Page 56 of Smoke and Glitter

"No, it isn't."

His mouth closes.

"That's who you are. And I love that about you."

The word slips out so easily that neither of us moves.

We both hear it, and I don't take it back.

My heart is already breaking. What exactly am I protecting now?

"But sometimes I stand in that room and I can't tell if I'm different from everyone else."

Sam stares at me.

"I don't want you to be worse to anybody else." My voice cracks, and I hate it, but I keep going. "I just want something that isn't theirs too. I want to feel like I mean something to you outside the walls of this apartment. Something more than just convenient."

His grip tightens around the unopened beer.

"One thing, Sam."

I swallow.

"Just one thing that is mine alone, that sets me apart from how you are with everyone else."

The apartment is so quiet I can hear traffic on the street below.

He could cross the room.

He doesn't.

"I'm the same person with everybody," he says.

My chest hurts.

"And I don't want to be everybody."

"That's just who I am. So I don't know what you want me to..."

"I want to matter differently to you. Not more than Bex or Summer or Marisol. I'm not asking to outrank anybody. I want something between us that doesn't look like what everybody else gets from you."

Sam goes still.

The words hang there between us, and I let them.

Saying it out loud makes my face burn, but there is no point protecting my pride now. I want something with Sam that belongs to us, something I don't have to squint at and wonder whether I invented it.

Sam rubs a hand across his jaw.

I watch him looking for a way around it.

That hurts more than if he'd gotten angry.

"Okay," I say.

His eyes come back to mine.

"Then tell me something."