My heart pounded. I reached out and took his hand before I could stop myself. “Then don’t,” I said. “Not with me.”
His fingers tightened around mine. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t heavy anymore. We were standing on the edge of something real, and for once, I almost felt brave enough to fall.
“If we stop hiding,” he said, “everything changes.”
“I know.”
“Are you sure?”
I turned fully toward him. “No.”
He laughed, quiet and wrecked. “God, I hate how honest you are sometimes.”
“I hate how much I want to kiss you right now.”
His breath caught. “Then do it.”
And I never could resist a dare.
That night, after he’d fallen asleep in my bed, curled up as if he’d always belonged there, I sat at my desk and opened my laptop. My fingers hovered over the keys before I finally typed:
How do you tell your best friend he’s your entire future when you don’t even know who you are?
I didn’t hit enter. I just stared at the blinking cursor. Waiting for an answer that didn’t come.
CHAPTER 35
DARE
I’ve learned to see myself in his reflection, because that’s the best version of me.
I snaggedone of the sketch flyers on my way past the bulletin board outside the library. My hand moved before I could think about it, like it had been waiting for an excuse.
It was a comic-style drawing of two soccer players colliding midair, the ball suspended between them. Every line was sharp, deliberate, too good for some random flyer. Even the creases in their jerseys looked alive. I tilted it toward the sunlight filtering through the hallway window, tracing the ink with my eyes. “Damn,” I muttered under my breath.
I already knew who drew it. He didn’t have to sign his name; it was written in every detail.
Back in my room, I pinned it above my desk, right next to the one of me with the cracked shield, the one Inever asked him to draw but hadn’t been able to stop looking at since I found it. His work always ended up here, whether I meant to collect it or not.
Every sketch was a version of us—a different angle, a different truth. And I couldn’t stop myself from chasing them, from hoarding every glimpse into Tru’s head.
Through his eyes, I wasn’t the guy who screwed up, or lashed out, or doubted every decision he made. I was someone worth drawing. Someone who didn’t break as easily as he felt.
Tru made me want to be that guy. Made me wonder if I could be.
I touched the edge of the drawing, tracing the lines of someone I barely recognized. “Who the hell is that?” I murmured. And for a second, I almost believed he could be real.
I told myself I’d stop after this one, but I knew I was lying. Tomorrow, if another sketch showed up, I’d take that too. And the next. Until my whole wall was nothing but Tru’s versions of me. All the people I wished I were.
I was still staring at the flyer when a fist thumped against my door.
“Yo, Dare! You coming to practice, or just planning to get benched?”
I jolted, instinctively tucking the flyer under a stack of books. Not to hide it, just to keep it from anyone else’s hands. It wasn’t for them. It was for me.
I grabbed my cleats and headed out, trying to convince myself my heart wasn’t still hammering over a goddamn drawing.
Later that week, Tru and I headed across town together.
