“Okay.” Thomas sounded hoarse. “I don’t know… I mean, I kind of know, but I don’t…”
“I don’t have crushes,” Andrew said. “I don’t want—I don’t think about… about… sleeping with people. I don’t want it. With anyone.” He was blinking fast. He didn’t know why. “Sometimes it’s different for other asexual people. But for me it’s… this.”
“You don’t like boys.” Thomas’s voice sounded stripped.
“That’s not what I said.”
Thomas turned in a jagged circle, hands in his hair again as he paced to the stairs and back. Andrew could almost feel the heat churning from Thomas’s spinning mind.
“I like you,” Andrew said, his mouth dry. “But not… not how you need.”
Thomas stopped sharply. “Wait, what are you assuming I need?”
“Don’t pretend.” Andrew’s skin felt too tight. “You would want… you w-would want to sleep with me. Someday.” He couldn’t look at him.
“Well, obviously? Andrew, you’re beautiful. Of course I… Itold you. I am in ruins for you. I’d give you anything.”
Andrew was going to cry. This was worse than anything, worse than the monsters sinking teeth into his skin.
He wanted to say,You are my everything, too.
He wanted to say,I don’t exist without you.
He wanted to say,Kiss me.
But he had to step back, because he couldn’t be what Thomas wanted, and for that he was going to lose him completely.
This was why they should have left it. Been whatever they were without words. He knew there was nothing wrong with intimate, platonic affection—but for him, under all his rotted and tremulous layers, there was nothing platonic about what he felt for Thomas. Andrew loved this boy so deep and whole and obsessively that he couldn’t breathe, and the weight of it terrified him.
“I can’t.” Andrew tucked his shaking hands behind his back.
“I’m not saying right now.” Thomas jerked at his tie until it loosened, and he looked everywhere but at Andrew. “I know you’re anxious. I’d never pressure—”
“It’s notanxiety. It’s… I can’t. I won’t. I—Just forget it, okay?” The notebook slipped from his shaking fingers and thwapped on the path between them. Andrew’s hands shook as he scooped it up. “What about Dove?”
It was a cruel thing to throw. He knew it as soon as Thomas’s face shuttered.
“I was never in love with Dove.” His voice came low.
“Did you two kiss?” Andrew said.
Say no.Say no.
But Thomas said nothing. He pulled at his bottom lip andthen suddenly dropped down to sit on the stairs again. He scrubbed at his hair, curls so damp they plastered his forehead.
“What else did you do together?” Andrew had stepped outside himself. “Is this why you fought? Last year after school ended? The big fight that made her cut you out.”
Thomas looked up, surprise warring with confusion. “Sort of, but it’s complicated.”
But Andrew took a step forward, and he sounded so terrible he knew his face must match. “How many times did you kiss?”
“When we kissed it felt wrong, it was… a mistake. We both agreed.” Thomas struggled to keep his mouth straight, but his eyes were far too bright, the agony there brutal to behold. “Why are you doing this?”
To protect myself. To keep you away.
Because I can’t stop.
“Do you even like me,” Andrew said, “or do you just miss Dove?”
