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Noah nods, uncurling from himself to sit straight and push off the bed. He smiles and presses onto his tip toes to place a dry peck on my lips before slipping out of the room and down the hall.
I wait until I hear the water turn on, and then start moving about to do what I always do best.
Take care of the people I love.
All the little frustrations and pieces of feelings that have been floating to the surface are buried under my protective instincts, because I have a best friend who needs me, a brother whose feelings I need to weigh against my own, and a man who wants a part of me I’ve never given to anyone.
Of all the days to fall apart, today isn’t an option.
With Noah gone and hours until my meet up with Atlas, my worry shifts into overdrive. Dad and his demolished porch and his outrage. Noah and his persistent nightmares. This thing with Atlas that keeps me on the edge of elated and terrified.
Everything feels clear and quiet when he kisses me. When he holds me. I’m supposed to be the one guiding his experimentation, but every time we’re together, it feels like he’s in the lead. Like I just want to lay my soul in his palm to fill me with warmth. Wrap his fingers around my core and be my security blanket. My safety.
I’ve never relaxed with someone the way I melt into Atlas when he’s around. But then I step back into the world outside our galaxy of pretend, and I’m slapped in the face with the harsh reality of life.
Dad’s bills and repairs are piling up; Shiloh is on the verge of a depressive episode because his new meds don’t seem to be tampering his mania as much as they should; I haven’t even mentioned it to Noah, but I had to drop a class last semester that I haven’t been able to pick back up, and that puts me under part-time enrollment so the student loans I took out are coming to bite me in the ass.
Sometimes I wonder what I’m even at college for. At first it was just the need to escape: to get away without feeling guilty about abandoning my family. But now it’s like another requirement, another task I have to check off on my daily tally. I’m skating by in the few classes I still have left, but my attendance is abysmal so it’s mostly just cram sessions the night before a test.
That night under the stars, Atlas wove a thought experiment of his own. One where we had a cabin out in the middle of nowhere. During the day, he’d be at the little family restaurant he owns with his older brothers, and I’d be at a tattoo shop helping people rewrite the stories society believes defines them. At night we’d build a fort under the stars and just talk. Hold each other and forget the rest of the world exists.
It’s not practical or possible by any means, but it creates a little spark of joy in my chest that’s been missing for years—maybe since the day Mom died. Atlas said that it could be my kernel of peace: that place I go when life gets hard or overwhelming; when I need to get away but there’s no way for me to leave. He says he has one like that, but that it’s a secret.
And then he’d kissed me like I was his secret: like I was his peace.
My bed is covered in crumpled and torn pages. There’s smudges of lead on my fingertips and smeared around my cheeks, nose, and chin because I can’t stand eraser marks and wipe at my mistakes with the pad of my fingers instead.
I don’t know what I’m making. There’s no image in my head, just an emotion bubbling in my thoughts until it’s a foaming mess that I can’t ignore. Nothing comes out right, though, and I can feel the frustration—the desperation—reaching a peak in my chest.
I need this out. Whatever it is, it needs to be captured on the page and bottled into the ink until I find the place, time, and money to put it somewhere on my body.
My phone buzzes against the comforter, and the fog narrowing my focus lifts. Not entirely, but enough that I can fit myself back into the Big Brother Blair mold when Shiloh’s name appears on the screen.
“What’s up, squirt?” I press the phone between my ear and shoulder as I fiddle with the sketchbook in my lap.
“Not much,” he says, tone dull. “Sore as shit from exercising with Atlas. You’d think he’d cut his best friend some slack, but fuck no. Fuck him.”
His voice holds a whine at the end, and a smile tugs at my lips for the first time in hours. “You told him not to go easy on you.”
There’s a beat of silence, then a heavy sigh. “I did. But since when does he listen?”
“He respects you, Loh. Plus, Atlas would never push you further than he thought you could handle.”
“I’m trying to be frustrated with him, you jerk.”
I chuckle. “Sure. Be mad at the man that would quite literally take on the world for you.”
“I know,” he says softly. “I love Atty.”
“Shocking.”
“No.” His tone shifts to something hard, but his voice is quiet. “I’m telling you I love him. You can’t have him, Blair. He’s confused and hurting, and he’s going through so much right now. He needs me. Not you.”
My sketchbook falls to the mattress, pencil rolling off the edge and clattering to the floor. A lump forms around the breath in my throat, making my chest go stock still.
“I don’t have him,” I say through the intrusion, hoping he takes the way my voice cracks as just static from the phone. “He isn’t mine. I know you care about him.”
I’ve always known he cares. I’ve seen the way he’s all but monopolized Atlas throughout the years. How he has friends but only ever sees them in class or with Shiloh present. How Shiloh has been his priority for so long I don’t think he realizes how isolated he is.
