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“Oh right. I forgot. It just feels like you’ve always been here.” Eli bounced inside, flicked on the entryway light, covered his eyes, and then blindly turned it back off. “Next year, take an Uber to Hughes Thanksgiving so we can get drunk together and then have drunk sex on my ginormous couch.”

Nolan let out an embarrassing gurgle. “Next year. Right.”

“If we’re still together,” Eli said. He removed his shoes and left them by the front door, and Nolan did the same. “Which I hope we will be. Do you think we will be?” He hiccuped his way to the couch in one socked foot and on one bare foot, leaving a trail of outerwear behind. Scarf, coat, toque. “Do you like me? I like you. A lot. I called you my significant other today, but I don’t actually know if you are. Like, are we exclusive? Am I just a fling? What happens when you go back to San Francisco? Do you even want to go back there?”

Nolan had no idea what to do with any of that, so he stood there like a statue and stared as Eli sat on the couch and pulled off his one remaining sock.

“Wait, forget I asked that,” Eli said, his speech slowing. “I wasn’t supposed to ask that. You’re not supposed to know yet that I want to keep you forever and ever until it’s lights out ’cause I don’t want you to have one foot out the door with me. Both feet inside, okay?” He lay down on the couch, fully dressed in jeans and a sweater, and tugged the throw over himself. He laid his head on one of Nolan’s accent pillows and hugged the other to his chest. “Both feet inside,” he repeated. “I’m sleepy. Can you turn the lights off before coming to bed?”

Nolan looked around helplessly. The only lights came from the under-cabinet lights in the kitchen, and they reached the living room just enough for Nolan to see Eli’s silhouette. “They are off.”

“Cool. Thanks.”

Eli was asleep in the next second.

And Nolan took his first full breath in several long minutes.

chapter

sixteen

“Wow,” Eli said when Zanetti answered the door at seven the next morning. “Last year when we went jogging after Hughes Thanksgiving, you looked like hungover warmed-over crap.”

Zanetti’s dark-eyed gaze narrowed. “Why are we friends again?”

“Today, you look great.”

“Ah. That’s why.” Zanetti stepped outside and shut the door.

“What’s your secret?” Eli asked.

Zanetti sent him a sly grin. “Didn’t drink as much.”

“What, no. You drank as much as the rest of us. More, actually, since you did the obstacle course twice.”

“But what about two truths and a lie?” Zanetti asked. He began to jog backward as Eli fast-walked after him.

“What about it? You drank as much as everyone else. I saw you.”

“Did I?” Turning to face forward, Zanetti met Eli’s gaze over his shoulder. “Or did I refill my shot glass from a separate bottle filled with water?”

Eli’s jaw dropped. “You cheater! How are you so good at cheating at Hughes Thanksgiving?”

Zanetti’s laugh echoed along the quiet street.

They jogged in silence for a few minutes. The late-November bite to the air cooled Eli’s skin. He’d woken up under two blankets on the couch—the throw he kept over the back of the couch and the comforter from his bed upstairs. He didn’t remember going up to fetch it, so Nolan must’ve covered him in it at some point. Or maybe he’d gone to get it for himself, seeing as Eli had commandeered the throw.

He’d fully expected to find the other side of the couch empty this morning. He’d been incoherent last night, rambling like a jackass, and he wouldn’t have blamed Nolan for heading home.

But he’d been sound asleep next to Eli.

So maybe Eli hadn’t scared him off with his two a.m. are-we-exclusive song and dance.

“So,” Zanetti said once they’d cleared their neighborhood and crossed a nearby side street. “You and Nolan, huh?”

“Yup,” Eli said with more confidence than he felt. “Me and Nolan.”

“A bit of a one-eighty compared to when you were crying about him having a girlfriend last year.”