Noah sayingI’ll see you Monday?as though he actually wanted to.
Eli gripped the steering wheel tighter.
He’d been through breakups before. He’d been through slumps. He knew his heart was inclined to latch onto any sign of kindness, like ivy on a wall. He refused to read too much into a couple of flirty sentences and a nice smile.
Still…
It had been a long time since anyone had looked at him like that.
At the very least, he decided, it would be nice to finish a week where the most exciting thing in his life wasn’t a client email that read,We tried AI and it’s, like, close enough.
His apartment greeted him with silence.
He flicked on the entryway light and stood there, his breath fogging slightly in the chilled air. He’d turned the heat down for the trip, and now the place felt as warm and welcoming as a hotel lobby at midnight.
He dropped his backpack by the door and did a quick circuit. Mail sat on his doormat. His plants were all still barely alive—congratulations, boys. The couch was exactly as he’d left it, with the dented cushion where his ex used to sit, still stubbornly holding its shape.
He looked away.
In the bedroom, he yanked his duffel from under the bed and opened the closet. Packing for a month.
How much does a month weigh?
He decided on sweaters, flannels, jeans, a couple of shirts “nice enough if someone dies,” as his mother liked to say. He added underwear and socks until the bag felt respectably full.
Then he went to his desk and grabbed his current sketchbook, laptop, and charger, the tools of his trade.
He turned toward the door, then paused, and turned back to the closet.
At the very bottom, beneath a stack of old portfolios and some dust bunnies with tenure, sat a cardboard storage box. He knew what lay inside. He’d shoved it down there years ago, intending to “sort through it when I have emotional stability.”
Hestilldidn’t have emotional stability, but he pulled the box out anyway.
Inside sat a stack of old sketchbooks, their spines cracked and labels peeling: 9th grade, 10th, Summer before college. He picked one at random, a plain black book with the corners rounded from years of abuse, and flipped it open as he sat down on the floor.
The first few pages were harmless: scribbles of trees, classmates’ faces half-finished, a disgruntled attempt at drawing the school mascot. He turned another page. And another.
Then he stopped.
There, on the right-hand page, drawn in careful pencil strokes, was a face.
Seventeen, maybe. Older than him, back then. A strong jawline, floppy hair, an easy half-smile that hadn’t been in the reference photo because there had been no photo. Eli had drawn this one from memory, not to mention a lot of stolen glances, and maybe a little imagination.
He even remembered drawing it.
He’d been fifteen, sitting in the back of the gym during some pep rally or spirit assembly, pretending to work on “environmental concept art” while actually sketching the profile of one of the upperclassmen across the space from him. He hadn’t known his name. He’d barely dared to look.
But the boy had been every daydream Eli had entertained since realizing he was not, in fact, straight.
He’d gone home that night and drawn the boy again and again, until the lines felt right and the ache in his chest felt worse.
Now, in his quiet Boston bedroom, Eli stared down at the sketch as if it had just spoken. He recalled the line of his jaw, and the shape of his nose. He remembered staring at that mouth.
His heart tripped.
“No way,” he whispered.
He tilted the book toward the window light.
