The apartment is quiet. Which is a good thing because that means there’s nobody here to witness whatever this feeling is that’s crawling up from my ribcage and settling behind my eyes.
I pull the covers up to my chin and stare at the ceiling. Outside, the sounds of a campus that refuses to sleep drift through my open window. Laughter from the quad—probably drunk summer school kids who haven’t learned that grass stains don’t come out of white shorts. The distant thrum of bass from a house party on Fraternity Row. Cicadas are doing their thing, loud and relentless, nature’s version of Gerard Gunnarson.
And underneath all of it, quieter but unmistakable, a couple walking beneath my window. I can’t see them, but I can hear them. Her laugh, bright and easy. His voice, low and teasing. The scuff of their shoes slowing, then stopping. A beat of silence that I know—I know—is a kiss.
I roll onto my side and press my face into the pillow. The couple moves on, their footsteps fading into the warm June night, replaced by another wave of distant laughter, another reminder that the world outside this room is full of people who have found their person.
Gerard has Elliot. The human golden retriever and the dry-witted librarian who tames him with a single raised eyebrow. I watched them tonight at The Grotto—Gerard’s arm slung around Elliot’s shoulders, Elliot pretending to be annoyed while his thumb traced circles on Gerard’s knee under the table. They fit. Not perfectly, not without friction, but in that messy, real way that makes you believe the universe occasionally gets it right.
Drew has Jackson. The sex king and the quarterback. I’ve documented their relationship from the beginning, cataloged every stolen glance and loaded silence, and even I didn’t predict how seamlessly they’d click once they stopped fighting it.
And Oliver and Ryan. They don’t have each other yet. Not officially, or in any way either of them would admit to. But I watched Oliver Jacoby’s entire world narrow to the boy beside him. I watched Ryan Abrams forget to be afraid. I watched two cherry colas clink together over a promise disguised as a toast, and I thought: There it is. The beginning of something that’s going to wreck me to write about.
Because itwillwreck me. That’s the part I don’t put in the blog.
I’m happy for them. All of them. Genuinely, sickeningly, against-my-brand happy. I root for these idiots with a ferocity that would horrify my readership if they knew the full extent of it. Every post I write is laced with sarcasm and snark because that’s the Ice Queen’s currency. But underneath the performance, I’m a nobody lying in bed at two in the morning, listening to summer happen without me.
The jealousy is new. Or maybe it isn’t new—maybe it’s been there all along, buried under layers of wit and detachment, and tonight it finally clawed its way to the surface. Watching Oliver offer Ryan his hand on that dance floor. The simplicity of the gesture. The enormity of what it meant.
I want that.
The thought arrives without permission, raw and unvarnished, and I don’t have a quippy comeback ready to neutralize the ache.
I want someone to offer me their hand. I want someone to look at me like I’m the most interesting thing in any room, like my laugh is a prize worth earning. I want someone to text me first, to save mea seat, to show up at my door for no reason other than wanting to be near me.
I want someone to know my real name.
The Ice Queen is a character. A persona I built freshman year when I started the blog with equal parts armor and entertainment. She’s sharp, untouchable, all-seeing. She doesn’t need anyone. She thrives on observation, on distance, on the safety of narrating other people’s love stories instead of living her own.
I think about what it would be like to have someone. Not in the abstract, fantasy way I’ve imagined before—candlelit dinners and dramatic declarations. I mean the mundane stuff. Someone to argue with about what to watch on Netflix. Someone whose hoodie ends up in my laundry. Someone who reaches for my hand under the table like it’s muscle memory.
Someone who reads my blog, figures out it’s me, and shows up anyway.
My eyes are burning. That’s annoying. The Ice Queen doesn’t cry. The Ice Queen makes other people cry with her devastating commentary and flawless investigative journalism. The Ice Queen is above this. She’s aboveallof this.
A tear slides down my cheek and disappears into my pillow.
Okay. So maybe she’s not above it all.
The summer stretches ahead of me—long, hot, full of material. Oliver and Ryan’s story is just beginning, and it’s going to be beautiful and painful and everything my readers want. I’ll document every glance, every almost-touch, every moment where one of them is brave enough to close the distance. And then I’ll close my laptop, climb into this bed, and drown in sorrow.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and roll onto my other side, facing the window. The curtains shift in the breeze, and moonlight spills across my floor in a pale rectangle. Somewhere out there, Oliver is probably lying awake too, thinking about hazel eyes and cherry colas. Ryan is probably staring at his ceiling, replaying every moment where Oliver’s thigh pressed against his in that booth.Gerard is probably doing something unspeakable with Elliot while calling him Principal Montgomery.
I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders and close my eyes. The cicadas swell outside, and I let them sing me toward something that isn’t quite sleep but isn’t quite wakefulness either. That liminal space where the armor comes off, and the wanting is allowed to exist without commentary.
21
OLIVER
I’ve scrubbed the countertop seventeen times, and it still doesn’t feel clean enough. Nothing does, yet I bet if you asked any of my teammates, they’d say the Hockey House kitchen has never looked this good.
“Dude.” Drew’s voice floats in from the doorway. “You’re aware the lunar eclipse is happeningoutside, right?”
I don’t stop scrubbing. “Jackson is bringing Ryan here, and then we’re going to head out.”
“And what? You think he’s going to stop and inspect the grout?”
“He might.”
