The frustrating part is that I know I’m attractive. That’s not arrogance; it’s observation. I have mirrors. I have eyes. I have a DM folder full of messages from guys who would crawl across broken glass for my attention. But the guys I actually want? The ones I’ve spent three years building friendships with, laughing with, watching terrible movies with at two in the morning while sharing a bag of Doritos? Those guys see right through me. Orrather, they see around me. Past me. Over me. Every direction exceptatme.
Once I’m done showering, I twist the faucet off and stand in the steam, water dripping from my body onto the bath mat.
The county fair changes things. It has to. Three days of proximity, adrenaline, and recklessness that only carnival lighting can produce. People make stupid decisions at fairs. They ride Ferris wheels with people they shouldn’t. They win stuffed bears for people they’re pretending not to like. They eat funnel cake off each other’s fingers and pretend it’s platonic.
I grab my towel, wrapping it around myself as I catch my reflection in the foggy mirror. I swipe a hand across the glass, clearing a streak, and study what I see. The body is good. The brain is better.
So what’s the problem? Why do these idiots look at me and see a sibling instead of someone who could absolutely ruin their lives in the best possible way?
Ithinkthe answer is proximity and familiarity. I’ve been around so long that I’ve become furniture. You don’t fantasize about your couch. You don’t take your bookshelf to dinner. I’ve made myself too comfortable, too available.
Too safe.
The Ice Queen would never make that mistake. She keeps people at arm’s length and doles out attention as though it’s rationed.
My phone buzzes on the dresser. I glance at it.
Picking you up in thirty. Better be ready, kid.
Kid.
I stare at the word until my vision blurs. Then I pick up the phone and send a smiley face, because that’s what the little sibling does. Smiles and never makes waves. But that has to end sooner rather than later. Summer is almost over.
First: I need to stop being available. If they text, I wait. If they invite, I hesitate. Scarcity creates value.
Second: I need to be seen with other people. Not other guys necessarily—though that wouldn’t hurt—but anyone who isn’t them.Break the pattern. Disrupt the assumption that I’ll always be there, perched on the periphery of their lives like a loyal lapdog.
Lastly—and this is the hard one—I need to stop hiding behind the Ice Queen.
25
RYAN
Morning light slants through the blinds, catching dust motes that drift lazily across my empty dorm room. Jackson’s bed is still made from yesterday. Last night, he texted a string of eggplant emojis followed by “don’t wait up,” and a photo of Drew’s leather jacket draped over a chair that I recognized as the one in the Hockey House living room. Which means I’m completely, utterly alone with nothing but my thoughts and the memory of what lies beneath Oliver’s shorts.
I roll onto my back, and my mind drifts back to that night atop the astronomy tower.
I’m really glad you let me come tonight.
Oliver’s voice echoes in my memory, and my abdomen clenches.
Since I was ten years old, Oliver Jacoby has lived in the locked room of my imagination. For over a decade, I’ve folded “admiration” into the shape of something harmless, creased “loneliness” along its edges until it resembled anything but desire, told myself that whatever I felt was just the desperate reaching of a boy who never stayed in one place long enough to belong.
But I can’t pretend anymore. I want him in ways that make my face heat and my body respond.
I shift in bed, and the sheet coils around my legs. I’m wearing briefs and nothing else. My hand drifts to my stomach without conscious permission. Resting there, feeling the rise and fall of my breathing as I think about Oliver’s eyes catching the moonlight, how they lingered on me with a focus that made me feel special.
This has to stop. I should drag myself out of bed, stand under freezing water until my teeth chatter, lose myself in the pages of a good book, or the soothing voice of David Attenborough. Anything to drown out thoughts of Oliver Jacoby.
My fingers trace lower, following the trail of fine hair that leads beneath my waistband. The touch is tentative at first, exploratory.
I think about Oliver’s hands, strong and sure, wrapped around mine with a confidence I’ve never possessed. Those hands have handled hockey sticks. They’ve lifted trophies. They’ve probably touched other bodies in ways I can only imagine.
The thought should make me jealous. It only makes me harder.
My palm presses against the growing bulge, and I let out a breath that’s almost a gasp. The pressure feels wonderful, and I rock my hips up before I can think better of it.
In my mind, the astronomy tower transforms. The eclipse is still happening overhead, the blood moon casting its red glow across the observation deck, but now Oliver isn’t holding my hand. He’s turning toward me, cupping my jaw, tilting my face toward his.
