Content Warnings: ​Graphic sexual content. Discussion of parental death, grief, substance abuse. 

 247 days sober
“If you have one more cup of coffee, I’m going to throw up on the obstacle course,” Javi warns, “and I’m not even scheduled to run until this afternoon.”

The mug that I appropriated from the dining hall is already half-raised to my mouth, but if Javi wants to be annoying and dramatic, so can I. I purse my lips so my sip turns into a long, obnoxious slurp, swallow with an exaggerated gasping ah at the end like I’m in a Coke commercial, and say, “Throw up as much as you want, ‘cause I’m first on the schedule. I don’t care if you run that course leaking from every hole you’ve got as long as you do it after I’m out of there.”

“I just don’t understand how you can be on your third cup already.”

“Fourth. Campbell stopped at Dunkin’ on the way here because he’s an enabler.”

A few of us are sitting in the grass together, supposedly warming up, but Declan is the only one actually doing anything. He’s deep into a hamstring stretch at the moment, both hands curled around the sole of his shoe. He’s also tuning us all out with a set of noise-canceling headphones and a workout playlist I made for him during my latest attempt to merge our music tastes without ceding any ground. So far, I’ve coaxed him into accepting some rockabilly, cowpunk, a little bit of folk-rock, and a sprinkle of Orville Peck.

I lean over and tap him on the shoulder. When he shifts one side of the headphones off his ear, I say, “Can you do some kneeling hip flexors?”

“I already did.”

“I know, and your ass looked real nice when you did ‘em, so I think you should do a few more,” I say, and he snorts. “Also, the guys are being mean to me. They’re saying I drink too much coffee.”

“You do drink too much coffee.”

I raise my mug. “You literally poured this for me in the dining hall before we came out here. You remember that, right?”

He shrugs. “I like the way you hold the cup.”

I blink, first at Declan, then at the mug. The Patton dining hall coffee cups are heavyweight diner mugs, slightly curved and undersized enough that you can’t really hold the handle. I’ve got the body of the mug itself against my palm, with my middle and ring fingers through the handle, index and little fingers framing it on the top and bottom. The idea that Declan notices the way I hold my coffee cup in the morning, let alone has an opinion on it, makes a low, smoldering heat spread through my veins until I think I’m starting to blush. At least, that’s how it feels for a few seconds before--

“Why?” Steve asks. He makes a circle out of thumb and middle finger and peers through it at Declan, then starts to make a jerking-off motion. “Because he holds it like he’s holding a dick?”

“I think it’s because he’s fingering it,” Javi observes, offering up a two-fingered thrusting motion that is absolutely not what I’m doing to the handle.

I grimace and set the mug down on the grass. Declan rolls his eyes and says, “Thanks, you assholes. God forbid I like something without you making it weird.”

“Fuck you, man. This is payback for years of you tormenting the rest of us,” Steve says. “What about when you came up to me and Jenn at the junior semiformal and told her she should stop grinding on me before I busted a nut in my suit?”

“Are we ignoring the fact that I was right, and you did?”

“What are you, my dry-cleaner? Mind your own business.”

“Remember when you got half the dorm in on a bet about when Vanessa and I would have sex for the first time?” Javi adds.

“Wait, that was you guys?” I say, perking up. “I won that pool! It was like, six hundred bucks, too. You guys kept me in beer and cigarettes for the rest of the schoolyear.”

“You didn’t even know us yet!” Javi protests.

I shrug. “Yeah, but my buddy Kevin said one of his baseball teammates was taking money on whether two freshman would smash before summer vacation, and I didn’t want to feel left out.”

“You were alarmingly accurate, too,” Declan offers. “Down to the hour.”

Javi gapes at me like he thinks I belong on a watchlist. I give everyone my most modest smile and go for my coffee cup again. “I just have a sense for these things. The first time Ben and Jamie hooked up, I scented it out like a bloodhound within an hour of it happening. And I bet I could guess the number of people who have touched anybody in this group’s dick with a margin of error of plus-or-minus five percent.” Declan opens his mouth, and I quickly add, “Except Dec, because my accuracy drops as soon as we hit the triple digits, and I’m pretty sure he’s in, like, crowd-control-tally-counter, maybe-we-should-install-a-turnstile territory.”

Steven scoffs. “I bet you can’t guess how many people I’ve—”

“Seven,” I say. He blinks at me. I sip my coffee. He holds his hands out, wide, a what the fuck gesture, and I shrug. “You’ve hooked up with all the girls we hang with except Nessa, right? Jenn, Kaitlyn, Aubrey, that’s three. You mentioned getting with Tess before she hopped on Declan’s dick and turned feral, so that’s four. I saw you hook up with Sarah what’s-her-name that one time at that orgy, and you told me about some hippie stoner chick you smashed over the summer, when you were both camp counselors in Maine, though fuck if I know how you got yourself hired as someone responsible for supervising children. And then, well, the other one.”

I raise my eyebrows meaningfully, even though I’m absolutely full of shit right now. Most people I know have at least one cringeworthy bad decision they’d rather not tell their friends about, so I’m sure there is a seventh person, even if I don’t know who it is. But the bluff turns out to be worth it, because Steven rolls his eyes and says, “Come on, dudes don’t count. It’s boarding school. Everybody gets drunk head at a party or swaps handies with their roommate at least once.”

“Everybody does what?” Javi demands, and Declan just shakes his head and says quietly, “They really don’t.”

“Campbell, you do it all the time now!” Steve says. “I mean, not your roommate roommate, ‘cause Javi and Vanessa are basically married. But you and Garen are pretty much surrogate roommates, considering how much time you spend at each other’s places, and you give each other handjobs all the time, probably!”

I reach out and gently cup Steven’s skull in my hands. “Is there even anything in here? You can tell me if there’s not. I promise I won’t judge.”

He smacks my hands away, and I lean back into the grass, propping myself on my elbows as Declan says flatly, “We don’t get each other off just because we happen to spend the night together, you dipshit. We spend the night together after we get each other off.”

“That’s the same thing!”

“Oh my god, no, it’s not.”

“What I want to focus on,” I say loudly over their bickering, “is the fact that Taylor told me weeks ago that he’d never had sex. So, either this happened like, recently, or Taylor’s a liar, or Steve’s dick game is so weak that somebody slept with him and literally forgot about it.”

Steven rips up a clump of grass from the lawn and stuffs it into my coffee cup before I can stop him. I make a noise of outrage and start trying to fish the grass out while he says, “Fuck you. My dick game is great. And Tay’s not a liar. I told you, it didn’t count. We didn’t sleep together. It was just, ya know”—he makes the same jerking off motion he made earlier to demonstrate how he thinks I hold a coffee mug—“two dudes yankin’ it for each other to see if either of us was into it, and we decided we weren’t, so that was the end of it.”

“Okay,” Javi says slowly. “And the drunk head at a party?”

Steven rolls his eyes and says, “Same person everybody else got it from.”

“Me?” I guess.

“You say that like you don’t know,” Javi says.

“Bro, I don’t. I was getting blackout drunk and blowing straight dudes left, right, and center for three years. The only guy I know who slept with more randoms than me—” I cut myself off and turn to gape at Steven. “Jamie?”

Steven shrugs like what-do-you-want-from-me. “Me and half the people in Chappaqua. Fooling around with James Goldwyn is like, the official Patton-Ward pastime. Besides, he got all sulky and horny when you first moved away last year. I figured I was providing, like, community service.”

“Was that before or after he and Taylor dated?” Declan asks, and if I wasn’t feeling so utterly blindsided by coming in last place in the “Fun Facts About James Goldwyn’s Sex Life” trivia contest happening right now—a contest I would normally win and star in half the answers for—I’d probably be rolling my eyes. Declan hoards details about other people’s lives as ammunition, and he only asks questions like that when he already knows the answer.

Steven waves a hand dismissively. “After. Way after. That was like, sophomore year. Sometime in the fall, wasn’t it?”

Javi nudges my elbow and assures me, “It was only a couple of weeks, and then Taylor broke up with him ‘cause he thought James liked somebody else.”

“Sounds like Jamie,” I say.

That feels a lot less awkward than telling them that their sophomore year was my and Jamie’s junior year, and fall semester of junior year is when Jamie suddenly got it into his head that he was in love with me. We were also sleeping together pretty much constantly that semester, so he probably cheated on Taylor with me, too; I just never really paid that much attention to who James was dating until Ben.

I move to take another sip of coffee, but Declan covers the rim of the mug with his palm and steers it back to the ground, saying, “Babe, there’s a fucking handful of grass in that. Get a grip.”

“Babe?” Steve echoes.

“Babe!” Javi coos, looking absolutely thrilled for us.

Babe. I roll the world over in my mind, examining it from every angle like that’ll somehow neutralize the pulse of electricity surging through my gut. The reaction isn’t even my fault; Declan’s use of terms of affection has taken place strictly in the bedroom until this exact moment, so I’ve always put it down in the category of meaningless shit guys say when they’re about to come.

I mean, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve had to stop myself from blurting out I love you, please don’t leave me during sex, I’d have enough money to cover the copay of a therapy session where Doc explains to me why I do that.

Hearing Declan call me babe now, here, fully clothed and in front of our friends and totally absent-minded, like it’s the most natural thing in the world… that’s new. I can’t decide if it’s mortifying, or the best thing that’s happened all week, right up there with him deciding I should be the little spoon every night.

Declan moves back into a hamstring stretch and ducks down so his face is hidden against his knee, but it does nothing to disguise the flush creeping up the back of his neck, nearly the same color as his hair. I’ve never wanted to put my mouth on someone’s skin more in my entire life.

We’re all spared from any actual response by the long screech of a whistle.

“Whitman Squadron, fall in!” Sergeant Smitth barks, and we all get to our feet and move into formation. He doesn’t tell us to stand at attention, which is great, because standing at parade rest means I can hold my coffee cup behind my back and not get screamed at for having it. He surveys us all for a long, silent minute, a grimly satisfied smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

That’s how I know this experience is gonna suck.

“Welcome to Obstacle Course Day.” Sergeant Smitth gestures behind himself, indicating the looming maze of ropes, beams, and walls that still looks pretty intimidating, even though I’ve been practicing my run with Declan for the last month. “Each of you will have one complete turn in the course. Your time begins on my first whistle, and it ends only after you have successfully completed every obstacle. If you make a mistake—fall off a beam, trip over one of the tires, touch the wire above you during the mud crawl—I blow the whistle, and you start that obstacle over. You keep going until you get it perfect. You’re going to go all the way through, over the climbing wall, ring the bell on the other side, and then you’re going to turn around and come back. Same rules apply; you make a mistake, you start that obstacle over. Time stops when you get to the top of the rope climb and put your hand”—at this, he points up to where the rope is anchored into wood—“on that beam up there. Everybody understand me?”

We all sir yes sir at him, and he turns that pointed finger on me like he’s swinging the muzzle of a rifle around. “Anderson. You’re up first. The rest of you will wait in the second floor senior lounge. Each time someone finishes the course, they’ll go up and send down the next person. Alphabetical order—Anderson will send down Barrington, who will send down Campbell, and so on. Lewis will be starting us off after lunch, and besides meals and bathroom breaks, nobody is leaving that building until they’ve completed their run. Walczyk, Young, I hope you two brought something to keep you occupied, because you’re going to be here for a while.”

There’s a soft grumbling of discontent, mostly from the guys whose names start with letters in the latter half of the alphabet. Smitth narrows his eyes but just repeats, “Anderson, you’re up first. The rest of you! Dismissed!”

He turns for the course, and we break formation. Declan holds out one hand for my backpack, one hand for my mug, and I take one last hurried sip, only to spit it right back into the mug when clumps of dirt and strands of grass hit my tongue.

“Dumbass,” he says, then grabs a fistful of my t-shirt and pulls me in so he can whisper right in my ear. “If you can beat your best practice time, I’ll let you spend all weekend teaching me how to deepthroat you properly.”

“Shut the fuck up, dude,” I say, shoving him away from me, like that does anything to quell the lightning strike of pure crackling heat to my groin. Declan laughs—his real laugh, the one he saves just for me and the squad—and I smack the coffee mug out of his hand onto the grass before running away after our drill sergeant.

“Anderson,” Sergeant Smitth says, his voice all ominous like he thinks he needs to warn the obstacle course that I’m on my way. “Are you planning to screw around for fourteen and a half minutes and then gun it through the last thirty seconds so you can pass on a technicality? Or are you going to take this seriously?”

“I’m incredibly serious about this, sir,” I say gravely. “Two years ago, I gave every guy in my old squad a custom navy and gray jock strap with the Patton Military Academy crest silk-screened on the pouch. I’m wearing mine right now, even though it’s honestly about half a size too small and kind of suffocating my nuts. That’s how dedicated I am to living up to the Whitman Hall legacy.”

Sergeant Smitth jabs his pen at me, somewhere between pointing at my face and trying to stab me in the eye. “Don’t you ever talk to me about your jock again. You hear me?”

I salute. He grunts and gestures towards the starting position for the obstacle course. I put a little bounce in my first couple of steps, just testing the earth a bit. We haven’t had any rain for a few days, so the ground is firm under the soles of my boots. Great for running, less great for the fact that the barbed wire crawl—my slowest obstacle even on a good day—will involve more dust than mud. My biggest issue will probably be getting dirt in my eyes if I’m not careful.

My second biggest issue will be the too-small jock, which I actually did wear under my PT uniform fatigue pants for the bit, but I can’t blame the weather for that.

“On my whistle,” Smitth instructs. He’s stationed on this little makeshift observation deck, a plywood platform that’s barely a foot off the ground and mostly serves to keep observers’ shoes from getting muddy when the weather sucks. I drop to a four-point stance just behind the edge of the course, where grass meets dirt, and Smith counts down from three, gives a short blast of his whistle, and I’m off.

My first attempt at the obstacle course was nine weeks ago, and I finished it in twelve minutes and forty-seven seconds. Every single run I’ve done since then has been faster, so there isn’t any universe in which I could conceivably fail this shit. I’d have to break a leg again or get dolphin-in-a-six-pack levels of stuck in the climbing nets.

But I don’t. Obviously.

I clear the first set of beams, the tires, the second set. I climb, I swing, I crawl, I live my best jungle gym life out there. Weeks of practice get me through the first half, and the knowledge that I can make it all the way over the climbing wall to the bell on the far side without a single misstep triggers a surge of adrenaline that has me moving even faster on the return trip. By the time I’m sliding down the parallel bars, I’m thinking fuck yeah, let’s go, let’s fucking go with every step, and when I get to the rope climb, I’m saying it out loud. I pull myself up the last stretch to the top of the rope and smack the overhead beam twice, just in case Sergeant Smitth misses it the first time.

When I return to solid ground and make my way back to the starting line, Sergeant Smitth is looking down at the stop watch, surprised and maybe even reluctantly impressed. I consider it a mark of my patience and maturity that I don’t snatch the thing out of his hand to read the time for myself. Instead, I wait for what feels like five years before he finally says, “Nine minutes, thirteen seconds. Excellent work, Anderson.”

Only the fact that I know he would add time to my score stops me from doing a celebratory dance, complete with hip thrusts. My heart is hammering in my chest from the activity and the excitement, and I deserve a goddamn medal for the fact that all I do is nod sharply and say, “Thank you, sir.”

He nods towards the building and says, “Get back there and send Barrington out.”

“Sure, but—can I come back later?” I ask. “After Barrington, I mean. Campbell has been training to beat the course record.”

“I know he has,” Sergeant Smitth says warily.

“Okaaaay,” I say, drawing out the word in a mocking version of his tone before I realize that’s probably a bad move. He gives me the same I cannot wait until you graduate, you little shit look he has been giving me since I was fourteen, and I clear my throat, switching back to my normal voice. “Anyway, I want to watch him do it. So, can I come back down with him after Barrington finishes? Or am I just dismissed for the day?”

Smitth looks over at the building again, like he thinks Declan is going to be waving at him from an upstairs window. The room everybody’s hanging out in is on the other side of the building, though. There isn’t a clear line of sight to here, which is why I want him to just agree to let me do what I want, since we both know I’ll probably do it anyway.

“You and Campbell…” Smitth pauses, considers his words again, and settles on, “The two of you seem close.”

My instinct is to say, That’s a side effect of all the sex we have. But before I can open my mouth, I realize that Declan and I haven’t exactly had a conversation about how out he is or wants to be with his sexuality. He hasn’t even told me if there’s a label he prefers, beyond giving me a don’t be fucking stupid kind of look the last time I made a joke about him being the latest in a long, proud line of straight boys I’ve nailed. That said, he did call me his boyfriend in front of half the squad four days ago—in between menacing Charlie with a baseball bat and trying to fast-pitch a cleat through his chest—so I think it’s safe to say something.

“Yeah, we’re close,” is what I end up with. Sergeant Smitth just leans against the platform railing and waits me out. You’d think I’d be better at keeping my mouth shut by now, considering this is a tactic that half my friends and both my parents pull with me on the regular, but eventually the silence is too grating, and I admit—to my drill sergeant, what the fuck—“We’re dating. Have been for two months, which is about a month longer than I’ve dated anyone who didn’t put me in the hospital, and it’s two months longer than Campbell has dated anyone, full stop. That might be more information than you were looking for, but you’ve always been creepily aware of things going on in the squad, so for all I know, you already know all of this, and what I’m trying to say is—yes. We’re close. Which was the original question, I think.”

“I didn’t actually ask a question,” Sergeant Smitth says.

“Yes, you—” I mentally play back the almost completely one-sided conversation we’ve had. You and Campbell. The two of you seem close. “This is entrapment. I want a lawyer.”

“Campbell’s a good kid,” Smitth says, like I haven’t spoken. “Smart, strong, dedicated. He doesn’t come from money, or a big city, or a family that gives a damn about him, and everything he has now, he worked his ass off to get. He’s done a damn good job in his student ambassador position, and he’s headed off to West Point this summer. He’s got a bright future ahead of him. You could, too, if you got out of your own way, but I think you’re still working on that.”

I blink. Smitth very pointedly does not.

“If that life he’s making for himself involves you, as a friend or—” Smitth gives a sort of prompting gesture, like he wants me to fill in the blank on whatever else Declan and I might be to each other, but when I open my mouth, he cuts me off again. “I want to be clear about my expectations. You and Campbell, you’re going to treat each other with respect, you hear me? You’re both good men, and you’re going to fucking act like it. I don’t care that you’re about to graduate. The Patton grapevine is far-reaching, and if you treat one of my former students badly, I will hear about it, sooner or later. And then you and I will have words.”

A good, old-fashioned shovel talk from my drill sergeant. Totally normal, if I’m being honest. Sergeant Smitth has been calling me out on my dumbassery since I was fourteen, so this isn’t really anything new. The only surprising part is that one little nugget buried in the middle of it all.

“Do you really think I’m a good man?” I ask.

“Well, I think you’re still pretending to be the same idiot kid you were when you first showed up at this school, and that annoys the piss out of me. But yes. Underneath all the crap you put on trying to impress people, I think you’re a good man.”

“Oh,” I say, because that’s all there is. At least until I feel a prickling at the corners of my eyes, and I reach up to pinch the bridge of my nose like that’s gonna do anything to stop my tear ducts from kicking into overdrive, or stop my voice from cracking when I add, “What the fuck.”

Smitth points at the building behind me, his mouth twisting into a scowl, his eyes wide and alarmed. “Go. Get out of here. And send Barrington down for his course run.”

“Okay,” I whisper, my voice thick with tears. “But can I come back down when Declan runs the course?”

“Only if you can pull yourself together by then. Jesus Christ, Anderson, go,” Smitth demands, and as I’m heading off to the building, I hear him mutter, “Dramatic little bastard.”

Maybe, yeah. But he still thinks that under the shell of the dramatic little bastard is a good man, and that’s enough to make me need a full two minutes to compose myself in the stairwell before I can head up to the senior lounge and send Barrington outside.

I’m still feeling all emotional and magnanimous, so I tell him, loud enough for everyone else to hear it too, “Careful on the wire crawl. The ground is dry as fuck, so the dirt’s kicking up pretty easily.”

Barrington hitches his chin in acknowledgment and heads for the door. I make a beeline for where Declan is half-standing with his ass propped on a windowsill, not sure whether I should start with the part where I beat my best runtime by seven seconds or where our drill sergeant threatened to fight me if I’m not a good boyfriend. Before I can say either, Declan raises his phone to show me the stopwatch app on the screen.

“I heard the whistles,” he says, tipping his head towards the open window. “Nine fourteen?”

“Nine thirteen,” I correct.

“Fuck yeah!” Javi exclaims, and there’s a flurry of guys pounding me on the back and dapping me up and generally just riding the high of the first runtime in the squad being a good one.

In the middle of it all, Declan pushes himself up off the windowsill and slinks in close enough to squeeze my bicep with one of his big hands. “Good job,” he says in my ear, his voice all quiet and deep and shiver-inducing. I just nod, and the fact that I’m not being a freak about it and pressing up against him and saying thank you, Daddy and making jokes about his earlier promise of how we’d spend the weekend if I beat my own best time is probably what gives me away. Declan studies my face for a minute, whiskey-brown eyes flickering over all of my features like he’s taking inventory before coming back to meet my own gaze. “You good?” he asks.

Which basically means, I can tell you’ve been crying. Great.

I nod and give what I hope is a casual, dismissive wave. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sarge was being weird.”

“Weird how?”

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I lie, and he narrows his eyes a little like he can tell I’m full of it, but that pause in the conversation lasts just long enough for the rest of the guys to absorb us back into their chatter.

It only takes another ten to fifteen minutes before Barrington returns, red-faced and huffing and definitely not announcing a nine-something runtime as he waves first at our group, then at the door and pants, “Campbell. You’re up.”

Declan wears a mask of absolute blankness that I know is covering up nerves. He kicks his backpack behind one of the chairs for safe-keeping, but I stoop to grab it for him. He gives me a look, and I clarify, “I’m heading back downstairs. Sarge said I can come watch your run, if that’s cool with you.”

Steven lets out a long, mocking ooooooh like we’re in middle school, and I snap at him, “Be nice to me, or I’ll fuck your dad.”

“You can’t. Declan’ll get jealous,” he says.

“So? I’ll fuck Declan’s dad, too.”

“You’ve never met my dad,” Declan says. “I’ve barely met my dad.”

“Give me half a Vyvanse and twenty minutes on Instagram, and I bet I could find him. There are probably only so many thirty-two-year-old Bryan Campbells in Colorado.”

“Campbell is my mom’s last name.”

“Shit. What’s your dad’s last name?”

Declan shrugs.

I scoff and nudge him in the direction of the door. “Fucking useless. Come on. You’ve got a course to run.”

He doesn’t say anything else until we’re at the bottom of the stairs and he’s shouldering the door open. “You going to tell me what happened with Sergeant Smitth earlier?”

“What? Oh. He told me that I have to be a good boyfriend to you, or he’s gonna murder me and bury my mangled body in the woods.”

“What?”

“And then he called me a good man.”

“You are,” Declan says, and I have a split-second of thinking I might cry again before he asks, “How the fuck does our drill sergeant know you’re my boyfriend?”

Now it’s my turn to shrug. “Maybe he saw Ryan Marten’s video of you, like, screaming about it and trying to hit Charlie Walczyk with a baseball bat.”

“I wasn’t screaming. And I didn’t actually try to hit him. It was an implied threat.”

“So, I’m thinking the word ‘implied’ probably doesn’t belong in this conversation. You said you were going to gut him like a mule deer and make his family eat his barbecued corpse.”

“Yeah, but nobody filmed that part. Anyway, trying to hit him with a bat is felony assault. Implying I’m going to hit him with a bat is a misdemeanor menacing charge at the most.”

“If you and my mom ever actually meet, I think she’s really gonna like you.”

Declan doesn’t say anything. I glance over at him, only to find that his cheeks have gone pink. I bite back a smile and bump my shoulder against his. He bumps me back.

We’re coming up on the course now. Smitth shoots me a brief, irritated glance, like he was hoping I’d get distracted and forget to come back down, but I keep my mouth shut, my hands to myself, and a respectable distance when I join him behind the railing of his shitty observation deck.

“Alright, Campbell. You’re familiar with the rules. Any questions before we get started?”

“No, Sergeant,” Declan says.

Sergeant Smitth nods along for maybe a few more seconds than is strictly necessary. Eventually, he adds, like it’s no big deal, “You’re going for the new course record.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“And the time on that?”

“Eight minutes and forty-four seconds,” Declan says. “Christopher Powell, 1986.”

“Alright then. Let’s show Mr. Powell what you can do,” Sergeant Smitth says.

Declan mouth stretches into a thin, flat line that he probably thinks is a smile. It has a deeply unsettling Raggedy Andy effect, like he has genuinely never looked uglier, and I quickly duck down and pretend to be rummaging through my backpack so I don’t laugh. I keep my face hidden as he moves to the starting line, as Sarge counts him down, and then, the second the whistle screams above me, I launch myself upright again so I can see.

Declan takes off like a fucking gunshot. He clears the first set of beams easily, swinging himself over each one without so much as grazing the wood with his boots. The tire step is barely a blip on the radar, the more difficult beams tackled just as fast as the first round, the climbing nets so miraculously incapable of tripping him up that they might as well be rungs in a steel ladder.

He’s all gas, no brakes, and my whole body aches with how much I need him.

“Christ, that’s talent,” Sergeant Smitth mutters when Declan’s low crawl has him moving through the mud under the wire faster than half the Whitman squad can move on two feet.

“Dec’s the best,” I say. That’s all there is to it, isn’t it?

We watch the rest of the run in silence. Midway through Declan’s return trip, I find myself leaning in to clutch the platform railing so hard, I might leave nail marks on it.

Declan’s boots hit the mulch on this side of the final beam, and I finally chance a brief glance down, only to do an immediate double-take to really stare at Sarge’s stopwatch. Eight minutes and nineteen seconds. Eight minutes and twenty seconds. He’s hauling himself up the rope now at eight minutes and twenty-two seconds, and unless he straight up falls off, there’s no way he’s going to run out of time before he makes it to the top of that rope.
“Oh, shit,” I say. Up, up, and then he’s there. He reaches for the beam, and I look down just in time to see the stop watch click over to eight minutes and twenty-six seconds as I hear Declan’s palm slap the side of the wood.

All the tension that has been building inside of me since Smitth’s first whistle comes bursting out at once. “Yes!” I pound my fists against the railing, but that’s not enough, so I vault the damn thing and take off towards Declan, roaring, “Eight twenty-six! Eight twenty-six, let’s fucking go!”

He drops the last few feet off the climbing rope, his boots hitting the ground a little unsteady as he echoes the number, somewhere between needing the confirmation and just straight up not believing me. “Eight twenty-six?”

“Eight twenty-six, motherfucker,” I say, and I launch myself at him.

I fully intend to tackle him straight to the grass, but he takes the hit like a human shock absorber, barely shifting back an inch. I don’t let go, and he doesn’t either, and what started as my dickhead attempt at a celebratory body slam to the ground has just become the hardest, tightest hug I think I’ve ever experienced.

For all the leaning on or hanging off each other, all the making out or fucking around, Declan and I don’t usually embrace each other like this, and if we ever come close, it’s definitely not in front of other people. This is probably going to earn us another side-eye from Sergeant Smitth, but I don’t care at all. I squeeze Dec tighter and say somewhere into the space between his ear and his jawline, “I knew it. I fucking knew you were gonna do this shit, from the second you said you wanted it.”

“I didn’t know, though,” he rasps back. “Ran that course like two hundred times, and I only ever beat the record twice.”

“Doesn’t matter. You just destroyed that shit, you set the record that all the future Patton brats are gonna be foaming at the mouth trying to beat.” I lean back just enough that he can see my face, see how much I mean it when I say, “I’m so fucking proud of you.”

Something raw and unreadable flickers over his expression. He grabs me by the jaw and kisses me hard on the mouth.

“Hey, no,” Sergeant Smitth barks. “None of that. Code of conduct.”

Declan wrenches his lips away and says, “Sorry, Sergeant.”

“I’m not,” I say and try to lean back in, but Declan dodges it and releases me completely. Some combination of exertion and embarrassment has his cheeks flushing a bright, mottled red. He heads towards Sergeant Smitth, and I try to trail after him, but Smitth snaps his fingers at me and points towards the building behind me.

“Go send Ellis down,” he says.

“Why can’t I stay?” I ask.

“Because I don’t need you hanging around irritating me while I’m talking to another student,” Smitth snaps. “Not everything is about you. Go. Now.”

I roll my eyes, give Campbell a smack on the ass and a lightning-quick kiss on the forehead—not in that order—and mutter, “Fine. Dec, I’ll see you—”

“Hang out for a while,” Declan interrupts. “I’ll meet you in the lounge.”

The look he gives me says we’re definitely not going to be staying in the lounge long, unless he wants to kickstart an orgy with the rest of the Whitman squad. I can work with that energy.

Back upstairs, I announce my return to the room with both arms raised in celebration of a victory that’s definitely not mine.

“Well?” Javi prompts.

I cup my hands around my mouth and bellow, “That’s Campbell with a new course record, motherfuckers!”

There’s a burst of cheering and shouting from our friends, jeering from our enemies. Mostly, it’s just a lot of noise with nowhere to aim it, since Declan is still down in the yard with Sergeant Smitth. I have to repeat his runtime half a dozen times for everyone, then watch the embarrassing struggle of a bunch of dudes who should be better at math trying to find the difference between eight minutes and twenty-six seconds and eight minutes and forty-four seconds.

“It’s eighteen,” Taylor finally ends up having to yell over all the stupider voices. “He beat the record by eighteen seconds. Jesus Christ, how are some of you assholes taking Calculus right now?”

“Eighteen seconds faster than a time nobody has even touched in decades is crazy,” Javi says. He’s already got his phone out, probably texting Vanessa so that all the Ward girls can hear about this as well.

I don’t really want to hang around here talking running stats with the rest of the squad, so I excuse myself from the room right at the same time that Sam Ellis is leaving for his turn at the course. Neither of us says anything to the other in the hallway, but we hit the door to the stairwell at the same time Declan comes through it.

Sam jumps back a step, but tries to play it off like he didn’t just almost piss himself a little. “Hey. Congrats on the record. Got any tips?”

“Yeah, here’s a tip,” Declan says flatly. “You and Walczyk should lock your dorm room door at night, ‘cause we’ve only got three weeks left until graduation, and I’m still planning to castrate at least one of you before then.”
Sam tips his head back and blows out a big, exhausted breath, cheeks all puffed up. “Come on, man. You and Charlie have been at each other since Parents Day. That’s like, three weeks. Three of the last weeks we have as a squad before graduation, and summer, and college, and you in the fucking Army. Aren’t you sick of this feud shit by now? Aren’t you at all pissed off about the fact that we were friends for almost four years, and this is how we’re ending our senior year?”

“No,” Declan says.

“Yes,” I say. Sam shoots me a hopeful look, but I put my hands up in defense. “Absolutely not, dude. The whole situation is annoying, but if Declan wants to ride out the year hating you and your shitty roommate, that’s his call. And if you didn’t want to get involved in this mess, maybe you shouldn’t have told Charlie to tell his brother that I was going to be within distance for an attempted vehicular homicide.”

Sam opens his mouth to respond to that, but Declan says over him, “Don’t you have a fucking obstacle course to suck at right now? Get the fuck out of my face.”

It’s maybe not one of his most charming moments, but it does at least finally send Sam down the stairwell. I can think of around six hundred things I’d rather do than keep talking about our obnoxious friends—especially former friends—so when Declan turns to me, I grab him by the belt and say, “What’d Sarge want to talk to you about? Is he gonna have Patton get a big shiny plaque with your name engraved on it so everyone knows you’re the fastest son of a bitch on the East Coast?”

Declan slips his hands into my back pockets, which is definitely just an excuse to grab my ass. “Fuck off.”

“That’s a ‘yes.’”

“It’s a fuck off.”

“Do you think they’re gonna give you a trophy, too?

“I think you’re gonna give me a reminder of why I stayed single for the first eighteen years of my life,” Declan says. "Yes, they’re putting my name on a plaque. No, I’m not getting a trophy. I think I’m getting a certificate or something at the student awards assembly during grad practice week.”

“I’m gonna frame it.”

Declan nips lightly at my bottom lip, but the second I start to incline my head to get my own taste of him, he releases me completely and steps back. “Smitth also wanted to tell me a bunch of awkward shit I already know about you.”

“About me?” I echo. Declan nods and moves to the stairwell door. I follow him. “What kind of awkward shit? Whatever it is, it’s a crock. I didn’t do it. Unless it’s like, doing ketamine in the teacher’s lounge or making out with somebody who sucks, and then I probably did do it.”

We get to the ground floor, but instead of leaving the building, Declan steers me through to the hall of currently unoccupied MLEP classrooms.

“He told me to be careful with you,” Declan says.

I roll my eyes. “What does he think I’m gonna do, knife you mid-blowjob?”

“No. He told me that I need to be careful. That you’ve been through a lot of heavy shit over the past few years, and you deserve better treatment than you’ve gotten.”

When I stop and stare at him, Declan just shrugs.

“There wasn’t a threat attached to it. Or an alternative, really. He just told me to be good to you, and I said I would.” Dec turns the handle of the nearest door, which is when I finally realize that he has led me to Sergeant Smitth’s classroom. He tilts his head to indicate that I should enter. “And since this whole floor is going to be abandoned for the next few hours, I’m thinking you should come let me be good to you in here.”

My gaze flickers past him to the rest of the room—our drill sergeant’s desk, the chair where I was sitting the first day he decided to harass me into going to a hookah bar with our friends, the desk where he tries to take notes while pretending he doesn’t notice me slipping a hand onto his thigh when I get bored during class sometimes.

“Fuck yes,” I say, and he grins, steps aside, and closes the door behind us.

A few years ago, somebody in Patton admin clearly picked up on the idea that an American high school campus full of nothing but teenage boys and rifles might be setting the stage for some dark shit to happen. A massive renovation replaced all the regular doors in the academic, administrative, and library buildings with windowless steel ones that have a faux-wood finish and heavy-duty deadbolts. Declan flips the lock now, and that in itself has me feeling secure enough with our privacy to strip my shirt off and toss it on the floor with our backpacks.

We fall into each other and end up against the wall, kissing furiously. Adrenaline is still surging through my body, making every single one of my movements feel aggressive and messy, but the way Declan is panting against my open mouth as I clutch his back, his shoulders, the back of his skull, makes me think he doesn’t mind it too much.
Declan’s hand has made its way under the waistband of my fatigue pants and, finding nothing but elastic and bare ass, he wrenches his mouth away from mine. “Did you wear a fucking thong to PT today?”

I laugh, loud and kind of mean, and lean my shoulders back into the wall, thrusting my hips out in his direction. “How ‘bout you unzip me and find out?”

He unbuttons my pants and shoves them down to the tops of my thighs and steps back to just stare at the Patton crest printed right across my bulge. “What the fuck.”

“A joke with my old squad,” I explain. “Not a thong, though. Sorry.”

“This is better,” Declan says. He gives his dick an almost absent-minded squeeze through his clothes, and I feel another wave of arousal hit me. “You know, after dorm rooms and locker rooms and communal showers, I’m used to seeing guys in less than you’ve got on right now, but… I don’t know. The jock is kind of working for me.”

I slide a hand down my chest, watching his eyes track the progress over every ridge of muscle until I’m cupping my cock through cotton. “And you haven’t even seen the best view of it yet.”

“Show me.”

It’s not the command I’d expect those words to be. In fact, it’s a lot closer to begging.

I untie my boots and toe them off to join the other abandoned accessories. The fatigue pants are looser than any of the jeans Declan has ever seen me peel myself out of before, so there isn’t any point in trying to turn this into a striptease. I push them a little further down my thighs and let gravity do the rest, kicking them off when they hit my feet.

Then I turn away from him and fold my arms, propping my elbows against the wall and arching my back to present my ass, very much like someone who gets paid to show off my nearly naked body just like this two nights a week.

Declan probably thinks he’s being quiet. He probably thinks I just assume he’s looking his fill. But I can hear him breathing slowly, deeply through his nose, the way he does when he’s so outta-control horny that he has to rein himself in before every person in the Tri-State Area catches onto whatever bottom bat signal he’s putting up.
Discretion isn’t on the menu today, though, because when he finally says something, it’s: “Can’t believe we’ve been hooking up for two months, and you’ve had an ass like that this whole time, and I haven’t asked you to sit on my face even once.”

That startles a snort of laughter out of me. “What, you trying to end up with a broken nose? I’m like, two hundred pounds.”

“The hell you are, you skinny fucking liar,” Declan says. “You’re one eighty on a good day. You carry it well, though. Here.” He skims his hands up my sides and around my front to cup my pecs, getting a good, solid grope in while my nipples pebble up under his touch. “And here.” I bite back a protest as he moves away from my chest, palms skating back under my arms and over my lats, up my back to my shoulders, along the curve of my delts to squeeze my triceps.

This soon after running the obstacle course, my muscle pump is out of control, and I know I must look good, everything jumping out at him at once. I can feel his eyes on me almost as much as I can feel his hands. And then he’s moving down again, just the tips of his fingers trailing down to graze my ass. “And here. Can I touch you?”

He’s lingering near the elastic of my jock, definitely in the safety of cheeks territory instead of straying towards the cleft between. If I say no, he’ll back off immediately, and the absolute certainty of that makes it so easy for me to nod my head and keep on nodding until he grabs himself two big handfuls of my ass. He squeezes the same way he did with my pecs, just enjoying the feel of muscle and flesh, and god, I love his hands on me.

“I’ve never—” I try to say, but the words tangle around each other in my brain and can’t make it as far as my mouth. I swallow hard and try again. “Nobody’s ever… gone down on me like that? Like what you said. When you mentioned me, you know, fuckin’…”

“Sitting on my face?” Declan supplies, and I huff out a laugh and nod.

“Yeah. I’ve never had anyone do that. And I don’t like penetration, I don’t want that—fingers or dick or anything, I’m not into that.” I don’t even have to wait for his response, because he’s already nodding along, already so completely on the same page with what my limits are, and I feel some of the tension in my spine leeching out. It makes me want to lean back harder into him, press myself into his hands. “But if it was just your mouth, I might… like that. I don’t know. I’d be down to try it.”

Declan is still tracing the edges of my jockstrap, thumbs hooked into the band right at the spot where ass cheek meets thigh meets side. He ducks his head to press a long, quiet kiss to my shoulder, like he’s just considering everything I’ve said. Then he straightens up, firms up his grip on my hips, and turns me around so I’m backed against the wall instead of facing it.

“We can try anything you want to,” he says. “Whenever you want to, however you want to. Only if you want to. Right now, though…” He drops to his knees and shoots me an evil, filthy grin. “How about I use my mouth for something I know you like?”

“Pretty sure I’m the one who’s gonna be using your mouth,” I rasp, and he yanks my jock down to my ankles and swallows me down like that does anything to hide the desperate, somehow amused moan he lets out at my words.

That twitchy “don’t push my head down and don’t come in my mouth” attitude that Declan had the first time we fucked is gone these days. Ever since then, he has been gagging for it, sometimes literally, because he might say he still needs me to teach him how to deepthroat, but fuck if he’s not trying to get there on his own.

“Fuck, that’s good,” I breathe, letting my head fall back against the wall as he works me over. Usually, I watch while he’s sucking me off. He looks so fucking good with his mouth stretched around me, the muscles in his jaw and neck flexing as he bobs his head to take me deeper, and shit, he always knows the exact moment to look up at me, knows when seeing that searing heat in his whiskey-colored eyes will bring me right to the edge.

A needy groan claws its way out of my throat. I can’t watch him now. Can’t even open my eyes. I’m too worked up, like I’d crawl out of my own skin if it means getting closer to his. Instead I just feel him, cradle his head in my hands and murmur my approval as he sucks me.

And then Dec pulls off, his red hair slipping from between my fingers as he switches to his hand. I maybe let out a whine at that and look down to see that he’s leaning over to drag my backpack across the floor. He digs into the front zipper pocket and surfaces with a small bottle of lube, yanks the cap off with his teeth and spits it on the floor, and only then does he seem to realize that the lube has a shitty little pump top, which is a bitch to work with. There’s something stupidly funny about the idea of him letting go of my dick so that he can use both of his huge, calloused hands to pump lube out of this tiny little bottle onto his own palm, especially since I know this particular lubricant does, like, the tiniest little glob with each squeeze. He’s going to have to sit there hammering on that pump for a solid twenty seconds before he has enough to actually do anything with, and I’m going to be laughing at him, and he’s going to call me an asshole, and I’m going to fucking love it.

Dec narrows his eyes at me like he can hear what I’m thinking. Even if he can’t, he can definitely see my massive, shit-eating grin. A grin that disappears instantly when he clamps the bottom of the bottle between his teeth and uses his one free hand—because the other is still stroking my spit-soaked dick, not missing a beat—to twist off the entire pump top. Half the bottle spills out onto his hand, running in shiny rivers down his forearm and pattering to the floor in little silicone raindrops, getting absolutely fucking everywhere as he shoves his hand below the waistband of his fatigue pants.

Fatigue pants. Right. Uniform, obstacle course, he just set a new record, this is about him getting everything he wants, not just me getting my dick sucked.

“Up,” I say, grabbing at the collar of his shirt. “Get up. C’mon, get your clothes off, baby, I wanna see you.”

Declan half-stumbles to his feet and lets me tear open the fly of his pants. Between the two of us, we somehow manage to get them down and off and across the room somewhere with his kicked-off boots, who gives a shit. I reach for his cock, achingly hard and all shiny with too much lube, but he backs away, keeps backing up until he bumps into the edge of Sergeant Smitth’s oak monster of a desk, and then he’s on the desk, legs spread and knees pulled up to his chest and pressing two lubed fingers into himself and letting his head fall back with a sigh.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, I think to myself, or maybe say out loud, if that nasty, crooked smile playing at the edge of Declan’s lips is any indication. I stoop to grab a condom from the pocket in my backpack and get myself suited up while Declan fucks himself with two, then three fingers. It’s just prep—he has told me before that he doesn’t always get the angle right when he’s fingering himself, that he likes it better when I do it.

I shuffle closer to the desk and open my mouth to ask if he wants me to take over now, but before I can get a single syllable out, he grabs my dick and basically fucking tows me forward by it until he can rub the head against his hole, giving us both a hint of pressure and friction, but not letting me inside just yet. That’s fine, I can be patient. Or I can try, at least. His knees are still pulled up high enough that I can nudge my way under them to get his legs up on my shoulders. He lets his head fall forward so he can watch our bodies moving together, on the cusp of being joined, and the knowledge that his eyes are on me makes my dick jump a little in his hand, and he lets out a breath of a laugh. I kiss his cheek, since it’s closer than his mouth. His temple. His forehead.

That’s where my lips are still pressed when he moves to get a hold of my hip and jerks me forward, burying half my length inside himself in one movement. “Shit, Dec,” I whisper against his skin. He’s still staring down between our bodies, watching each inch disappear into the clutching heat of his hole. And if he wants to watch, I should put on a show, right?

I ease myself out just a little and then snap my hips forward, once, and then on the second time, I’m fully seated, as deep inside him as it’s possible to be. And now his head rolls back so all my open-mouthed kisses and whispers are smeared down his face, and he groans, the sound loud and hoarse in the otherwise silent room.

“Fuck, that’s it. Come on, want you to give it to me hard.”

My favorite kind of invitation. I get a knee up onto the desk and crawl up after him, shoving him backward so I can fold that motherfucker in half and rail him, even while the wood is groaning in protest beneath our combined weight. This is good, this is perfect—rough and noisy and sweaty and tight and fucking incredible, exactly the way we both like it best. Part of my brain is screaming out fuck, I missed this, even though it’s only been two days since we last fucked. I don’t care. I want this all the time, I want him all the time, every day.

There’s a splintering crack, and a bang like a bomb is going off, but if it is, it’s happening right underneath us, because the whole desk lurches. I throw an arm around Declan’s head to shield his skull if we end up on the floor, but that seems unlikely, ‘cause Declan’s legs have a death grip on me and his hands have one on the desk.
We’re both frozen in place for a minute. Everything is still. The room definitely isn’t collapsing around us. I slowly uncurl from the awkward protective hunch I’ve got going on over Declan’s head. “What the fuck?”

“Legs.”

“What?” My hand goes to his thigh, still thick and muscular and hot as fuck and covered in soft copper hair.

“Desk legs, you dickhead,” Declan says. He grabs my wrist and redirects me to the side of the furniture. I feel around until my fingers catch on something jagged, and yep—at least one of the stubby little desk legs has snapped clean off right where it’s supposed to be bolted into the wood. I switch to the other side and find that the mirroring leg is also gone. No wonder I feel off-kilter; one whole half of the desk has dropped a good five inches lower than the other.

“You broke Sarge’s desk,” I whisper.

“You broke Sarge’s desk,” Declan echoes, shoving at my shoulder. “You’re the dumbass who thought it could hold both of us.”

“Yeah, and you’re the slut who thought we should fuck on the desk in the first place,” I counter. “We could’ve been on the floor. Or the chair.”

“You think a rolling chair from fucking Staples would hold us better than this?” He squirms to drop his legs from my shoulders to my waist, totally disregarding what that shift in position does to me where I’m still very much inside of him. “We should probably get off.”

“What kind of ‘get off’?” I ask, with another shallow thrust of my hips. The desk gives a wobbly sort of squeak beneath us, and I press my lips together to hold back the instinctive giggle. Another thrust. Another squeak. Again, and again.

Declan has his head thrown back on the desk, eyes closed, but an infectious grin pulling at his lips. “You’re going to destroy the furniture.”

“Gonna destroy that ass,” I counter, and he groans and tries to cover my mouth with his hand.

“Christ, you’re the fucking worst,” he says. His other palm makes it around for a loud smack against one of my ass cheeks. “Come on. Keep going.”

We get approximately twenty-five more seconds of wild, incredible, but inappropriately squeaky fucking before the desk jolts again and levels out with a second, even louder crash as the remaining two legs come splintering off and rocketing in different directions.

“Shit,” I blurt out, like this wasn’t the most absolutely predictable result of my actions, and Declan fucking cackles, there’s no other word for it. Even if the rest of the squad upstairs somehow missed the drawn-out death of the desk, they can definitely hear him laughing now, open and overcome by the ridiculousness of the situation and such an unexpected, real sound. I kind of love his laugh, actually.

Except the second that thought flickers through my brain, I love his laugh becomes an almost irresistible urge to say I love you so that I can hear what it sounds like when he says I love you, too. Which is a fucking deranged thought process to be navigating when I’m basically mid-thrust in a fuck so crazy it broke furniture, but now that I’m considering it, maybe that’s the only appropriate time for me to be having whatever psychotic break I’m--

“Don’t stop,” Declan says, because right, mid-thrust wasn’t an exaggeration.

I open my mouth to say—I don’t know, something, anything, except the words that are right there are tell me you love me, and I’d honestly rather use one of those broken desk legs to stake myself vampire-style than say that, so I latch onto his neck and keep fucking him instead.

Later, after we’ve both gotten off and I’ve buried the condom and wrapper in the bottom of the wastebasket, I gather the broken legs for inspection. Each one is absolutely obliterated where the bolts were ripped sideways out of the wooden frame of the desk. It’s actually pretty impressive.

“We deserve some sort of credit for this,” I say.

“I’ll tell the admin office to add a subtitle to my plaque,” Declan says. He’s still sprawled out on the desk, panting, but he rallies soon enough and gets up to find his clothes.

There’s no way in hell I’m squeezing myself back into that too-tight jock for the ride home, so I just dress in my shirt, fatigue pants, and socks. I collapse in Sarge’s chair—and no way this thing would’ve held me and Dec both, not with the sound it makes from just me sitting down—and start to tie up my boots. Declan already has his on, and he uses the toe of one to kick the abandoned jockstrap at me.

“Tell me you’re not planning to leave that there.”

“And get fucking murdered by Smitth? No, thanks.”

“He wouldn’t know it was yours.”

I grin. “Sure he would. I told him I was wearing it before I did my course run.”

Declan rolls his eyes and stoops to pick up the jock. I expect him to drop it in the wastebasket and shuffle it to the bottom with the condom, but he pockets it instead. I snort. “Fucking pervert.”

“Hey, what are you doing Friday?” he says, almost before my shitty little jab is out of my mouth.

“Friday tomorrow, or Friday next week?”

He does a vague overhand gesture, like he’s passing a football. “Next week.”

I kick my feet up on the desk and lean back as far as I can without upending the chair. “Last day of classes, but half of them are canceled anyway, now that AP exams are done. I’ll probably try to dip early, see if I can get a nap before work that night.”

“And I’m guessing you don’t get vacation days,” Declan says.

“At the sketchy nightclub named after a brand of poppers? No, our benefits package is light on PTO, heavy on sexual harassment from bosses who wanna give me gonorrhea.” I make a face at the memory of the last time my second-shittiest boss, Mikael, suggested I join the group of coked-out twinks heading back to his apartment after the club closed. “Why?”

“Prom,” Declan says, and I give him the exact bewildered, amused look that single syllable deserves. He gives me the finger. “Fuck off, don’t give me that look. It’s a group thing. Me, Javi, Nessa, Aubrey, Taylor, Steve, Jenn, and Kaitlyn. We all got a table together, and Jenn and Aubs badgered us into getting a limo. It’s a school event, so it’s over at fucking ten thirty or something, and we’re all going over to the Ward House after. Gonna drag all the mattresses down into the living room and order a bunch of takeout and watch movies.”

A school dance and a sleepover. It sounds so childish and lame, and all at once, I want it more than anything else in the world. The closest I’ve ever been to this was six months ago, when I took Nate Holliday to his junior ring dance. Between the garbage music playing, the gossipy friends watching, the asshole jocks trying to knock us over, and the date who turned out to be talking shit behind my back two weeks later, it wasn’t really the highlight of my social experience at Lakewood High.

Not that I had a highlight of my time in Lakewood. Mostly, I had depression and rehab.

“You sure it’s a group thing?” I ask Declan to give myself more time. “Eight people going already, sounds pretty paired off. I’m not tryna ninth-wheel it.”

Declan shrugs. “It’s not really paired off. I mean, Javi and Vanessa are, you know—”

“Javi and Vanessa,” I supply, and Dec nods.

“Exactly. So, they’re together, but the rest of us are one big group. And even if people were pairing off, you’d—”

He cuts himself off, mouth snapping shut on that sentence like a bear trap on a wayward leg. It doesn’t matter, because I already know where he was going with that, and I can feel a smile starting to spread across my face.

“I’d what?” I prompt. His eyes narrow. Mouth stays shut. I keep going. “I’d be paired off, too? With you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, only ‘cause you’re too chickenshit.” I haul myself back out of the chair and dart forward to wrap my arms around his shoulders like we’re gonna slow-dance, even as he’s trying to back away from me. “Declan fucking Campbell, you goddamn loser, are you asking me to prom?”

“Fuck off. No.”

“Right, no, ‘cause what you’re actually doing is pussying out of asking me to prom. That’s even more embarrassing, oh my god.”

“I said fuck off.”

“I can’t fuck off yet. We’ve gotta compare dresses to make sure they match, since you wanna go to prom with me, ‘cause you’re a fucking dork who’s like, obsessed with me.”

We somehow end up wrestling in the same aimlessly frenzied way we often do—part play-fighting, part groping, part intentionally annoying the fuck out of each other because sometimes it’s just fun to do it. I’m the one who takes us to the floor, because I always am. It’s the only way I can successfully grapple him for even a few seconds, because my refusal to admit that he’s stronger than me doesn’t do shit to stop him from squirming out of my grip too damn easy every time. This time, however, I have the secret weapon of cooing ooooh, you wanna take me to the prom in a high-pitched voice while he tells me to fuck off again and tries to claw his way to freedom.
Somewhere a couple feet to the side, my phone chimes with a text alert from the pocket of my backpack. Declan makes a dive for it, digs it out and announces, “Oh, look. Goldwyn wants to talk to you. Guess you’ve gotta get the fuck away from me.”

“Gimme,” I demand, making grabby hands, and when he passes the phone to me, I roll over onto my back to read the text.

Hello, darling. Care to have lunch? I’m in the area, and I have sandwiches.

The area turns out to be the Patton senior parking lot. James and I have had our location sharing turned on for a couple of months now, part of his safety hyperfixation in the aftermath of his parents’ death. When I pull up the map app on my screen, I can see the little blue James dot moving across the parking lot in the general direction of the building I’m in. I frown. Showing up unannounced with food is more of a me move than a Jamie one, but I can’t be too surprised.

He’s different these days. Of course he is.

Hope they’re big, I text back with an open mouth, sandwich, squirt emoji combo. I’ll meet you in the garden behind the library. Give me 5.

I stuff my phone in my pocket and climb on top of Declan, who’s still lying on the floor next to me. “I gotta go,” I say, smacking a kiss to his cheek. “Congratulations again on setting the new course record.”

He grabs me by the chin and steers me into a proper kiss so that his answering thanks is murmured against my lips. I think I set a record of my own by only getting distracted by that for a few seconds before I clamber to my feet. The broken desk legs can’t stay here, and it seems like a better option to just pretend the desk was always half a foot closer to the ground, so I cram the scraps of wood into my backpack and zip it shut.

Declan has finally gotten himself upright, and at the door, I turn back to him and say, “Listen. There’s just one thing I really need you to know.”

He blinks at me warily. I wonder if he thinks I’m going to word-vomit a bunch of feelings at him. I wonder if he has any idea how close I came to doing exactly that earlier. I take a deep breath.

“I know that you know my favorite color is red, but red roses are kind of corny, so when you order my boutonnière for the prom you want to take me to because you’re a fucking loser—”

“I’m not getting you a fucking boutonnière.” Declan scrunches his sweatshirt up into a ball and chucks it at me; I use the door as a shield, then pop back into the room and continue on like he hasn’t said shit.

“When you order my boutonnière, make sure you tell the florist you want some other kind of flower, okay? Poppies could be cute, but that might be a little on-the-nose for someone who abused opioids, I dunno. You’ve got this though, I believe in you.”

I snap the door shut before he can respond and take off down the hall, leaving him to remember and clean up the sea of lube he spilled all over the floor earlier.

The garden behind the Patton library was planted during my freshman year as a place where students could relax and commune with nature so they didn’t jump off the library roof during midterms, or whatever. In the three years I lived on campus, Jamie and I only ever used it as a picnic station when I got us kicked out of the library for trying to smuggle in food.

When I arrive now, Jamie is sitting on a backless stone bench with his legs folded like a kindergartener and a giant, greasy-looking white paper bag sitting in his lap. I’d normally expect him to be worried about the stain potential, but he’s wearing probably some of the shittiest clothing he owns: joggers, a Columbia t-shirt that looks like something they handed out for free during his freshman orientation, and a pair of scuffed Adidas. He’s also wearing his glasses instead of his contacts, and his car keys and phone are just sitting out on the bench next to him instead of tucked into one of his leather satchels that he pretends are backpacks instead of purses. Every single one of those details would be a red flag on its own, but his darkly-circled eyes are set in an unfocused, fully-dissociated stare that makes me stop in my tracks a few feet away.
“Jamie?” I say.

He blinks. It seems like it’s kind of difficult. He does it a few more times and snaps to face me, his mouth twitching into an immediate and tense smile. “Hi. I hope I’m not interrupting your day. Were you waiting for your friends to finish their PT course? How did you do?”

“Good. Nine minutes, thirteen seconds. Campbell set a new course record. Eight twenty-six. Fuck the rest of them, though, I’m not sticking around for those late-alphabet-having motherfuckers,” I say. Jamie starts to force a chuckle, but I wanna cut that shit off at the knees. I sit down on the bench next to him and say, “Tell me what’s wrong, James.”

He at least has the decency not to pretend he has no idea what I’m talking about. He opens the white paper bag and starts unloading enormous, paper-wrapped subs and bags of chips onto the stone between us. I let him do it, even take one of the sandwiches when he wants to hand it to me. Neither of us moves to unwrap the food, though.

After a long minute, he says, “Georgia state law considers me a victim in my parents’ car crash. Because they both died at the same time. If it had only been one of them, then whoever survived would be considered a victim, but since they both…” He trails off and holds his hands out in a sort of guess this is it gesture. “Legally, I have certain rights. They assigned me a victim advocate who calls me to check in sometimes. The attorneys handling the prosecution of the driver need to keep me updated on court proceedings. I can make a victim impact statement during the sentencing, if I choose to. And they have to hear me out before they can offer him a plea deal.”

“Is that what they’re planning to do?” I ask carefully.

He nods, gaze cast down at his own lap, and finally starts to unwrap one of the sandwiches. “I got a call this morning from Samantha—that’s the victim advocate. Having any amount of THC in his system when he ran them off the road means that the driver is being charged with two counts of first-degree vehicular homicide. That’s a mandatory minimum of three years in prison for each count, and a maximum of fifteen. But he’s seventeen, and he hasn’t ever been charged with anything else, and he seems… remorseful. That’s what they keep telling me, anyway. They put him under house arrest when he bonded out, and he hasn’t tried to violate the terms of it. I suppose he understands the serious shit he’s in, and I think… I don’t know what I fucking think. People keep telling me he’s remorseful. He’s showing remorse. My parents are dead because he couldn’t wait until he got home to smoke a fucking blunt, and he’s remorseful.”

I rip open the paper wrapping of the second sandwich and shovel an enormous bite into my mouth because it’s the only thing I can do to stop myself from talking right now. And what I really want to say is--fuck his remorse. I hope he fucking chokes on it. But this conversation doesn’t have any room in it for my feelings, not when Jamie’s are so fragile already. So, I just smother myself in a mouthful of meatball parm and wait for him to keep going.

“Eight years per count, to be served concurrently. Eligible for parole after six years, with two years of probation to follow. Mandatory substance abuse treatment and community service after release. Driver’s license revoked until he’s thirty.”

I choke on a meatball. Jamie pounds a fist on my back until I cough it back up into my mouth, which is fucking gross, but I feel like spitting it out would be grosser, so I swallow it again, properly this time. “Seriously?” I gasp. “That’s it? If he’s eligible for parole after six years and the mandatory minimum is three per count, that means he’s getting the lightest possible sentence. He killed two people.”

Jamie tips his head back and closes his eyes. “He’s a seventeen-year-old idiot who got high and drove a car. I’ve done the same thing. So have you.”

“I know that,” I snap. “A year ago, I was neck-deep in an oxy prescription and a cocaine addiction, and I was swerving my Ferrari all over Lakewood. It wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t a mistake. It was a choice I made. I could have killed people, and now I have to live the rest of my life knowing that. I have to wake up every single day and think about all the people I hurt, or could have hurt, because I was selfish and sick and stupid. That’s my fucking punishment. It doesn’t matter how remorseful I am. And I don’t really think it matters how remorseful this guy is either. When you make shitty choices, and you hurt the people around you, sometimes you deserve to suffer for it.”

Jamie moves the uneaten sandwich off his lap and props his elbows on his knees so that he can bury his face in his hands. He isn’t crying, at least not yet, and I’d prefer to keep it that way, so I shut my mouth. I rub a pattern of big, slow circles over his back for several minutes, letting the meatball parm cool and congeal on its wrapper between us.

Finally, Jamie says, “There’s a plea hearing at the end of next month. He’ll enter his guilty plea, and the prosecutor can offer the deal. I’m allowed to read a victim impact statement as part of the official record. Will you come with me?”

“Yes,” I say immediately.

Jamie nods and not-quite-whispers a muted thank you. I keep rubbing his back. He eventually lifts his face from his hands and says, “I think I’m going to drop out of college.”

My hand stills, right there on the back of his ugly Columbia t-shirt. “You are?”

Surprisingly, he lets out a soft, almost wet-sounding laugh. “Well, sort of. Mostly, I think I’m failing out.” He sits up straighter and shakes my hand off, finally picks up his own sandwich and takes a huge bite of it. He chomps down on it viciously, the way Omelette gobbles up his kibble, then swallows like he’s proving some kind of point and continues, “I missed a lot of classes when I went to Savannah in March. Some of my professors were understanding, but I couldn’t make up the science labs I missed, and I never got around to completing a lot of the work. My grades have been”—he mimes a sharp, downward angle—“this whole second half of the semester. After the call this morning, I didn’t even show up for my ethics final. But even beyond that, I don’t… care. For the first time in my entire educational career, I don’t fucking care, because Christ, what’s the point? I’ve spent the past five school-years in New York, and I was prepared to spend another six the same way. College, then law school, then the fucking military, and some big impressive career as a judge advocate, and for fucking what? Who am I fucking impressing, Garen? My dead parents, who only got to see me a few weeks out of the year? My professors, who didn’t want my untimely tragedy to interfere with their grading schedule? The military, who won’t even accept my candidacy if I spend too many months in therapy even though I really, really need it right now? My partner, who has to take time off work and sit on a train for an hour every time he wants to see me, and who offered to help me write my victim impact statement damn near before I’d finished telling him I wanted to give one? You? You’re my best friend in the world, and you’ve spent the last eighteen months of your life being harassed by your peers, and being beaten and raped by an ex-boyfriend who I didn’t even know was back in the picture until he put you in the hospital again, and developing a drug addiction, and going to rehab, and having panic attacks, and suffering. You’ve been an inch away from dying at least six different times that I can think of, and I haven’t been there for fucking any of it, because I was so goddamn busy with my private boarding school education and then my Ivy League college and my luxury apartment on the Upper East fucking Side of fucking Manhattan.”

“Jay,” I whisper, opening my arms to him, and he collapses against my chest, letting me cradle him while he cries. The meatball sub is squashed somewhere between his thigh and my knee, creating a slowly-spreading wet spot of grease and marinara on my fatigue pants. Whatever—I was probably going to throw them out after graduation anyway.

“I’m so fucking tired, Garen,” James says. “I worked so hard, and I had all these plans for how everything would be, and I don’t want any of it anymore. It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t worth it, it’ll never be worth it. I just want my parents back.”

“I know you do,” I say into his hair. “I know. I’m so sorry, Jamie.”

I would give anything to be able to offer him more comfort than that. But this is all there is. I hold him tighter and just let him cry.

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