Chapter 13
OLIVER
Is it possible to choke on your tongue? Asking for a friend.
That friend is me.
I’m standing in the campus library and fritzing like a broken animatronic at Chuck E. Cheese, because Ryan Abrams has just walked through the double doors with Jackson. And he isn’t wearing his glasses.
Let me say that again for the people in the back.
Ryan. Abrams. No. Glasses.
My brain liquefies. Not gradually, not in stages, but in a full, instantaneous meltdown. Every coherent thought I’ve ever had evaporates into steam, replaced by a singular, all-consuming awareness that the boy I used to live next door to has become a man who could make me walk into traffic.
For as long as I’ve known Ryan, the only times I’ve seen him without glasses were specific, controlled situations.
Late at night during sleepovers, when he’d set them on the nightstand and his face would go soft and unguarded in the dark.
In the mornings after a shower, when he’d emerge from the bathroom squinting and fumbling, acting more like a baby deer discovering the world for the first time than a human being.
And that one summer at the Westbrook Community Pool, when I was teaching him to swim.
I remembered thinking, even then, that his face looked different without them.
But that was kid Ryan. Scrawny, pale, ribs-visible Ryan with his anchor-print swim trunks and his mid-calf socks.
This is grown-up Ryan. And that guy is hot with a capital H.
Capital O. Capital T. The whole goddamn word in neon letters fifty feet tall, blazing against the night sky, telling me that I am absolutely, irreversibly fucked.
His hazel eyes are wide and luminous in the library’s natural light, framed by lashes that are darker and longer than I ever realized.
His cheekbones, usually bisected by his glasses, cut sharply and cleanly across his face.
His nose, freed from the constant weight of frames, appears straighter and more defined.
Even his jawline seems sharper. It’s as if the glasses were a disguise, and he’s ripped them off to reveal that he’s been Superman this entire time.
My body responds in kind—toes curling in my flip-flops, my cock stiffening against my thigh inside my khaki shorts. I have to shift my weight and angle my hips away from the group before someone notices that the team captain is pitching a tent in the library.
What is happening to me? This is Ryan. My childhood best friend.
The kid who ironed—sorry, steamed—his socks.
The kid who told me my “pedagogical methods leave much to be desired” while I was trying to teach him to float.
I should not be having a cardiovascular event because he switched to contacts.
“Damn, Ryan!” Gerard is the first to break the silence. No surprise there—Gerard has never met a silence he didn’t want to murder. He bounds across the library’s entrance area, his blond hair flopping. “Where are the glasses? You look like a whole different person!”
A flush creeps up Ryan’s neck. “I got contacts.”
Nathan nods with the approving air of someone who knows things about eye care and gives Ryan an appraising look. I stifle the snarl that threatens to escape. “It suits you, man. Your bone structure’s really nice without the frames competing for attention.”
Drew leans against a bookshelf, arms crossed, and lets out a low whistle. “Ryan Abrams, you’ve been hiding that face behind prescription lenses this whole time? Someone should press charges.”
“They’re just contacts,” Ryan mumbles, but the flush has spread to his cheeks now, painting them pink in a way that makes my stomach do deeply concerning acrobatics.
“It’s not just contacts,” Gerard insists, slinging an arm around Ryan’s shoulders. “It’s a transformation. A glow-up. A—what’s the word?”
“Metamorphosis,” Nathan supplies.
“That! You’ve metamorphosed, dude!”
Ryan’s eyes dart around the group, searching for an anchor that happens to be me. Buffering like a web page, mouth slightly open, zero words loading.
Say something, Oliver. Anything. You’re the captain. The big brother. The emotionally intelligent one who always knows what to say. Open your mouth and form a sentence that isn’t “I want to lick your cheekbones.”
“You—” My voice comes out as a pubescent squeak. I try to recover with a throat-clearing, which earns me a raised eyebrow from Drew. “You look good, bud.”
Nailed it. Casual. Breezy. A totally normal compliment from a totally normal friend.
Ryan’s flush deepens approximately three shades. “Thanks.”
The corner of his mouth twitches in that almost-smile I’ve been chasing since we were kids, and my cock jerks in response. I shove my hands into my pockets—partly to look casual, but mostly to create a barrier between my situation and the outside world—and try to reboot my higher brain functions.
Synapses fire. Neurons reconnect. The fog lifts enough for me to remember where we are and why.
The library. Summer penance for our naked pool adventure.
Drew’s eyes narrow. His gaze flicks from my face to my pocketed hands to my curled toes, and I watch the realization bloom across his face. Fuck. He’s totally going to hold this over my head for the rest of my life.
I shoot him a look that says, “If you say one word, I will end you.” He shoots me one back that says, “This is the best day of my life.”
Gerard, mercifully oblivious, continues cataloging Ryan’s facial features as though he’s an art critic at the Louvre.
“Has anyone told you that you look like a young Paul Newman? Because you look like a young Paul Newman. Elliot would agree. Elliot loves Paul Newman. Speaking of the love of my life, where is Elliot?”
As if summoned by the invocation of his name, Elliot Montgomery rounds the corner of the reference desk, a clipboard in his hand, and his expression locked into professional mode.
“You must be the pool delinquents,” he says. “I’m Elliot Montgomery, librarian and Dean Morris’s assistant for the summer. I’ll be coordinating your summer penance activities.”
Jackson scratches his head. “Uh, Elliot? We all know who you are. Gerard is your boyfriend. You’re my best friend. Why are you…” He gestures his hand at Elliot’s stoic demeanor.
“Because right now, you don’t know me, and I don’t know you.”
“Oh fiddlesticks. I’m getting a boner,” Gerard whispers.
Elliot’s gaze lands on his boyfriend with laser precision. “Mr. Gunnarson. The one with the memorable posterior.”
Gerard beams. “That’s me!”
“Keep talking, and your punishment will be much worse.”
The way Gerard mimics my pose—hands in pockets, hips angled, toes curling in his flip-flops—would be funny if it didn’t suddenly make it even more obvious what’s happening to me.
“Let’s establish some ground rules.” He consults his clipboard.
“You will report to me every morning at eight o’clock sharp.
You will complete any assigned tasks without complaint.
You will conduct yourselves as representatives of Berkeley Shore University, which means no more late-night pool infiltrations, no more naked sprints across campus, and absolutely no more incidents that end up on gossip blogs. ”
Drew and I exchange a look. The Ice Queen is going to be devastated.
“Your first assignment begins today.” Elliot flips a page.
“The university archives in the basement of this very building have been neglected for decades. Boxes of documents, photographs, and memorabilia need to be sorted, cataloged, and organized. You will be working in pairs.” He reads off the pairings like a sentencing.
“Drew Larney and Jackson Monroe. Gerard Gunnarson and Nathan Paisley.” A pause. “Oliver Jacoby and Ryan Abrams.”
My heart stutters. Ryan’s eyes meet mine, wide and slightly panicked.
“Be warned. It’s dusty down there.” He surveys us one final time. “Any questions?”
Gerard raises his hand. “Is there going to be a heartfelt moment at the end of this where we all realize we’re not so different after all and form lifelong bonds?”
Elliot stares at him for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Mr. Gunnarson, the only thing you’re going to realize by the end of this summer is that actions have consequences.”
Gerard watches him go with undisguised admiration.
“This is just like The Breakfast Club. We’re all here for detention, thrown together by fate, forced to confront our differences, and Elliot is definitely the principal.
The authority figure who doesn’t understand us but secretly wants us to succeed. ”
“This is nothing like The Breakfast Club,” Nathan says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “In The Breakfast Club, there were five people. There are six of us. The math alone disqualifies your analogy.”
Gerard’s mouth drops open like Nathan just insulted his firstborn. “The math? Are you going to math your way out of a cinematic parallel? That’s the most Nathan thing you’ve ever said, and you once corrected a professor’s grammar during a fire drill.”
“It was a misplaced modifier. It changed the entire meaning of the evacuation instructions.”
“See, this is exactly what I’m talking about.
” Gerard wheels on Ryan, who has been standing quietly at the edge of the group, doing his best impression of someone who wishes he were invisible.
Gerard slings his arm around Ryan’s shoulders and tugs him into the conversation.
“Ryan, back me up here. This is totally The Breakfast Club. We’ve got the jock, the rebel, the brain—that’s you, by the way—”
“I didn’t agree to be the brain.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s self-evident.” Gerard tightens his arm around Ryan’s shoulders. “You’re my new bestie, and besties back each other up. That’s, like, rule one of the bestie code.”
Ryan’s gaze finds mine across the group, his eyes wide and pleading.