flower that pulled her hair slightly to the side. Her mischievous smirk was in place on her full lips, and her dark eyes sparkled in the fading sunlight on the ocean behind her. So why was this guy not sure after seeming so willing before he’d seen her?

Ryan shrugged. “How can you not know?”

“Well, I…”

“Do you want to go on a date with her, or don’t you?”

“She doesn’t… I mean… yes, okay, I’ll do it. Fine. Where and when?”

“Chili’s. Seven. Tonight.”

“The one just over there?” the guy asked, pointing.

“Yes,” Ryan said. “And I don’t believe we caught your name?”

“Chase. So. Uh, yeah. Who are you, so I can tell the cops if shit goes down?”

Ryan snorted at his slang. “I’m Ryan. He’s Adam.”

“Are you guys going to be there?”

“Wasn’t planning on staying,” I answered, “But we’ll have to get Kates there somehow, eh, Ry?”

“Guess so. And hey, what’s your GPA?”

“Three-point-eight-three-three,” he said, looking a little confused. “But okay.” Chase said, looking back and forth between us. “Okay. Just make sure she doesn’t run away.”

And he pushed past us out the doors, lugging his hockey gear behind him. “Run away?” Ryan said, just as I said, “What the hell?”

“Do you think…” Ryan started. “Do you think he knows her?”

“Holy shit, he couldn’t be Chase Chase, could he?”

“Chase Chase?” Ryan repeated. “Not ringing any bells.”

“You know,” I said, ruffling my hair uncomfortably, “the guy who works with her at the fucking Baskin Robin’s. The guy she hates.”

“Calm down, Adam. If it’s the same guy, she doesn’t hate him. She thinks she hates him because she doesn’t like how he makes her feel about him. Katie’s the walking cliché, we know that. It’ll be great. And he so obviously loves her, so. I mean, really, what could possibly go wrong?”

XoXoX

“You did what exactly?” Katie shrieked.

“We set you up on a blind date for your birthday present,” I explained as Ryan pinned Katie to her chair so she couldn’t kill me.

“But I—I don’t… what if…” Katie looked close to tears.

“Hey, hey, Kay,” Ryan said soothingly, stroking her hair, “it’s okay. He’s cute, I promise. He’s cute, isn’t he Adam?”

“Yes, Katie, he is very cute. And he plays hockey. And his grade point average is three-point-eight-three-three.”

“That’s, what…” Katie calculated in her head. “Five A’s and a C, no AP classes? I can deal with that, I guess…what’s his name?”

“Chase,” Ryan said, feigning coolness, like Katie mightn’t throw him against the wall.

“Chase. Okay. Hot Chase, plays hockey…” she mumbled something that sounded like, “How many could there be in one city…?”

Well, we found out exactly how many hot hockey players named Chase there were in this city. One. Because when Ryan, Katie and I walked into the Chili’s, she stopped dead in the doorway. “You’re shitting me,” she said.

“No shitting here, dearest,” I said affectionately. “Go say hi.”

“Chase,” she said, barely contained fury surfacing under her cool demeanor. “I take it you’re my date.”

Chase nodded, his eyes flicking back and forth between me and Ryan and Katie. They finally rested on her, taking in her silvery shirt and rose necklace. I wasn’t one to notice things like this, but I could tell Chase was also examining her hips in her skinny jeans. And let me tell you, Katie had some damn nice hips. “I’m sorry,” he told her.

Her harsh expression broke slightly. No matter how much she liked or disliked Chase, I noticed, she was still a female, and therefore very prone to giving in if apologized to enough. “It’s… I mean, I didn’t know you liked me.”

“Katie,” he said in all seriousness, “what’s not to like?”

Ryan and I “aw”ed quietly. Katie and Chase didn’t even notice. “So I guess our work here is done,” Ryan whispered to me.

“Guess so.” I turned back to the interesting new couple and said, “Hey, Kates? Me and Ry are going to head out. Happy birthday. Later, Chase.”

They nodded and Ryan and I backed out of the restaurant, making a run for Ryan’s car before Katie could change her mind. Ryan laughed, looking almost exhilarated as he strapped himself into the driver’s seat. Ryan got excited over the tiniest things sometimes. It was actually kind of cute.

Not that I liked Ryan or anything.

We drove away, and Ryan said, “Hey, you wanna come to my house? We could, you know, watch movies and shit.”

Subtle, Ry, I thought. But I didn’t care that much—that is to say, I didn’t care in a bad way. “Sure,” I said.

It was almost sad, in a way, that such an amazing person like Ryan was wasted by being gay. Not that he’d told me he was. But I knew, all the same. But I mean, he should be able to pass his amazing-Ryan-ness genes on, because if everyone in the world was like Ryan, everyone would be happy. No one would fight, or be sad, because that’s how Ryan is. He’s only sad when people make him that way. But if everyone was like him, no one would make anyone else sad. It was a little too philosophical for my brain to handle right then, and as we pulled up into Ryan’s driveway, I called Charlotte. “Hey, mom,” I said. “Can I stay over at Ryan’s?”

“No sex,” Charlotte said blandly.

“I’m not… for god’s sakes, ma.”

She laughed. “Alright, then, Addie, have a good time.”

“Bye, mom.”

“Bye, Adam.”

I hung up. “What’d she say?” Ryan asked as we made for the front door.

“She told me not to have sex with you.”

Ryan’s pale face flushed in the light of the streetlamps. “Oh.”

“I know.” But I didn’t know. Did he mean “oh, that’s ridiculous of Charlotte”… or did he mean “oh, that sucks, Ad, ’cause I was gonna fuck your brains out”? And it was just a little bit scary that I didn’t know which kind of “oh” I wanted it to be at all.

“Well, anyhow…” We’d gone further into the house, and Ryan dropped to his knees at their DVD cabinet. “What do you want to watch?”

“Mm… Shutter.”

“Fuck, no. I remember that one, Ad. I’m not watching it.”

“Only ’cause you’re a wimp.” I stood behind him and rested my hand on the top of his head. “It’s okay, Ry. If you get scared, you can hold my hand.”

Ryan looked up at me, giving me the Ryan Look. “Flirt.”

“Only with you.”

He laughed and turned back to his DVDs. “Okay, fine, we’ll watch your fucking Japanese ghost movie.”

“You’re only giving in because I offered to hold your hand,” I accused.

He just continued to laugh at me. “Don’t flatter yourself, Addie.”

I rolled my eyes, sighing inwardly. Maybe I was just flattering myself. I mean, I wasn’t completely naïve; obviously Ryan cared about me—we’d been best friends since… ever. But I thought, once in awhile, that maybe he cared about me in more than just a friendly way. And it was just a little scary to find that I was actually wishing it to be that way. “Come on,” I finally said, sitting on his couch as he inserted the disc. “Hey, where are your parents?”

Ryan shrugged. “Out.”

“I see.”

“Hey, what d’you expect? They’re party people, after all…” Ryan went to the wall to turn off the lights. “I’m glad you’re here, though,” he said, sitting beside me. “It’d suck to be alone.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It would.”

The movie started normally enough. But by the time they made it to Japan, Ryan was sitting directly next to me, ducking his head behind my back as Jane’s car swerved in the darkness, crashing because of the strange girl in the middle of the road. “Fuck shit,” he was whispering. “Holy shit holy shit holy shit.” I chuckled quietly, keeping my eyes on the screen. Ryan settled back into the couch as the daylight returned to the characters. In the house on the television, Ben rubbed his neck and shoulder, hissing slightly at the pain. “Shit shit shit!” Ryan muttered, remembering what that meant from the end of the movie. “It’s almost creepier when you know what happens later…” he whispered, pulling his knees to his chest. “Shit.”

I rolled my eyes. “Calm down, Ry, it’s just a movie.”

“Yeah, but the character’s name is Megumi… and the actress’s name is Megumi… do you think she has nightmares about herself?”

“Oh frickin’ take a chill pill,” I said kindly, nudging him with my shoulder. “You know I’ll protect you from the cute little dead Asian ladies.”

“There is something mildly wrong with that sentence,” Ryan decided, his eyes glued to the screen. “Shh, she’s gonna flip the photos. Shit! Ohmygod!” Ryan squeezed his eyes shut as Jane flipped the automatic camera’s photographs in succession, showing the eerie process of Megumi crawling across the floor, reaching out her hand. I looked over at Ryan, who had actual tears in his eyes. This wasn’t strange at all, though. He wasn’t crying. Whenever Ryan got really freaked out, his eyes would water— it was just one of those things that happened to him.

I leaned my arm against his. “It’s okay, Ry, it’s just a movie.”

“You said that,” Ryan frowned. “Why’d I let you talk me into this, again?”

“I promised I’d hold your hand if you got scared.”

Ryan rolled his eyes, his face flushing in the flicking light from the television. “That was so not why I agreed, you bi-curious whore.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” I asked.

“Because it’s what you do. You flirt with girls like it’s your job, but then you come back and act like you like guys. It’s pretty damn confusing, Adam. And we’re kind of supposed to be friends. So I figure you’d tell me what the hell’s running through your brain once in awhile.”

I looked at him, angling my head upward slightly to face his taller form. “Well, I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure.”

“No.”

“You couldn’t tell me if you were gay or straight or whatever. You just don’t know.”

“That would be correct.”

“This is stupid.” He said. “Let’s just watch the fucking movie.”

“You’re the one who brought it up!” I wanted to shout. But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to make Ryan angrier than he already was.

The thing was, I hadn’t been very truthful. I knew I was gay. I just… Oh, I was stupid. I didn’t want to tell Ryan because I didn’t want things to change. And things would change if he knew that I liked him. I liked being with him because he was my best friend. But it didn’t hurt that he was maybe the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, with his dark brown hair, often hanging in his honey-colored eyes. His pale baby-face with his little smirks and his Looks. His long, thin fingers that moved faster and sharper than lightning across his guitar. And I couldn’t help but wonder, sometimes, if maybe I was in love with him. It would be easy to fall in love with Ryan without noticing it; it could happen to anyone, really.

That was just who he was. You might love him forever and not notice it when it happened, because loving Ryan was maybe the most natural thing in the world. I looked back at him. He was watching the movie, that dork.

Remember how I mentioned that sometimes I felt like Ryan liked me? Well, it didn’t feel that way now. In fact, it felt an awful lot like he was mad at me. Which would be stupid of him, because the only reason he would be mad at me was because I wouldn’t tell him that I was gay, and that would mean that he cared whether or not I was gay, which would imply that he liked me. So really. Either way I thought about it, I came out with the same conclusion.

Also, he hadn’t moved away from me since I’d rested my arm against his about fifteen minutes ago.

As onscreen Jane reached her hand out to turn Megumi’s chair around, Ryan started shivering lightly. I looked at him, then back at the screen. I felt him jump horribly, clinging to my arm as the Japanese corpse’s head fell backwards. “Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.” Ryan whispered. I smiled. I guessed that meant I was forgiven. “That is soooo gross.” Ryan shook his head fervently, his hair flying around with his motion. “Ugh. When I kill myself, remind me not to use potassium cyanide, okay?”

“You’re not killing yourself,” I chided. “And how’d you know it was cyanide, anyhow?”

“Brown bottles,” Ryan murmured. “The brown bottles in the—shit!” He hugged my arm again, burying his face in my shoulder. That little flirt. And he got angry with me for giving him mixed signals.

By the time the movie ended, Ryan was shaking like a little bunny rabbit, and his eyes were watering a lot. “I never,” he stressed, standing up and turning the channel to Barney and Friends, “ever want to see that movie ever again.”

“That’s what you said the first time we watched it.”

“And I meant it!”

“Aw, come on, Ry, you didn’t enjoy that just a little?”

A little smile played at his lips. “Maybe a little.” He yawned.

“You wanna go to sleep?”

“Nuh-uh,” he murmured.

I shook my head. “How is it you can be an energetic little psycho one second and the next you’re falling asleep standing up?”

Ryan grinned mischievously. “Maybe I just want to get you into my bed.” And he flounced off down the hall towards his room, leaving me with my mouth hanging open and my eyebrows making contact with my hairline.

Ryan was not the one who initiated flirting. EVER. I mean, if I started messing around with him, he might mess around back, but he never started it. This was interesting. Very interesting.

When I got to his room, he was already sitting on the end of his bed, his legs curled under his bottom, looking a little too adorable in his white wife-beater and blue boxers. He bounced up in a Friedrich-in-the-Sound-of-Music kind of way as I walked in, saying, “Brush your teeth, fool!”

“You’re so strange,” I told him, laughing as I pulled off my shoes.

Thing about Ryan’s bed was that it was the fucking hugest bed in the world. Honestly, I think the perimeter of his bed was bigger than the perimeter of my bedroom. Whenever I stayed over at his house, we’d just sleep in his bed together—Hey, we totally were not gay for each other our whole lives—and we’d wake up, still on far sides of the bed from each other. I thought maybe five grown men could sleep in Ryan’s bed together and never bump into each other once all night. Unless they really wanted to.

Ryan crawled under his covers, scooting so that he was leaning against the far wall, looking at me. “I mean this in the least sexual way possible, Ad, but take your freaking clothes off. I don’t want your dirt in my bed, thanks.”

“But Ryan,” I said innocently, “the more clothes I take off, the dirtier I get.”

“You are disgusting,” he informed me, fiddling with the edges of his blanket. Yeah, the dork slept with a blanket, ahaha, no. It was another thing that made Ryan Ryan. He was basically like a little kid in some aspects: afraid of the dark, the blanket—his body, too, was slender and his face young-looking. He was taller than me by maybe five inches, but people never noticed this because he still looked like a baby. But a cute baby. A really, really cute baby who was sitting in his fucking enormous bed in his underwear, waiting for me, and—shit. I wasn’t supposed to be thinking like that. But my god.

I pulled off my shirt and jeans and flipped the light switch, going to the bed. “Here,” Ryan said, shifting the covers towards me.

My first thought was that he should get a bigger bedspread, because his barely covered the large mattress. But then I said, “Ry, take the fuckin’ covers, it’s your bed.”

“I’m not cold,” he insisted, reaching over me to tuck the edge of the sheets around me. I felt my stomach drop as his bare arm brushed my bare chest. I swallowed. I was so not supposed to be thinking this way about Ryan. At all.

He didn’t seem to notice anything, though, because he moved back to the far side of the bed, laid on his back and whispered, “Night, Adam.”

I, too, laid on my back and looked at the little glow-in-the-dark stars that had been on his ceiling since we were four. “Night, Ry.”

And soon, I could hear Ryan’s light little snores sounding around me. I turn on my side to look at him. People used to tell me that when you’re asleep, you look younger, prettier. Ryan didn’t. He looked exactly the same as he always did—young and pretty. I reached out and ran my fingers through his dark, shaggy hair. And I finally admitted to myself that I did love Ryan. I was done with wondering, I was done with playing mind games and fooling around. This was serious. And it was the truth. I loved him.

And that was why I couldn’t stay there. You can’t sleep in the same bed as the guy you love when you don’t know if he loves you back. I slid out of the bed and was almost to the door when I heard Ryan sit up. “Adam?” he mumbled sleepily. “Go to sleep, Adam.”

“I can’t.” I said, frightening myself with the way my voice shook in those two little words.

“Adam,” he said my name again, this time with a Ryan Reprimand behind the tone. “Come back to the bed, Adam.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck, Adam.”

Why on earth did he have to keep saying my name? My name called in Ryan’s tenor tone was like a jackhammer to the concrete of my willpower. It broke me down further each time it was spoken. “I can’t sleep,” I lied.

“Then just lie down. Don’t leave me alone.”

He had to be shitting with me. I knew Ryan was afraid of the dark, but he’d never been this afraid. Maybe it was because he would be alone in his house once I left—Ryan really didn’t like being alone. I sighed. “Fine, you big wimp.”

I heard him chuckle as I climbed back into the bed. He laid back down, more than a foot and a half of empty bed between us. Eventually, I just faked sleep, hoping that maybe if I looked like I was asleep, I could feel like I was asleep, and would actually end up falling asleep. “Adam, you awake?”

Whenever someone asks you that question, I have learned that it is best, sometimes, not to respond. If they wanted to say something to you, it could be said at another time. If not… well, then. That was what was interesting. So I continued lying there, feigning sleep, as I heard Ryan move closer to me. He cupped my cheek in his hand, and I resisted the urge to jump up screaming, “I knew it!” because it would probably scare the shit out of him. And that wasn’t what I wanted. So I stayed still, breathing deeply. Breathing in the scent of Ryan.

His long, thin fingers stroked my cheekbone, ran through my hair. I opened my eyes partially to see him leaning on one elbow, looking at me intently. Then, abruptly, he rolled over, muttering, “Stupid.”

It was not stupid. It was right. And he knew it. When he touched me, when—GOD!—Ryan touched me, didn’t he feel the same sense of belonging that I did? It seemed almost impossible for one person to feel that overwhelming emotion when the other didn’t. That’s what I always thought, anyway. That you couldn’t truly be in love with someone until they loved you back. It was, I figured, one of the ways things were.

I did fall asleep, and so did Ryan, because when I next opened my eyes, partial light was coming in through the blinds and Ryan was snoring lightly next to me. He, of course, had all the covers, because no matter what he’d told me last night, he was a skinny little boy, and he got cold in the middle of the night just like everyone else. His honey eyes blinked awake and he saw me watching him. “Morning,” he yawned. Then he saw that he had the sheets. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry. You cold? Of course you’re cold, it’s winter. Shit.” He reached over to tuck the first sheet around me, then the blanket, then the comforter. When his arm reached to my other side to tuck the fuzzy blanket that lay on top of his comforter around me, I seized his wrist and pulled him down on top of me, forcing his lips to mine.

He gave in instantly. His eyes slammed shut and he crawled over me so that his hands were pressed to the mattress on either side of my head and his knees on either side of my torso. He pressed his lips so forcefully against mine, now, that I was almost afraid we’d be glued like that forever. He bit my lip lightly, and my breath hitched inside my throat. He pushed his tongue inside my mouth, and I fought back with mine. I’d always imagined what kissing Ryan would be like. I didn’t know why I’d ever labored under the impression that he would be quiet and gentle, like everything else he did. Because, oh, Ryan was far from gentle. He practically attacked my face, you know.

When he finally pulled away, rolling onto his back beside me, we were both breathing like we’d been running. “Sorry.” Ryan whispered. “Shouldn’t’ve done that.”

“Honestly, Ry?” I said, laughing a little, “I think that was the best thing you could’ve done.”

He turned over to look at me. He was giving me the Ryan Look. “Do you know,” he said, suddenly angry, “how much it sucks to be around you when I can’t even touch you? And all you do is tease me and look at girls and act like I’m a little kid. I’m not a little kid, Adam! I’m older than you by two days, if you’ll remember! I mean, just ’cause I have this stupid blanket and I’m scared of stupid things like thriller movies and the dark, that doesn’t make me any younger than you. And my stupid face! I hate how I look, I look like I’m about twelve. But I’m not twelve, Adam, I’m seventeen, same as you.”

“Ryan, I—”

“And then you were gonna leave last night…” Ryan shook his head. “I didn’t want you to leave. You wouldn’t have left me, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t’ve.”

“Well, at least you’ve got one thing straight.” He then laughed. “But that’s apparently the only thing you’ve got straight.”

I grinned at him, glad he was done with his rant. “Yeah, okay, make fun of the gay kid. He’s in your bed.”

Ryan smiled. “Sorry about the rant.”

“It’s okay. And you know, I actually do know how much it sucks being around someone and not being able to touch them. That’s how I felt when I was around you.”

He gave me this little look, this half-disbelieving, half-happy look that made my heart smile and made my arms pull him to me. He snuggled against my chest, and I smoothed his hair. “I love you, you know,” he mumbled.

“I know. I love you too.”

“I know.” I felt him smile against my chest. “Hey, how do you think Katie’s date with Chase went?”

“God, that seems like eternities ago.”

“It was.” Ryan agreed. “Hey, are we supposed to tell our parents about this? Us? Whatever it is?”

I thought. “I think we should have a few more sleepovers. Then tell them.”

Ryan smiled. “Works for me.”

A/N: I may have out-gayed myself this time. But it was cute, was it not? I like them, don’t you? I mean, sheesh. What’s not to like? They’re completely unrealistic little babies, but they’re my completely unrealistic little babies. Review, please, and let me know what you think.