“What? You were in the way.”
He didn’t believe me.
Good.
Maybe he’d think about it. Maybe he’d think aboutme.
Back in the present.
Tonight is Jamie’s birthday.
He’s turning nineteen.
The house is loud with people, music, drinks, the usual chaos of college kids looking for excuses to touch each other. I should be downstairs—being the friendly, charming, “straight frat boy” everyone thinks I am.
But all I can think about is the fact that Jamie’s birthday means something else:
A perfect opportunity.
A conversation we’ve been avoiding.
A truth clawing at the walls between us.
He wants answers. I can tell.
And I’m done pretending I don’t want to give them.
Tonight, I’ll pull him aside.
Tonight, I’ll look him in the eyes and admit that something’s been wrong with me since that night—and that I don’t want it fixed.
But before that… I need to see him.
I need to see if he still glances at me with that question in his eyes—the one that begs,Was it you?
Spoiler alert:
It was.
And if Jamie asks me directly tonight, if he corners me and demands the truth…
I don’t think I’m going to lie.
Not anymore.
Not when the thing I want most is walking around this house, flushed and bright and just waiting for someone to tell him he’s just as desirable.
****
The party started slow, the house filling in waves—first a few of Jamie’s classmates, then friends from the arts program, then people who somehow always found their way into our house when music and alcohol were involved.
Jamie didn’t want a huge party. He never did. He always acted like celebrating himself was an inconvenience to everyone else.
It pissed me off how little he thought he deserved.
But it also…
made him stupidly cute.
