“Yeah. He gave me a lot of grief about not defining things with you. About how I’m wasting time ‘seeing where things go’ instead of just asking you to be my boyfriend.”
There. I said it.Boyfriend.I’ve been dancing around it for weeks, too scared to say it out loud, too worried about pushing too fast. But Kyle was right. In fact. everyone’s been right, and I’ve been an idiot.
Ryan is very still beside me. “Boyfriend?”
“Yeah.” I turn to face him, taking in the wide eyes and parted lips and the way his chest is rising and falling just a little too fast. “That’s what I want, Ryan. I want to be your boyfriend. I want to hold your hand in public, take you on real dates, and introduce you to people as the guy I’m with. Not the guy I’m ‘seeing where things go’ with. And I know you’ve never done this before. I know it’s scary, new, and probably overwhelming. But I’ve never felt this way about anyone, and I’m tired of pretending I’m okaywith ambiguity when what I really want is you. All of you. Officially.”
I’m breathing hard by the time I finish, the words having tumbled out in a rush that I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried. My heart is hammering against my ribs, and my palms are sweating, and I’m pretty sure I’m about to either get the best news of my life or have my heart ripped out through my chest cavity.
Ryan reaches out, takes my hand, and threads his fingers through mine. “I came here tonight to tell you the same thing. Jackson even made me practice in the mirror before I left. He said I needed to use my words instead of hoping you’d read my mind.”
“So tell me.”
Ryan takes a deep breath. “Oliver, I’ve been falling for you since we were kids. Every moment we’ve spent together this summer has been the happiest of my life. When you kissed me on that Ferris wheel, something clicked into place that I didn’t even know was missing.” His grip on my hand tightens. “I want to be your boyfriend too. Badly enough that it terrifies me.”
The relief that crashes through me is so intense I actually laugh. It’s a breathless, disbelieving sound that echoes across the night. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Ryan’s smile is small but radiant. “I know I’m not experienced. I know I’m probably going to mess up a lot. But I’ve been told that’s just what relationships are. Two imperfect people trying to figure each other out.”
I lift our joined hands, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “So we’re really doing this, huh?”
Ryan’s answering smile could power the entire campus. “Yeah, we really are.”
I kiss him then, right there on the uncomfortable wrought-iron bench outside The Brew. It’s not our most romantic kiss—there are no stars, no Ferris wheels, no carefully planned picnics. But who the hell cares? We’ve finally stopped dancing aroundwhat we want.
When we break apart, Ryan laughs. “Jackson is going to be insufferable about this.”
“Drew and Gerard already are. Have been since the shorts incident.”
“Boyfriend,” he repeats after another couple of minutes of making out. “That’s me. I’m your boyfriend.”
“You’re my boyfriend.”
“Golly.”
I pull him closer, tucking him against my side, and we sit there until the streetlight finally flickers out and all we’re left with is the moonlight.
35
RYAN
Elvis Presley has been dead for nearly half a century, and he’s still the sexiest man in this room—which says a lot about the company I’m keeping.
Oliver’s bedroom is a disaster zone of hockey gear, tangled charger cables, and approximately seventeen half-empty water bottles arranged in no discernible pattern across every flat surface. We’re propped against his headboard, his laptop balanced on a pillow between us, watchingJailhouse Rockbecause Oliver made the mistake of admitting he’d never seen it, and I made the mistake of acting like this was a personal offense.
“He’s not even singing that well,” Oliver says, gesturing at the screen with a cheese puff. Orange dust coats his fingertips. “His hips are doing all the work.”
“His hips changed Western civilization.”
“That seems like a stretch.”
“There are academic papers written about what his hips have done for the world.”
“You’ve read academic papers about Elvis’s hips?”
“I’ve read academic papers about everything, Oliver. That’s who I am as a person.”
He grins, popping another cheese puff into his mouth, and I try very hard not to stare at the way his jaw works as he chews. We’ve been dating for eleven days. Eleven days of hand-holding and goodnight kisses. Of texting until two a.m. about nothing and everything. Eleven days of being Oliver Jacoby’s boyfriend, a title I still can’t think about without my stomach flipping around like Flubber.
