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A short silence fell, and I held my breath, waiting for ridicule or for them to kick me off their beach.
“So,” Miller said finally. “Do I email you all my homework assignments directly or do you prefer hardcopy?”
Warmth flooded me. “No chance, Stratton.”
“Worth a shot.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty damn perfect, right here,” I said after a few minutes. “Like we’re at the edge of the world and no one can touch us.”
“Yep,” Miller said, and Ronan nodded.
I sucked in a deep breath. Here goes nothing. Or everything.
“I’m gay,” I said. “I just wanted to get that out there. In case it wasn’t obvious. Is that going to be a problem?”
Miller’s brows came together. “No. Why would it?”
“Ask my parents,” I said, hope rising in my chest. I looked to Ronan. “How about you?”
Ronan downed the rest of his beer and threw the bottle aside. “No, I’m not gay.”
Miller and I exchanged glances then and our laughter came roaring back. The kind of laughter that keeps going until you’ve forgotten what was so funny in the first place. The kind that cements friendships instantly. A warm balloon expanded in me, lifting me for a few moments out of the shadows. When I caught my breath and came back to earth, I belonged around this fire, with these guys.
“You’re a crazy motherfucker, you know that?” Miller said to me, still laughing.
“So I’m told.”
“You could have been in with them, you know? The popular kids.”
“Why would I do that when fucking with them is so much more fun?”
“Fun,” Ronan said, his eyes on the roaring flames. “Is that what that shit with Frankie was about? Fun?”
“I did it to throw him off guard,” I lied. “That’s all.”
They wore twin expressions of doubt and concern, but they let it alone and I understood that giving each other space was one of the key tenets of their friendship.
“Where are you from?” Miller asked after a while.
“The Pits of Hell. Seattle,” I clarified. “Not that Seattle is hell, only my parents’ house. I live with my aunt and uncle now. They have a vacation home here in the Seabright neighborhood and are living in it year-round while I finish school.”
“Why even bother with school at all?” Miller asked. “With an IQ like yours, shouldn’t you be curing cancer or building robots at MIT?”
“Medicine takes discipline. I have none.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Be a writer,” I said, rubbing my ink-stained fingers. “Don’t know that I’ll be any good at it.”
“Why not? You’re smart enough.”
“A giant IQ means I have facility with language and words, but it doesn’t guarantee those words will have heart.” I turned to Miller. “Like your music. That was all heart. When I write like you play, my friend, I’ll call myself a writer.”
He seemed stunned by the compliment and didn’t know what to do with it. But I knew the rules here and I didn’t push it.
Like I should’ve done with River.
“You had only one more year of high school,” Miller said finally. “Why leave?”
