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“I am serious. Boys were pretty and so am I.”

“That simple?”

“For me, I suppose.” I glanced at him. “Doesn’t have to be simple for everybody.”

His fingers stopped moving, and I let the silence sit. Didn’t rescue him from it. Didn’t force him through it either.

Finally he said, very quietly, “I think I like boys too.”

I didn’t smile big or make some over-the-top speech, and I definitely didn’t tell him I’d known. I just nodded. “Okay.”

His eyebrows pulled together. “Okay?”

“Yep.”

“That’s it?”

“What were you expecting? Confetti?”

He laughed nervously. “I don’t know.”

“Trevor.”

He glanced over at me.

“There’s nothing wrong with you. Love’s love.”

His eyes dropped. I fucking hated how familiar that looked.

“You don’t have to figure everything out today. You don’t need a label today. You don’t have to tell anybody today. And you definitely don’t owe anybody proof.”

He nodded, and I bumped my sneaker against his.

“But if you need somebody who gets it, you’ve got me.”

“Even though you’re insane?”

“Especially because I’m insane.”

He smiled.

“And for the record?”

“What?” he asked.

“Don’t waste your childhood trying to make yourself smaller so somebody else feels comfortable. The world will burn you and roast fucking marshmallows over your corpse for less.”

Those little words of wisdom hit me somewhere I hadn’t expected. Because I wasn’t talking to Trevor anymore. Not entirely anyway. I was talking to the boy underneath that fucking oak tree. The one who had loved his best friend, who eventually kissed him, and who’d spent years afterwards pretending what happened next hadn’t fucking shattered him.

Trevor nodded once, as if he’d just figured something out. “You still like Mr. D’Angelo,” he said.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“Why are children like this?” I groaned, and he grinned.

“You do.”

“I’m currently throwing his underwear into a lake. That isn’t a love letter.”