“Why didn’tyou?”
“Because it’s humiliating,” I say miserably. “To love someone who doesn’t love you back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually. It came up during our fight the other night.”
Leo’s eyes get big behind his glasses. “It did?”
“Yeah, because we kissed—”
“You did?”
I laugh, but it comes out bitterly. “The morning we found out he won. But it didn’t mean anything. To him, anyway. He was pretty clear about that.”
Leo reaches across the table and gives my hand a pat. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Would it make you feel any better if I listed some of the worst things about Teddy? I can do it chronologically or alphabetically. Your choice.”
“Thanks,” I say, giving him a watery smile. “That means a lot. But I don’t think it would help.”
He nods gravely. “It’s incurable, then?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Can I ask you a question?” he says, and I nod. “I know you can’t choose who you love, but…”
“What?”
“Well, how can you have so much faith in someone—especially someone who lets you down as much as Teddy—when you have so little faith in the world?”
I frown at him, and then without thinking I say, “How canyoube so superstitious about everything when nothing bad has ever happened to you?”
We blink at each other, both a little stunned. The jukebox switches over to a new song, and the waiter sets our plates down with a clatter, whisking off again without asking whether we still need anything, which is just as well, since it’s a question I have no idea how to answer right now. It could fill the room, what we still need right now. It could fill the city.
Neither of us touches our food.
“That’swhy,” Leo says eventually, his voice choked. “That’s why I’m so superstitious.Becausenothing bad has ever happened to me.”
“Leo…”
“I know you might find it hard to believe, but it’s totally nerve-racking, having everything in your life befine.Especially when you know it’s not supposed to be like that. I’ve had it so much easier than you or Teddy….” He pauses, tipping his head back so that all I can see is his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “It doesn’t seem right.”
“Hey,” I begin, but when he lowers his chin to look at me there’s something so bleak in his gaze that I stop again.
“Maybe it’d be different if you guys weren’t in my life,” he says. “Maybe it’d be easier to ignore all the terrible things that can happen. But I can’t. Because none of it’s happened tome,and that means I’m overdue. It means the bottom’s gonna drop out at some point. It just is.”
“That’s not necessarily true.”
“Think about it,” he continues. “My life’s been pretty smooth sailing. The hardest thing probably should’ve been coming out, but even that wasn’t as dramatic as you’d expect.”
I nod, remembering when he first told me. It was the summer before freshman year, though by then I’d already sort of guessed as much. We were eating ice cream in Lincoln Park, and I was talking about my blinding crush on Travis Reed, and he gave me a look of such genuine surprise that I lowered my spoon. “What?”
“I like him too,” he admitted, and we stared at each other a second, then both burst out laughing.
In the end it turned out Leo was more Travis’s type; not long after that, they had their first kiss in the school parking lot after the fall formal. And a couple months later Leo decided he was ready to come out to his parents too.
“You’ll be fine,” I told him as he paced in front of me that morning, rehearsing what he planned to say. “Your parents love you. And they’re the best people I know. Plus, they’re Democrats, which means they’re practically required to be on board, right?”
“Right,” he mumbled, though he didn’t sound convinced. Even with parents like his, there were no guarantees. But an hour later he returned with a dazed expression. And before I could even ask, he said with a look of immense relief, “It went…weirdly well.”
