I expect him to laugh, but instead he just stares at me, his cheeks pink, looking leveled.
“There are forty other traits I could name off the top of my head,” I say, suddenly uncomfortable.
He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Goddammit, Shepard.”
“At what point did I make a wrong turn?”
When he lowers his hands, his eyes are red from the pressure he put there. “You didn’t.”
I don’t believe him, but he moves closer, gazing down at me with an expression so tangled I could never pull the strings of it apart to identify each emotion, even if I looked for days. For years.
He reaches out, peeling a piece of hair from my cheek, his fingers lingering. “We should yell it out.”
I blink up at him. “Excuse me?”
“Yell,” he says, laughing now. “It’s a proven technique to release bullshit.”
“We can’t yell. Someone’s going to think we’re being murdered.” I look over my shoulder at Paul, who’s picked his book back up. “We’ll interrupt Paul’s chill vibes.”
“Then we’ll go underwater.”
I stare at him. “Are you okay?”
“No. Are you?”
It’s my turn to laugh. “No.”
“Then get underwater and scream, Shepard.”
But he doesn’t give me a chance to do it myself. He takes my hand and submerges his body, yanking me under with him. His yell is a dull roar in my ears, muffled but powerful, like the first seconds of an earthquake, when it’s just the low groan of the ground shifting underneath your feet. Right before it knocks you off them.
I yell too, first in surprise, then because it feels good. It’s like my first plunge into this water minutes ago—the shock of it, then the numbness that brings relief. The water rushes into my mouth, pushes back out with the force of my breath and voice. With it, I push all of the grief of the last six months, the frustration of the past however many years, the disappointment and pressure I’ve put on myself. For what?
We come up gasping, staring like we’re seeing each other for the first time. Water runs like tears down his cheeks and mine. Theo pants out, “Again.”
I duck under the water with him, leaving my eyes open this time, drifting closer while we scream in tandem, bubbles rushing from our mouths. Theo’s leg winds around mine, and he pulls me close, wrapping an arm around my waist. My heart races as I grab his forearms, as his hand cups my neck. His mouth gets closer, and for a second, I swear it brushes against mine. But it’s just the water between us.
We come up wrapped around each other, water rushing off our bodies, gasping for air. I feel exorcised and electrified. Not fixed, but better. Like maybe I’m not the sum of my mistakes, my failures, my fears. Like maybe it’s not too late to fight for what I want, if I can admit it to myself. That it’s okay to have hope, to try, even if it doesn’t turn out the way I expect.
I can feel myself at the precipice.
“Ahh,” Theo says softly with a silly grin. It’s the last vestiges of our joint tension riding out on his breath. I want to taste it on his mouth.
Instead, knowing we have an audience of one, I laugh and shake my head, reluctantly untangling my body from his. “That was the weirdest end to Tell Me a Secret ever.”
“Do you feel better?” Theo’s hand slipping from my neck is our last connection point, and the slide of his skin lifts the hairs on my body more effectively than the frigid water we’re in.
I nod, unable to break my gaze from his. Beneath the surface, his knee bumps mine. Now that we’ve achieved emotional release, I’m hyperaware of how physically close we were. How close we still are. “You?”
“Right now, yeah.”
Paul’s voice carries on a sudden soft breeze, breaking our staring contest. “Take heart, you two. Nothing lasts forever.”
Theo and I turn back to Paul, where he’s lounging on the rock, camera in hand. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
Paul smiles, a quiet one, as he brings the camera to his face and snaps a shot. “Both.”
Nineteen
I can’t let you sleep on the floor.”
Theo looks over his shoulder from his crouched position. “What do you mean?” But his gaze drifts to the empty space next to me.
I’ve been pretending to busy myself with TikTok, reading and responding to comments from my videos. But so many of them are thirsty comments about Theo, and it just brings me back to him.
God, do I get it. If they could see him now, bent over the blanket he’s trying to smooth out in low-slung gym shorts and a shirt so threadbare the golden hue of his skin shows in diffused patches, that thirst would multiply. They’d be screaming at me to tell him to get in this bed. They’re already screaming at me to hook up with him, date him, fall in love with him.
I can’t do that. But there’s a lot of space between here and love where we could play.
“I can’t let you continue fucking up your body in good conscience. I felt bad about it last night, and tonight it’s extra absurd.”
He stands and turns, hands on his lean hips. “Why absurd?”
I give him a look. His tiny smirk reveals he knows exactly why. I can’t give what shifted between us today a name, but now it’s as emotional as it is physical. I crave both things with him.
Maybe he craves it, too. He picks his pillow up and pads over, pausing at the bed’s edge. He looms there, chin dipped toward his chest as our eyes lock.
“Are you sure?”
I let out a breath, pulling down the covers on his side. “Rarely, but about this, yes.”
I’m wearing the shorts he mistook as underwear the other night, and his gaze goes dark taking them in, just before the room goes dark when he turns off the lamp.
Sight is replaced by sound: The brush of his skin against the sheet as he slips into bed. The rustle of the covers when he pulls them over both of us. The squeak of the mattress springs adjusting to his weight. The damp parting of his lips and his soft inhale.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone I cared about in my bed, three years since my last relationship. Having Theo next to me, feeling the heat and weight of his body is unbearably intimate. That it’s Theo, the boy who occupied so many of my thoughts a decade ago, the man who’s turning everything upside down now, makes the moment surreal. It’s so coincidental that I’m starting to think it can’t be anything but inevitable.
“Good night,” I whisper, lit up with awareness. I won’t sleep for hours.
He lets out a breath. “？’Night.”
Even minutes later, my heart is beating too hard to close my eyes. It’s the same sensation I felt leaping into the water, that heady rush of adrenaline. But I have nowhere to expend it, so it just keeps pulsing through my veins in an endless cycle of anticipation.
I shift my head the barest inch to see if Theo’s asleep, only to find him looking at me, his eyes glittering in the darkness. The rush becomes a wave. I’m underwater again, but my scream’s caught in my throat. “What?”
“I don’t know,” he murmurs. “You.”
It’s the way he says it, stripped bare, that has me turning fully. I press my lips together, waiting for him to go on.