“His—” Ryan’s voice cracks on the single syllable. “Hiswhat?”
“Oh, yeah.” Jackson delivers this information nonchalantly. “It’s enormous. I’d wager it’s at least?—”
“Okay!” I lunge forward before Ryan’s soul fully exits his body. My hand finds the back of his neck, and I extract him from under Gerard’s arm with the practiced ease of someone who has been peeling people out of Gerard’s enthusiastic clutches for three years. “That’s enough of that. Ryan, Elliot said you’re with me. Let’s go.”
“But we were bonding!” Gerard protests.
“You were traumatizing him.” I steer Ryan away from the group, my palm still resting against the nape of his neck because removing it would require a level of self-discipline I don’t currently possess. His skin is impossibly soft there, and the fine hairs at his hairline brush against my fingertips in a way that sends a current straight down my spine.
I guide him toward the stairwell at the back of the library, the one marked ARCHIVES - BASEMENT LEVEL with a laminated sign that’s peeling at the corners. Behind us, I hear Gerard stage-whisper to Nathan, “He’ll come around. They always do.”
The stairwell is narrow, lit by a single fluorescent tube that flickers ominously. With each step down, my arms prickle with goosebumps, and Ryan rubs his palms together. Something tickles my nose, and a gray film coats my fingertip when I run it along the metal railing.
“Hey,” I say, keeping my voice low. “You okay?”
“I was just informed that Gerard Gunnarson is the owner of a massive erection. I’m…processing.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Jackson wasn’t exaggerating, but you won’t have to confront that reality today. Probably. Gerard keeps his pants on at least sixty percent of the time. Those are pretty decent odds.”
Ryan makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be a whimper. It’s hard to tell in the stairwell’s acoustics.
We reach the landing between floors, and I let my hand slide from his neck to his shoulder, turning him slightly so he’s facing me. The flickering light catches his features in strobing intervals—there, gone, there again—and each flash reminds me that this is the new Ryan. The one without the frames. “I really do like you without the glasses.”
The flush, which had been retreating, surges back with a vengeance. It blooms across his cheekbones and spreads to the tips of his ears, turning them a shade of pink that shouldn’t be as endearing as it is. His gaze drops to my chest—specifically, to the logo on my shirt—before snapping back up to my face.
“You said that already,” he murmurs. “Upstairs.”
“I said you looked good. This is me saying I like it. The contacts. Being able to see your whole face.” I tap my own cheekbone. “Nathan was right about the bone structure too.”
“Please stop talking about my bone structure.”
“Why? You have excellent bone structure. Very symmetrical. Astronomers should study it.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Sure it does. You study celestial bodies. I’m studying yours.”The words leave my mouth before my brain can flag them for review, and I watch Ryan’s expression cycle through confusion, realization, and mortification in rapid succession. My own face heats. “Your facial structure. I meant your facial—Christ.”
We lock eyes, frozen in mutual embarrassment while the cheap light above us pulses like a dying star.
“You’re usually smoother than this,” he says.
“I’m usually not standing in a stairwell complimenting my best friend’s face while he’s trying not to think about Gerard’s penis. It’s throwing me off my game.”
The almost-smile appears, there and gone in a heartbeat, but I catch it. I’ll always catch it.
“We should go,” Ryan says, tilting his head toward the stairs below us.
“After you, Captain Abrams.”
Something flickers in his eyes at the old nickname. A memory, maybe. Cardboard helmets and basement moonwalks. A boy who lifted him off the ground so he could touch the stars.
“Don’t call me that,” he says, but there’s no bite in it. If anything, his voice has gone soft in a way that makes my chest ache.
“Why not?”
“Because it makes me feel things I’m not equipped to handle this early in the morning.”
I watch him go—the straight line of his back, the neat part in his hair, the way his hand trails along the railing—and something slots into place inside me. Not a revelation, exactly. More like a confirmation. A truth I’ve been circling for years, getting closer with each orbit, and now I’m finally able to see it clearly.
