“Mom and Dad — they’re not in Paris.”
“What?” I angled my body so that I could see him better. “But you said —”
“I lied.” Cole sighed, gathering himself. “I wanted a new start here, and I didn’t want to be — Okay, I guess I should back up. Mom grew up here, with Gram and Grandpa. But she did really well in school, and when she went off to Yale, she met my dad, who is — You know those families you read about in mystery novels? Old money, mansions full of mahogany, descendantsall the way back to the Mayflower? Yeah, my dad’s family is like that. And I’m — I dunno. A disappointment. Their only kid, but you could always tell I wasn’t going to fit. I’m too —”
He bit his lip, shrugging hard, and I waited.
“Anyway — they sent me off to one of those fancy boarding schools for high school. You know, everybody is from a family like mine, uniforms for every occasion, lots of pressure to do well and get into Harvard or Yale. And — there was another boy.”
A thousand moments, suddenly clicking into place. Blue eyes meeting mine across the lunch table. Cole’s bare skin, golden in candlelight. A throaty laugh in new-fallen snow. A brush of fingers, a secret smile. Something warm was spreading out from the pit of my stomach, burning me from the inside out.
Cole went on. “Well, a few other boys if I’m being honest. I got kind of a reputation after a while. None of it meant anything, just — I had something to prove, I guess. But I got caught on my knees with one of them in the locker room one day and we were both suspended. It got ugly with the other guy — and there was going to be an inquiry, so my parents pulled me out instead.”
Images racing through my head, questions forming faster than I could blurt them out. “Wait, so that means you’re —”
“Yeah. I’m gay.” Cole wiggled his fingers. “Surprise!”
“But that first day — you said you had a girlfriend back home —”
“The girlfriend I’ve never mentioned again, even though I’ve been hanging out with you almost every day?” Cole snorted. “Yeah, I lied about that too.”
“But why?”
“Because this was my last chance!” Cole burst out. “They didn’t send me away at first. They tried putting me in the local public school, but rumors got around fast, and it was brutal. I was getting in fights almost every day and finally that school didn’t want me either. Dad wanted to send me to military school, but Mom thought they should try sending me down here first. So here I am. I just wanted to keep my head down and survive, so I did what I had to do.”
My blood was pounding in my ears. “So — why are you telling me now?”
“Because I wanted you to know who you’re putting on a pedestal. I’m just as fucked up as anyone else. And because —” He glanced over at me, his eyes wide in his thin face. “Fuck, what am I doing?”
“Because —” I prompted, the word barely scraping across my lips.
“Because I walked into class that first day, and you glanced over at me and it felt like you saw right through me. Because I’ve never met anybody asrealas you. Because you don’t give a shit what anyone thinks, whilemeanwhile everybody around you caressomuch. Because I look at you and everything I told myself when I moved here goes right out the window. Because —” His voice was shaking, his fingers hanging in midair. “Ezra,pleasesay something —”
I cleared my throat. “Um — IthinkI like girls?”
Cole bit his lip. “Okay —”
“Fuck, that’s not what I — I mean, I always thought Hannah was pretty. She’s nicer to me than the rest of them are, and — I dunno. And I’ve watched porn on my computer? And, you know —” I gestured vaguely below my waist. “It all seems to work. But —”
Cole was as still as a statue. My next breath was a ragged affair.
“When I’m around you —” Night air biting my face. Cold ground, seeping through the seat of my jeans. “When I’m around you, sometimes it feels — I can’t breathe. I get hot all over. I just want tobeyou. And sometimes I think you want to — that you’re going to — and I wonder what would happen, if you did.”
Cole eased himself onto his knees, inching a little closer to me. “Ezra, have you ever been kissed?”
I could feel his breath on my face. “Um — no?”
“Do you want to be?”
I wanted it more than anything. “I — I don’t know what to do. Could you —?”
Cole grinned, the first genuine smile to cross his face since he sat down, as easy as sunshine. “You are sofuckingadorable, I swear to God —”
Slender hands cradling my face, tilting my head slightly to the side. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and when his fingertips brushed my cheek, they were cold as ice. But his lips — when they met mine, they were warm and dry, a little chapped even, parting slightly as he brushed my mouth with his. A pause — and my eyes fluttered open to watch him studying me, his gaze flicking across my face, a crease between his brows.
“I’m not going to break —” I breathed.
“Good—”
