He stopped walking and turned to face me.
“And you?” he added. “You trust your instincts?”
“I trust evidence,” I said. “Instinct comes after.”
He stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the heat from him.
“Good,” he said. “I’m bad at pretending.”
So was I.
When he kissed me, it wasn’t tentative. It wasn’t rushed. It was precise, like he knew exactly where he wanted to go and wasn’t afraid to take the line.
4
THE FIRST TURN
The physical attractionwas immediate and overwhelming, but we took our time with it. First kisses stolen between library stacks. Long walks around campus that ended with us pressed against each other in shadowy doorways. The night he came back to my tiny apartment and we spent hours just touching each other, learning the geography of want and response.
“Waldo,” he whispered against my neck one evening in early February, and I tensed.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Call me that.”
He pulled back to look at me. “Why not? It’s your name, isn’t it?”
I’d never told anyone the truth about my name. Not friends, not roommates, certainly not guys I’d dated. But there was something about the way Jonathan was looking at me that made the truth spill out.
“It is. But kids used to make fun of me. ‘Where’s Waldo?’ Every day, from kindergarten through high school.” I shrugged, trying to make it sound casual. “I go by Wally now.”
“That’s terrible,” Jonathan said, and he sounded genuinely upset on my behalf. “Kids are cruel.”
“It made me very aware of how easy it is to be singled out.”
Jonathan nodded once. “Yeah. People decide who you are before you open your mouth. But Waldo’s a good name,” he said thoughtfully. “Strong. Uncommon. I’m going to call you Waldo, if that’s okay. I like the idea of knowing something about you that other people don’t.”
The space between us seemed to contract. Jonathan reached up, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw with a gentleness that made my breath catch.
“Waldo,” he whispered, my name a question and a prayer at the same time.
I answered by kissing him, soft and tentative at first, then deeper as he responded. His hands found the hem of my shirt, and I felt the warm press of his palms against my skin.
“Are you sure?” he asked, pulling back to meet my eyes. There was vulnerability there, hope mixed with uncertainty. This wasn’t just physical desire; this was Jonathan offering me something precious, asking if I wanted to take this step with him.
“I’m sure,” I said.
We moved to my narrow bed with nervous reverence, fumbling with buttons and zippers, laughing softly when his elbow caught in his sweater. The laughter helped. It reminded us that we were still us, still the boys who’d spent hours talking about everything and nothing.
But when our skin finally met, the laughter thinned into silence. I felt it in the way his breath caught, in the careful weight of his hands like he was afraid to rush something fragile. Nothing about it felt casual. Every touch carried intention.
Jonathan traced my collarbone with his fingertips, studying my face with an intensity that made it hard to look away. “I’ve wanted this since the first time I saw you,” he said.
“It took me an extra minute,” I told him. “But it was worth the wait.”
We were awkward at first. Elbows knocking, sheets tangling. But we slowed down and figured it out. We paid attention. The room was small and warm, and the outside world shrank to the sound of our breathing and the steady rhythm of learning what the other liked.
