had been braced to hear the worst. Neil was like Harvard in one way. He wanted something real, and he knew getting something fake would hurt more than having nothing.
“No,” Harvard said, shocked by the idea. “I wanted the date to go well. I liked you. It wasn’t some attempt to make Aiden jealous, what—”
As though Aiden would ever be jealous over him.
Neil must have seen the pain on Harvard’s face, as well as the regret. His hackles went down, and he opened his front door a little wider. But not all the way.
“I truly didn’t know how I felt about Aiden,” Harvard told him. “You knew before I did. And I’m truly sorry.”
Neil had nodded, accepting. He had said Harvard could call him if he ever needed to talk. Harvard’s mother had been right about him. Neil was nice, and Harvard liked him. In another world, a world with no Aiden, a world Harvard had no interest in living in, perhaps that could have been enough.
“Bye, Harvard,” Neil called from his front porch, where Harvard had first seen him little more than a week ago and wouldn’t be seeing him again. Even more wistfully, he added, “Bye, Harvard’s motorcycle.”
And that was that.
Aiden wasn’t like Neil, there for a week and then gone, someone whose absence could be borne. Harvard would never stop missing Aiden. If Aiden was gone, all the years of their past were gone with him, and all the years Harvard had ever imagined in the future.
Losing Aiden would be like carving a heart out of his chest and expecting his body to stagger on as normal.
“I understand what you don’t want,” Aiden told Harvard, speaking very carefully. Being careful not to hurt Harvard’s feelings, Harvard thought with a rush of guilt and affection. Now that Aiden knew he could. “Can you explain to me what you do want?”
Not to be like those other guys, who would pine for Aiden long after he’d forgotten them. To be different. Not to be foolish enough to throw away a lifelong friendship for the sake of something that couldn’t last.
Harvard couldn’t have everything he wanted. He had to keep what was absolutely necessary to him.
“I want what we already have. I want to know we won’t lose that. I want to know you better than anyone else, and for you to know me the same. I want to know that I’ll talk to you every day. I want what I can be sure of. I want to be friends,” said Harvard. “I want that always.”
Friends forever. For the first time, that sounded like a death sentence instead of a promise.
Aiden sighed. Harvard could only imagine how relieved he must be.
“If that’s what you want. Then that’s what I want, too.”
His tone was entirely cool and unaffected, but something gave Harvard pause. Maybe it was purely his own masochism.
“What you want is just as important as what I want,” he said slowly. “Do you want anything else?”
Aiden was quiet for a moment, contemplative. When he spoke, his voice sounded shockingly loud after the silence.
“I want one kiss that’s real. To see what it would be like.” As Harvard stared in astonishment, Aiden gave the same looping shrug he’d given before, though his face was entirely different, shuttered with none of that brief new openness. “Call it curiosity.”
No, absolutely not. Had Aiden not listened to a word Harvard had said? Why would he prolong this torture?
Even as Harvard thought that, he was moving toward Aiden. Helpless to resist. Just like everybody else. He hated himself for it, but he didn’t hate himself enough to stop.
He never knew who kissed whom first, moving together with terrifying ease and speed, as though these new moves had become instinct already. As though they would be difficult to unlearn. Aiden seized handfuls of Harvard’s shirt and pushed him up against the glass, his mouth an angry demand, and Harvard only pulled him in tighter. The kiss went through Harvard like light striking through a window or fire through brush, hot and vivid.
The setting sun burned a red line against the darkness behind Harvard’s eyelids. Not a sword wielded but a spear thrown in the darkness, with no way to know whom it might hit or hurt.
Aiden’s hand went behind Harvard’s head so Harvard wouldn’t hurt himself without breaking the kiss, starving and soothing, biting and gentling at once. They were almost clinging together and almost clawing at each other, and Harvard had to stop this, had