Chapter 13 #2
I shake my head, biting back a grin. “When it comes to Gerard, it’s best to just go with it. Fighting only makes it worse. Trust me. Drew tried to resist the bestie designation once upon a time and ended up with a friendship bracelet glued to his wrist for three weeks.”
“Superglued,” Drew corrects from his bookshelf. “I still have a bald patch on my arm.”
“Worth it,” Gerard says without a shred of remorse.
Jackson steps forward and claps Ryan on the shoulder from the other side, effectively sandwiching him between two enormous athletes. “Honestly, man, just surrender. One day, you won’t even blink twice at seeing Gerard come out of his room with morning wood.”
A genuine, pin-drop, hold-your-breath silence blankets the room. Ryan’s eyes, which were already wide, achieve a diameter I didn’t think was anatomically possible.
“His—” Ryan’s voice cracks on the single syllable. “His what?”
“Oh, yeah.” Jackson delivers this information nonchalantly. “It’s enormous. I’d wager it’s at least—”
“Okay!” I lunge forward before Ryan’s soul fully exits his body.
My hand finds the back of his neck, and I extract him from under Gerard’s arm with the practiced ease of someone who has been peeling people out of Gerard’s enthusiastic clutches for three years.
“That’s enough of that. Ryan, Elliot said you’re with me. Let’s go.”
“But we were bonding!” Gerard protests.
“You were traumatizing him.” I steer Ryan away from the group, my palm still resting against the nape of his neck because removing it would require a level of self-discipline I don’t currently possess.
His skin is impossibly soft there, and the fine hairs at his hairline brush against my fingertips in a way that sends a current straight down my spine.
I guide him toward the stairwell at the back of the library, the one marked ARCHIVES - BASEMENT LEVEL with a laminated sign that’s peeling at the corners. Behind us, I hear Gerard stage-whisper to Nathan, “He’ll come around. They always do.”
The stairwell is narrow, lit by a single fluorescent tube that flickers ominously. With each step down, my arms prickle with goosebumps, and Ryan rubs his palms together. Something tickles my nose, and a gray film coats my fingertip when I run it along the metal railing.
“Hey,” I say, keeping my voice low. “You okay?”
“I was just informed that Gerard Gunnarson is the owner of a massive erection. I’m…processing.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Jackson wasn’t exaggerating, but you won’t have to confront that reality today. Probably. Gerard keeps his pants on at least sixty percent of the time. Those are pretty decent odds.”
Ryan makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be a whimper. It’s hard to tell in the stairwell’s acoustics.
We reach the landing between floors, and I let my hand slide from his neck to his shoulder, turning him slightly so he’s facing me.
The flickering light catches his features in strobing intervals—there, gone, there again—and each flash reminds me that this is the new Ryan.
The one without the frames. “I really do like you without the glasses.”
The flush, which had been retreating, surges back with a vengeance.
It blooms across his cheekbones and spreads to the tips of his ears, turning them a shade of pink that shouldn’t be as endearing as it is.
His gaze drops to my chest—specifically, to the logo on my shirt—before snapping back up to my face.
“You said that already,” he murmurs. “Upstairs.”
“I said you looked good. This is me saying I like it. The contacts. Being able to see your whole face.” I tap my own cheekbone. “Nathan was right about the bone structure too.”
“Please stop talking about my bone structure.”
“Why? You have excellent bone structure. Very symmetrical. Astronomers should study it.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Sure it does. You study celestial bodies. I’m studying yours.
” The words leave my mouth before my brain can flag them for review, and I watch Ryan’s expression cycle through confusion, realization, and mortification in rapid succession.
My own face heats. “Your facial structure. I meant your facial—Christ.”
We lock eyes, frozen in mutual embarrassment while the cheap light above us pulses like a dying star.
“You’re usually smoother than this,” he says.
“I’m usually not standing in a stairwell complimenting my best friend’s face while he’s trying not to think about Gerard’s penis. It’s throwing me off my game.”
The almost-smile appears, there and gone in a heartbeat, but I catch it. I’ll always catch it.
“We should go,” Ryan says, tilting his head toward the stairs below us.
“After you, Captain Abrams.”
Something flickers in his eyes at the old nickname. A memory, maybe. Cardboard helmets and basement moonwalks. A boy who lifted him off the ground so he could touch the stars.
“Don’t call me that,” he says, but there’s no bite in it. If anything, his voice has gone soft in a way that makes my chest ache.
“Why not?”
“Because it makes me feel things I’m not equipped to handle this early in the morning.”
I watch him go—the straight line of his back, the neat part in his hair, the way his hand trails along the railing—and something slots into place inside me.
Not a revelation, exactly. More like a confirmation.
A truth I’ve been circling for years, getting closer with each orbit, and now I’m finally able to see it clearly.
I’m falling for him. Not past tense. Not childhood nostalgia dressed up in adult clothing. Present tense, active verb, no safety net.
I am falling for Ryan Abrams, and the ground is nowhere in sight.
The archives open up into rows of metal shelving that stretch into the dim recesses of the basement, stacked with banker’s boxes, manila folders, and the accumulated detritus of a century-old university.
The air is thick with dust motes that swirl in the shafts of light from the narrow windows near the ceiling.
A long table sits in the center of the space, already set up with sorting supplies—labels, markers, archival gloves, and a laptop that predates the internet.
“Wow,” Ryan breathes, and I can hear the genuine wonder in his voice.
He steps forward, his fingers trailing along the edge of the nearest shelf.
“These boxes go back decades. Maybe further.” He pulls one out slightly and reads the label.
“Faculty Records, 1947-1952. Oliver, do you realize what’s down here? ”
“Dust and spiders?”
“History.” He says it the way other people say “treasure” or “gold,” with barely contained excitement. “This is incredible. If these records haven’t been properly archived, there could be primary source documents down here that nobody’s looked at in half a century.”
“You’re getting turned on by old boxes, aren’t you?”
“I’m getting stimulated by the potential of discovery.” He catches himself, and the flush returns with such ferocity that I’m genuinely concerned about his blood pressure. “Intellectually. I meant intellectually stimulated.”
“Sure you did.”
“Oliver.”
“Hey, I’m not judging. Everyone’s got their thing. Mine’s hockey”—and you without glasses—“Yours is dusty paperwork.”
He opens his mouth to argue, then closes it. The almost-smile makes another appearance, lingering a beat longer this time. “You’re insufferable.”
“And yet you keep talking to me.”
Footsteps echo from the stairwell above us, and the rest of the group begins to filter in.
Drew and Jackson appear first, Drew’s sharp eyes already scanning the space with the tactical assessment of someone planning an escape route.
Jackson ducks under a low-hanging pipe and whistles.
Gerard and Nathan bring up the rear, Gerard’s head swiveling in every direction as he takes in his new home.
And then, out of nowhere, Elliot emerges from the darkness, and we all scream bloody murder.