Page 142 of These Secret Years

“It was a great kiss. I don’t want you to think⁠—”

“I don’t. It was a good kiss.”

“I do want you.”

“Same. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I just don’t know how to have you anymore.”

He has me. That hasn’t been in question for a long time now.

Rather than address it, I opt for a subject change. “You know what? I think we need to finish these beers and figure out a plan for next semester. What do you think about getting an apartment?”

He’s all in.

I pay for the off campus apartment, but it’s Sullivan’s name on the lease, and he’s the one who technically lives there. I technically still live in the house with the guys because we have our own lease, but I’m at the apartment every chance I get, even staying overnight when I feel like no one I live with is paying attention.

To say that Sullivan and I are taking it slow would be far overstating what’s actually happening between us as the winter gets even colder. The closest we’ve gotten to each other is about the same as it was on Christmas night when we lay face to face on the blankets and pillows beneath the glowing tree, our bodies barely touching other than his hand on my chest and mine on his waist. It’s close enough that our noses sometimes brush, and there’s the occasional soft kiss, but nothing more.

His clothes always stay on. He’s okay with me having my shirt off, but I haven’t pushed it any more than that. I go to sleep wearing sweats or pajama pants that I keep at his place. His face healed before New Year’s, or at least it looked healed when I FaceTimed him after winning our championship bowl game where I was named the MVP.

Even my dad had to give me some credit for that one. This is your calling. Proud of you, son.

I was so high off that win—the whole season—but at the bottom of it, my obsession with Sullivan nagged at me. Worry. Missing. Pure fucking longing for the person I wanted to be with the most. So, yeah, at least his face looked better.

His wrist takes longer, but it heals, slowly, over a couple of months. He comes out of the cast and goes into more of a splint thing, but he’s got full use of his thumb, and he starts seeing a physical therapist three times a week, although I do have to stay on him about that. He’s got this thing I’m learning about him where he thinks he can handle everything all by himself.

When I asked him why he was like that one night while we were just staring at each other on the couch, he looked surprised. “Oh,” he said. “I guess because I’ve always just…had to.”

Once the season was officially over in January and classes were about to start, Deandre called him and reminded him about our standing date at the gym. According to D, one working arm was good enough, and so—not because of me—we’ve still been working out together on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

It’s the easiest I ever see Sullivan. D, I think, in his own way, is a little obsessed with Sullivan, too, always talking his ear off on the treadmill and asking a million questions about music and his plans, or telling him he knows a guy who knows a guy or whatever who can help Sullivan get his music heard by some people.

For his part, Sullivan is still writing. Every day. He can write with his left hand, too, it turns out, but that doesn’t surprise me.

We don’t go home for Spring Break. I tell my roommates I am, and I pack a bag of clothes, but I only drive to the other side of campus, let myself into the apartment, and find Sullivan on the window seat, his legs drawn up to support the pad of tablature he’s scoring on, his pencil poised, his violin resting against his hip. He grins at me when I come through the door.

“Hey, honey. So glad you could come all this way. I’m making your favorite for dinner.”

Nothing’s cooking, and I’ve never seen him make anything more than a bowl of cereal or a cup of ramen unless we have leftovers. Getting him to eat properly has been more of a struggle this semester, but when I’m here, I either cook a decent meal, or order one. If I stay the night, he gets a full breakfast, too.

I wink at him before taking my bags into the bedroom, dropping them off and making him make room for me on the window seat. He has to fold his knees tighter to his chest and put the notebook aside, but the way he’s looking at me like I’ve come to deliver him from everything that’s ever hurt him makes me think he doesn’t mind being a little crowded.

Our knees and calves slot together, and I say, “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“How was PT?”

“Uncomfortable. How were the twins?”

“Moping,” I tell him. Dillon and Derek were miffed when I didn’t invite them home with me for the break the way I usually do. I had to lie and tell them my mom was super stressed with work, and I didn’t want to overwhelm her with houseguests. That made them feel a little less butthurt, but I had to really talk up the summer and all the things we’d be able to do. “But they did leave.”

“Where does their grandmother live?”

“Kentucky, but they decided to take a road trip to Texas instead.”

“Your house must be really nice because I can’t see any other reason they’d be so sad about not getting to go to Sunrise Point.”