Is it possible to choke on your tongue? Asking for a friend.
That friend is me.
I’m standing in the campus library and fritzing like a broken animatronic at Chuck E. Cheese, because Ryan Abrams has just walked through the double doors with Jackson. And he isn’t wearing his glasses.
Let me say that again for the people in the back.
Ryan. Abrams. No. Glasses.
My brain liquefies. Not gradually, not in stages, but in a full, instantaneous meltdown. Every coherent thought I’ve ever had evaporates into steam, replaced by a singular, all-consuming awareness that the boy I used to live next door to has become a man who could make me walk into traffic.
For as long as I’ve known Ryan, the only times I’ve seen him without glasses were specific, controlled situations. Late at night during sleepovers, when he’d set them on the nightstand and his face would go soft and unguarded in the dark. In the mornings after a shower, when he’d emerge from the bathroom squinting and fumbling, acting more like a baby deer discovering the world for the first time than a human being. And that onesummer at the Westbrook Community Pool, when I was teaching him to swim.
I remembered thinking, even then, that his face looked different without them.
But that was kid Ryan. Scrawny, pale, ribs-visible Ryan with his anchor-print swim trunks and his mid-calf socks.Thisis grown-up Ryan. And that guy is hot with a capital H. Capital O. Capital T. The whole goddamn word in neon letters fifty feet tall, blazing against the night sky, telling me that I am absolutely, irreversibly fucked.
His hazel eyes are wide and luminous in the library’s natural light, framed by lashes that are darker and longer than I ever realized. His cheekbones, usually bisected by his glasses, cut sharply and cleanly across his face. His nose, freed from the constant weight of frames, appears straighter and more defined. Even his jawline seems sharper. It’s as if the glasses were a disguise, and he’s ripped them off to reveal that he’s been Superman this entire time.
My body responds in kind—toes curling in my flip-flops, my cock stiffening against my thigh inside my khaki shorts. I have to shift my weight and angle my hips away from the group before someone notices that the team captain is pitching a tent in the library.
What is happening to me? This is Ryan. My childhood best friend. The kid who ironed—sorry,steamed—his socks. The kid who told me my “pedagogical methods leave much to be desired” while I was trying to teach him to float. I should not be having a cardiovascular event because he switched to contacts.
“Damn, Ryan!” Gerard is the first to break the silence. No surprise there—Gerard has never met a silence he didn’t want to murder. He bounds across the library’s entrance area, his blond hair flopping. “Where are the glasses? You look like a whole different person!”
A flush creeps up Ryan’s neck. “I got contacts.”
Nathan nods with the approving air of someone who knowsthings about eye care and gives Ryan an appraising look. I stifle the snarl that threatens to escape. “It suits you, man. Your bone structure’s really nice without the frames competing for attention.”
Drew leans against a bookshelf, arms crossed, and lets out a low whistle. “Ryan Abrams, you’ve been hidingthatface behind prescription lenses this whole time? Someone should press charges.”
“They’re just contacts,” Ryan mumbles, but the flush has spread to his cheeks now, painting them pink in a way that makes my stomach do deeply concerning acrobatics.
“It’s not just contacts,” Gerard insists, slinging an arm around Ryan’s shoulders. “It’s a transformation. A glow-up. A—what’s the word?”
“Metamorphosis,” Nathan supplies.
“That! You’ve metamorphosed, dude!”
Ryan’s eyes dart around the group, searching for an anchor that happens to be me. Buffering like a web page, mouth slightly open, zero words loading.
Say something, Oliver. Anything. You’re the captain. The big brother. The emotionally intelligent one who always knows what to say. Open your mouth and form a sentence that isn’t “I want to lick your cheekbones.”
“You—” My voice comes out as a pubescent squeak. I try to recover with a throat-clearing, which earns me a raised eyebrow from Drew. “You look good, bud.”
Nailed it. Casual. Breezy. A totally normal compliment from a totally normal friend.
Ryan’s flush deepens approximately three shades. “Thanks.”
The corner of his mouth twitches in that almost-smile I’ve been chasing since we were kids, and my cock jerksin response. I shove my hands into my pockets—partly to look casual, but mostly to create a barrier between my situation and the outside world—and try to reboot my higher brain functions.
Synapses fire. Neurons reconnect. The fog lifts enough for me to remember where we are and why.
The library. Summer penance for our naked pool adventure.
Drew’s eyes narrow.His gaze flicks from my face to my pocketed hands to my curled toes, and I watch the realization bloom across his face.Fuck.He’s totally going to hold this over my head for the rest of my life.
I shoot him a look that says, “If you say one word, I will end you.” He shoots me one back that says, “This is the best day of my life.”
