Page 41 of Hilarina and the Ogre

“The hottest person at school has a crush on me. If my head swells any bigger, it’ll pop.”

“What do you mean, hottest?” Hilary’s ears were burning. His face was burning. “Varda’s hottest. I don’t even crack the top ten.”

“They’re nothing to you. And don’t speak that witch’s name. It’s dangerous. I’ll become unhinged.”

“You’re already unhinged. Did you break your head open on the steps when I wasn’t looking?”

Trenton’s thumb brushed his cheek. “You’re so pretty when you’re shy.”

“Motherfuck—”

Trenton kissed him. Not sweet. Not romantic. The boy pushed him over onto that ratty couch and laughed when Hilary tried to swear at him.

“Shit! You’re crushing me.”

“Blame yourself. You’re the one who took me off my diet.”

But the air wouldn’t go into Hilary’s lungs, his heart thundering loud enough to hear outside of his body. It had nothing to do with the weight—only that it belonged to Trenton.

He tried to duck his head, to twist away, but Trenton caught his face. The boy had grown so obnoxiously bold it was making him murderous. “For fuck’s sake.”

“How do you think of me?” Trenton asked.

Hilary pretended not to understand. “My spleen’s seriously going to rupture if you don’t—”

“I thought anything involving sex disgusted you. Is it different when you’re alone? Or when it’s only a fantasy? I can’t believe I never thought to ask."

“As if I would have answered!”

“Why not? I’ll answer you. Whatever questions you have.”

“Why did you let me?” If he really was going to get a free pass—if his audacity could really last that long—Hilary knew what he needed to hear most. “You knew it wasn’t a joke. Why let me kiss you? Why pretend?”

“Was it only pretending, then?”

He’d start crying again in a second. He was so fucking angry. “Don’t give me that shit! I love you.”

“Say it again.”

“Fuck!” he shoved at him. “Fuck!”

Trenton grabbed hold of him, hauling him up like a raggedy doll, and he was no longer smiling. “Does my heart beat any weaker than yours does? Have I not been the one chasing you this whole time?”

“But you don’t—”

“So what!” The word cracked coming out, and with it he realized Trenton was just as close to crying as he was. “So what if I don’t! Will you punish me for that? For being born without that kind of drive? I could drown in you. I am fucking obsessed with you. My every thought—every moment—is thinking of how to show you, how to be with you, how to make it so that you can’t live without me as much as I can’t be without you. I’m repulsed? I’m pretending? Hilary, if you asked me to cut off my hand to prove it belonged to you, do you think I would hesitate? Stop fucking around!”

Hilary’s head rang, or maybe it was the space around him that was dissolving, like being underwater or outside of his skin. His hands closed in something. Trenton’s shirt, though that wasn’t what he needed. If the universe was fair, if it listened to any wishes at all, it would take his heart and put it inside that chest, broader than his, stronger than his, to nestle up against the only other heart that could beat in tandem with his own.

The sound coming from his throat was like the wailing of an animal. He reached, and Trenton caught him, was already lifting, taking him up as he had always meant to, into the space reserved for him since the very beginning. “You wanted to be friends. I know it was important—I tried—I wanted to—”

“And you did.” Trenton’s mouth was up against his temple, speaking the words into his skin as if they might be absorbed through the layers of tissue there. “What could it be other than friendship? What else could be this powerful?”

“But I fucked it up. I started to want—”

“What we want is the same. To be close. To be so close. To breathe you into my soul and house you there for all of forever. It’s so frustrating that we can’t, forced to be separate. You in your body and me in mine.”

It did sound the same when Trenton put it like that. The yearning to push in, to merge in and meld. If he had to be Hilary, he wanted only to be that part of Hilary that was inside Trenton already. That was the better part. All that Trenton loved was better, and whatever was left over was not even worth thinking about. “Then let’s do it. I want to do it.”