"Just sit with it."
So I did. We sat there. The diner doing its diner thing—the waitress wiping down the counter, the bell over the door chiming, the smell of burnt bacon and old coffee that would always mean this booth. This friendship. Whatever was left of it.
"I was hiding. From wanting Liam. From all of it. And you were right there and instead of letting that show me what was possible, I tried to—"
"Take a shortcut," Ethan said.
"Yeah."
He nodded. Like he'd known that already but needed to hear me say it.
"If I'd just told you that night," I said. "If I'd walked in and saidI'm scared and I don't know what to do—"
"I would have made you tea." Something almost soft in his voice. "Put on a terrible movie. Let you cry on my floor."
The image hit me so hard my eyes burned.
"Instead I—"
"Yeah." He cut me off. Gently. "Instead you did."
The weight of it sat between us. A thing that couldn't be undone.
"It's not simple," Ethan said after a while. "Coming out. What the closet does to people." He turned his coffee cup in a slow circle. "I came out at fourteen to parents who bought me a cake. You're doing this with… Thomas Harrington. Those aren't the same."
"That doesn't excuse—"
"I know. But I can hold both things." He met my eyes. "You hurt me. And you were drowning. Both are true."
I nodded. My throat too tight for words.
"It's complicated," he said.
Then I said it. Not because Ethan needed to hear it—he already knew. Had known since freshman year, probably before. But because I needed to say it. Out loud. In my own voice. To someone who mattered.
"I'm gay."
Two words. Sitting in the air between us like something I'd finally set down after carrying it so long my arms had gone numb.
Ethan looked at me. And his expression wasn't surprise—how could it be? He'd watched me torture myself over Liam for a year. He'd known before I'd shown up at his door that night. He'd probably known before I did.
But something in his face shifted anyway. Relief, maybe. Or the easing of a weight he'd been carrying alongside me—the exhaustion of knowing someone's truth and waiting for them to catch up.
"There it is," he said.
My hands were shaking. I didn't hide them.
"I know it doesn't change what I did," I said. "But I needed you to hear me say it."
Ethan nodded slowly. "I hear you."
"We're not fixed," he said.
"I know."
"There's going to be days where I'm angry again."
"Okay."
