He grabbed his pillow, crossed the room in three steps, and kissed me against the desk.My laptop rattled.I didn’t care.
We developed protocols.Door locked during contact.No visible evidence—no marks, no borrowed clothes left in obvious places, no lingering looks that lasted longer than roommate-appropriate.
It was exhausting.It was exhilarating.It was like running a constant simulation in the back of my mind:if person enters, then separate; if text arrives, check sender before reacting; if proximity exceeds threshold, then recalibrate.
On Wednesday, Ryan knocked without warning.
Luke and I had been on his bed, my back against the wall, his hand on my knee, textbook open between us as plausible cover.The knock sent us apart like magnets reversed—me to my desk, him to the door, textbook sliding to the floor with a thud.
“Monk!”Ryan’s voice carried through the wood.“Lift in ten.Harper’s orders.”
“Coming,” Luke called back, voice steady.
I heard Ryan’s footsteps retreat.Luke turned to look at me, chest heaving.
“Close,” I said.
“Too close.”He ran a hand through his hair.“We need better protocols.”
“Agreed.”
He grabbed his gym bag, then paused at the door.Glanced back.The look on his face—half frustration, half something softer—made my chest tight.
“Later,” he said.
“Later.”
The door closed.Then it opened again, and Luke crossed the room to me and kissed me before heading out again.I exhaled and pressed my palms flat against the desk until my heartbeat normalized.
Finals week arrived like a freight train.
Luke’s accounting exam loomed on Thursday—twenty-five percent of his grade, the number that would determine whether seventy-two became seventy-three or whether everything collapsed.I watched the stress accumulate in his shoulders, in the way he stopped sleeping through the night, in the frequency of ignored calls from a contact labeled simply “Dad.”
We studied every evening.I drilled him on journal entries until the words lost meaning, untildebitandcreditbecame pure sound.He improved.The practice problems came faster, the errors less frequent.But the margin was razor-thin, and we both knew it.
“What if I choke?”he asked on Tuesday night, staring at a trial balance that had finally come out even.
“You won’t.”
“But if I do.”
I set down my pencil.“We find another path.But you won’t.”
He looked at me—really looked, the way he did when the goalie mask was off and there was nowhere to hide.“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve seen you block shots that defied physics.Because you memorized adjusting entries in two days when it should have taken you two weeks.Because—” I stopped myself.
“Because what?”
“Because I believe in your ability to perform under pressure.”
He was quiet for a moment.He leaned across the desk and kissed me, soft and quick, and went back to his practice problems.
I didn’t tell him what I’d almost said:Because I can’t imagine a version of this where you fail.
Thursday morning, I walked him to the business building.
We kept appropriate distance—two feet, hands in pockets, nothing that would register as unusual.But at the door, he paused.
