“Really?”

Eli’s smile was so tremulous that it broke my heart, and I knew at that moment I couldn’t have made any other decision. I still had no idea what to do next, but I couldn’t handle him walking away again.

“Really.” I wrapped my arms around him and crushed him to my chest. “God, yes, really. Please just—don’t go. Don’t go anywhere.”

Eli made a strangled sound against my shoulder. His face was buried somewhere in my neck, so it was hard to hear. Remembering the tears in his eyes, I relaxed my grip. I didn’t want to squeeze all the air out of him. But Eli didn’t move a muscle, and after a moment it dawned on me that he was laughing.

“What are you laughing about?” I asked, stroking the back of his head with my hand.

His hair smelled good—warm and fresh and faintly like citrus—and I inhaled deeply. How long had I ached to hold him, just like this?

“Just that two minutes ago, I was convinced you never wanted to see me again and now—” he snorted and slid his arms around my waist, holding me tighter. “I just have a little whiplash is all. But you don’t need to worry about me going anywhere. Honestly, good luck getting rid of me.”

“Good. Very good.”

I pressed my face to the side of his head, breathing deeply, and almost pressed another kiss to his hair before I could stop myself. I didn’t want Eli to leave—I knew that in my soul. But nothing else was any clearer, and I still felt guilty about kissing him. Even if that was what had gotten us here. My head was a mess.

“As for whiplash…” I made myself take a step back, though I couldn’t quite bring myself to let go entirely. I took his hands in mine and held them. He’d been the one shaking earlier, but now he seemed rock steady, and I was the one who was falling to pieces. “Would you please tell me what actually happened tonight? I want to know that you’re alright.”

Eli cocked his head to the side and grinned. “That depends. Will you kiss me again, if I tell you?”

My stomach turned a somersault at that thought. I very, very much wanted to do just that. But it wouldn’t be right—or at least, I was pretty sure I thought it wouldn’t be, and I needed some time to think, and good lord, was it hard to think around Eli.

I bit my lip, not sure of what to say, and Eli sighed.

“I can tell by that look that the answer is no. It’s fine.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” I began slowly. “It’s just—”

“That you’re already regretting kissing me in the first place?” Eli said. He laughed, but it was short and brittle sounding. “It’s okay, Nick. You don’t have to pretend you care about me the way I—”

“Hey, listen to me.” I tugged Eli’s hands gently as I broke in. “I care about you. Very, very deeply.” Something trembled inside me at those words, as though they’d strummed a chord that reverberated throughout my entire body. “If I could only show you the space in my heart that you take up. Though on second thought, that might actually creep you out.” I squeezed his hands and smiled. “This is complicated, but if you believe one thing, please believe that I care about you.”

Eli looked up from the patch of floor he’d been staring at. “It’s gonna take some getting used to. So I can’t promise I won’t need you to remind me more or less constantly. But I guess I could try.” He gave me a lopsided grin. “And I guess I could also be an adult and answer your question without holding you emotionally hostage.”

“You’re too kind,” I snorted. I took a step towards the couch, then another, pulling Eli with me. I tried not to feel disappointed when he sat a completely reasonable 12 inches away from me. At least he didn’t move his hand away from mine. “So. I take it you lost your phone somewhere along the line tonight, but why don’t you start at the beginning?”

“Well, it feels stupid now, but…” Eli made a disgusted noise in his throat. “It’s been a really shitty month, and I was really sad, and then I got angry about being sad, and then I decided if I was just going to be sad and angry no matter what, I might as well do something intentionally dumb. So I came in tonight, and I ran into those guys from before…”

He trailed off and looked down at the couch cushions. I tried to stifle a flash of jealousy. Eli could do whatever he wanted with whoever he wanted. I wasn’t sure I even had any claim on him now, but I certainly hadn’t an hour ago, before I’d even known he was in New York. Still, my heart beat faster as Eli continued his story.

“It was really dumb, because I wasn’t interested in any of them. But I thought maybe if I just tried hard enough to pretend I was, I could convince myself. So I let them take me to this other bar, but then, when we got there—”

Eli broke off and a shiver ran through his body. I clenched his hand tighter.

“Did something happen? Did they—did someone hurt you?”

“No.” Eli was quiet, and he shook again, still looking away from me. “No, they—I’m okay.”

“Eli, look at me for a second?” I asked, working to keep my voice calm.

Slowly, Eli turned his gaze to meet mine. He dropped my hand.

“I promise I’m not going to be mad,” I said, trying to keep the terror out of my voice. “But you know you can tell me if something—I mean, if they did anything—”

“No, Nick, it’s fine.” Eli squeezed his eyes shut for a second. “Honestly. I just started to get kind of freaked out. I wasn’t sure if they were actually being sketchy, or if I was just imagining it, but they kept trying to get me to drink more, and took me into this back room, and I just panicked and ran away, and it wasn’t til I was outside the bar and blocks away that I realized I’d forgotten my jacket, with my phone and everything. And then coming here was the only thing I could think of. Sorry, again, for ruining your night.”

“You didn’t ruin my night,” I said, willing myself to calm down. I knew my face looked grim, and I tried to soften it into a smile. “I’m glad you came here. If I seem angry, it’s because I’m angry at those guys. Not at you.”

“But you—I mean, you’re the one who always told me this was dangerous. And then I went and—”

“Hey, it’s okay.” I took a deep breath. “Yes, I’m always gonna care about your safety, but that’s because I care about you. You don’t have to apologize for going out with those guys. It’s not like I had the right to ask you not to. All that matters is that you’re safe now, got it?”

Eli frowned. “If you say so.”

“I do.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Then, um, speaking of now. What, uh, what happens next? Are you gonna make me sleep in your bed again, and stay out here on the couch?”

I hesitated.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to make it weird.”

“You didn’t make it weird.” I swallowed. “And if you’d like, we could both sleep in my bed.”

Eli’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”

“Unless that seems like it’s crossing a line. I wouldn’t try to—I mean, it would just be to sleep. Nothing—nothing else.”

“You mean you’re not offering to take advantage of me while I’m passed out?” Eli arched an eyebrow. “Honestly, Nick, that’s kind of a dealbreaker for me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Cute.”

“But I suppose I’ll survive.” Eli bit his lip. “Do you um—do you have any thoughts about what happens after tonight though? Like, long term?”

He gave me a small smile, but I could see the flicker of worry in his eyes. He probably thought I was going to have a moral panic attack and kick him out tomorrow morning, sermonizing about how I couldn’t see him again.

Well—are you sure you’re not going to do that?

I wanted to be sure. I wanted nothing more than to just let go of everything holding me back, every rational part of my brain that told me this was a terrible idea.

But I wasn’t sure I could.

“My thoughts about that are that it’s late, and we both need sleep,” I said finally. “But I’m really, really happy you came here tonight.”

Whatever else happened, I was glad of that.

“Come on.” I took his hand again and stood up. “We’re both going to pass out right here if we don’t move soon.”

“If we’re being honest,” Eli said, following me back to my bedroom, “that wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for me. I may or may not have daydreamed about sleeping on that couch, spooning with you, like, a lot.”

“Well, if we’re being honest, I may or may not have dreamed about sleeping with my arms around you in lots of different places.”

“Really?” Eli’s eyes grew wide.

“Really.”

Eli blushed.

“Is it uh—is it okay if I take my jeans off?” he asked, looking at me as I sat down on the edge of the bed. “I won’t try to, you know, do anything. They’re just kinda tight.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” I laughed as Eli stuck his tongue out at me. “Go ahead, do whatever you need to to get comfortable.”

I was going to keep my sweatpants firmly on, I’d decided. I was wound-up enough at just the thought of having Eli in my bed. Having some extra fabric between us seemed like a good idea.

I busied myself with fluffing up the pillows and fixing the sheets as Eli stripped down to his boxer-briefs and the white t-shirt he’d been wearing under his sweater. It was hard to keep my gaze averted, but I wasn’t sure I wanted Eli to see the naked desire in my eyes.

When he was done, I climbed into bed and slid over towards the wall, making room. “Come here, you.”

Eli’s face broke into a smile and he climbed in after me, snuggling under my arm as I curled it around him. His back was pressed to my chest and my nose was in his hair again, and it took everything in my power not to kiss the nape of his neck.

I didn’t know why holding him was okay, but kissing him wasn’t. It probably didn’t make any sense. But I had to draw a line somewhere, and until I figured out what the hell we were going to do about this situation, keeping my lips off his skin seemed like a reasonable place for a hard stop.

“Hey, Nick?”

Eli’s voice was soft and drowsy, and I was glad that I’d suggested we go to sleep rather than try to figure anything else out tonight. Poor kid was exhausted, and probably still rattled from earlier. For all I knew, he’d be the one with a change of heart in the morning. The last thing in the world I wanted was to take advantage of him.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for letting me in tonight.”

As if there were a world in which I wouldn’t. I didn’t think there was anything I wouldn’t give, if he asked me.

Thanks for letting him in?

Thank you for not giving up on me. Thank you for coming back to me. Thank you for existing.

I’d tried living my life without Eli, and it was unbearable. No matter how messed up this was, it was better than the alternative. I needed him.

“Always,” I whispered, pulling him tighter. “You know you always have me, okay?”

But Eli didn’t answer. He’d already fallen asleep.

I woke up slowly, swimming to the surface of a world that was familiar in every aspect—except one. Same room. Same sunshine slanting in through the window and warming the pillow. Same smell from my coffee maker waking me up before my alarm even went off.

And Eli in my arms.

He hadn’t moved all night, and even now, his chest rose and fell against my forearm, his legs tangled with mine. We’d both kept our promises and done nothing but sleep, and I squelched the part of me that was disappointed Eli hadn’t tried to push things further.

Judging by the angle of the light, I had about five minutes before my alarm went off. I knew I should get up—reach over and turn it off, even if I didn’t get out of bed. But that would mean moving. Surrendering my hold on Eli. Maybe even waking him up.

The moment was too perfect for that. I needed to savor every millisecond.

When the alarm did finally ring, I reached over Eli regretfully to shut it off, and he stirred in his sleep. I sank back down onto the mattress, hoping he’d slept through it, until he spoke.

“I’m gonna be so mad if I open my eyes and I’m not actually in your bed and this was all a dream.”

I stroked his arm. “Not a dream.” My heart felt so full.

“Hmm. Okay, so it’s not a dream,” Eli said, still not moving. “But are you on the verge of kicking me out of your apartment, now that the cold light of morning has set in? Because if that’s the case, I think I might need to sleep another 13 hours… or years.”

I laughed. “Definitely not kicking you out. But how does coffee sound?”

“Does coffee require leaving this bed?”

“Well, it requires at least one of us getting up to go get some mugs and fill them. Sadly, I don’t have a series of pneumatic tubes running directly from the coffee maker to my nightstand”

“Lame. I thought you were an adult. What have you been doing with your life?”

“Spending way too much time thinking about a high school student,” I replied. I pinched his side. “Now come on, get up.”

“Jesus, if I knew you were secretly this cruel, I wouldn’t have spent so long daydreaming about you,” Eli grumbled.

“Too late.” I sat up and grinned down at him. “You already told me, and you can’t take it back. Now come on—we’ve gotta go find your phone and wallet this morning, among other things, and there’s no way I’m doing that uncaffeinated.”

Eli gave me a wary look. “That ‘among other things’ sounds ominous.”

“Oh, my bad, did you not want food, or Tylenol, or anything to help that hangover I’m pretty sure you have?” I threw the covers back. “I might even pay for breakfast, but you’ll never know if you don’t get out of bed.”

“God, you’re mean,” Eli grumbled as I climbed out of bed, but I heard him shift and soon enough he padded into my tiny kitchen, rubbing his eyes.

He was even smiling by the time I’d made him a cup of coffee with an alarming amount of cream. But there was still a touch of wariness about him, and I thought I knew why. He was waiting for me to bring up the subject I’d put off last night. Only, I had no desire to actually do that.

I’d thought about it last night, long after Eli had fallen asleep, and reached an impasse. I couldn’t ask Eli to go back to the way things had been this past month, the two of us not seeing each other. It wasn’t fair to him, and I didn’t have the strength in any case. Fighting to keep Eli out of my heart had been impossible from the start. I couldn’t deny that anymore.

But I felt equally awful about doing anything other than keeping my distance. It made me a hypocrite. A liar. And I couldn’t shake the feeling it also made me a lecherous old pervert, even if Eli was 19 and I wasn’t his advisor anymore. How could I be training to be in a helping profession and be thinking about keeping a secret like this?

It was a problem I didn’t have an answer for, and I knew avoiding the question wasn’t helping, but I was doing it anyway.

I lent Eli a jacket for our walk to the bar he’d been at last night. He claimed he didn’t need one, but even if it was sunny out, low thirties in January was no temperature to be walking around in without a coat. I tried to give him the jacket I normally wore, a navy blue pea coat that Gray had gotten after doing a photo shoot for some menswear company and given to me afterwards. But Eli made a face.

“You keep that one. It’s yours.”

“I’m not giving it to you, I’m lending it to you, silly.”

But Eli shook his head. “I like seeing you in it.”

Instead, he grabbed an old red flannel jacket my dad used to wear about 20 years ago. I’d borrowed it for a Paul Bunyan Halloween costume back in college and never ended up returning it. It was big on me, and Eli was positively swimming in it. It should have looked ridiculous, but it only made me want to kiss him even more.

“Shit, it is cold,” Eli said when we stepped outside.

“I told you. Here, put this on.”

I grabbed a hat from my jacket pocket and handed it to Eli. I expected him to make a fuss or refuse to wear it, but for once, he just cocked his head to the side and took it.

“Thanks,” he said, turning the hat over in his hands like he’d never seen one before. “Really. Thanks.”

He was a little quiet as we set off towards the bar, and his mood settled over me, too. Not a bad mood, exactly, just this sense that everything had been set on pause and it couldn’t start moving again until we decided what we were doing. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to face that conversation yet. Couldn’t I just enjoy this a little while longer?

So instead, I asked Eli if he was hungry, and coaxed him into letting me buy him a bagel from my favorite bagel shop a few blocks away. It was the same reason I stopped when we passed a woman selling handmade hats a few blocks after that. Eli needed a hat, didn’t he? I was just trying to look out for him.

“What about this one?” I asked, pointing to a green and blue hat in a chunky knit. It reminded me of something my mom would have made.

“Eh, it’s okay,” Eli said, grinning. “But instead, what if we considered… this?” He pulled a hat out of a different section and held it up to me. It was designed to look like a dog, with floppy ears on either side and a little snout right above the brow. “Come on, what do you think?”

“It’s a—um—a statement,” I said, trying to be diplomatic. “You want me to get it for you? I’ll worry about your head getting cold once you give me my hat back, otherwise.”

“Oh, you can get it.” Eli smiled. “But it’s not for me.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I already have a hat.”

“What hat would that be?” Eli asked impishly. I just looked at him, and he clasped my hat where it sat on his head. “Surely you don’t mean this one. Nick, we’ve talked about this. This is my hat, and you have to stop trying to steal other people’s things. But I think that puppy hat that you’ve picked out is adorable and I fully support your fashion choices. You should absolutely get it.”

“You’re an actual goblin, you know that?”

“A goblin with warm ears, though.” Eli gave me a sympathetic look. “Can you say the same?”

Which was how I ended up walking into Timberline with a puppy hat on my head, trying to figure out how best to swap it for the one Eli was wearing when he wasn’t looking. I was kind of amazed they were even open at this hour, but the bartender’s eyes lit up as we walked in, and she reached behind the bar to grab a jacket, wallet, and phone.

“Oh my God, thank you.” Eli’s eyes went wide as she set everything down on the bar. “You’re a lifesaver. I thought I’d lost everything.”

The bartender smiled. “Sadly, I can’t take the credit. James was tending bar last night, and he saw these after you left. Left me a note saying a cute blond kid might come back for them.” She laughed. “Not my words. His.”

Eli flushed, and I had the strongest urge to put my arm around Eli to show that he was mine. Whoever this James guy was, he clearly wasn’t that good at his job if he’d let Eli get trapped with those other guys.

No sooner had the thought arrived, though, than I realized it was unreasonable. The guy had probably been swamped with customers last night. And Eli wasn’t my possession. Still, I felt a bit disgruntled as we left.

“What’s wrong?” Eli asked, blinking in the sunshine as the door closed behind us. “I thought you’d be happy I got my stuff back and now you can get rid of me. You look like you’re about to punch someone.”

“What? I—no.” I tried to smooth my face. “It’s just—”

“Just that you’ve realized you can’t stand the thought of me leaving and you’re about to beg me to stay and move in with you?” Eli asked, cocking an eyebrow and grinning.

I snorted. “It’s just… ‘cute blond kid?’ Since when is some random bartender allowed to think you’re cute?”

“Are you saying I’m not cute?”

“I’m saying I’m the one who’s supposed to say those things about you. Not anyone else.”

“Oh.” Surprise flitted across Eli’s features.

“I know that’s shitty,” I felt compelled to add. “I get it. Jealousy’s not cute.”

“Well, but it kinda is, when it’s coming from you,” Eli countered. “It’s nice to hear you say that. Like you want me or something.”

“You know I do.”

“Yeah, but sometimes you’re a little hard to read.” Eli stopped, glancing up at me before looking down at the sidewalk. “Listen, I didn’t want to be the one who brought this up, but since we’re almost back to Penn Station and I’m beginning to think you’re never gonna say anything, I just wanted to know if—like, what I’m trying to say is—ugh. This is hard.”

My stomach dropped. Eli was right. We were back on 7th Avenue now, only a few blocks away from the train, and I couldn’t put it off any longer.

“I guess what I’m saying,” Eli continued, looking down, “is that last night, you said that you didn’t have a right to ask me not to go out with those guys. And I guess I’m asking if you, like… want to have that right?”

“Wait, what?” I blinked, not sure I followed his syntax properly.

“I’m trying to ask if you want to be my boyfriend, or date me, or whatever. Because honestly, the idea of you being jealous that someone else thinks I’m cute is actually the most amazing thing in the world to me, and I think I’m probably going to cherish that forever, in addition to everything about last night, which was hands down the best night of my entire existence on this planet, but like, you’ve barely touched me all morning and if you don’t want to be with me, I just want to know, so that I can stop holding out hope and just accept that last night was a fluke, and oh my God, this is the most mortifying thing I’ve ever said, so if you could jump in here and say something, any time, it doesn’t even matter if it’s to tell me I’m an idiot and you’re not interested, just, could you please put me out of my—”

“I want to be your boyfriend.” The words rushed out of my mouth before I even realized I was speaking, and they hung in the air between us. Eli’s eyes went wide and my heart spasmed, but he’d asked me to say something and that was it. That was what I wanted.

“Really?” Eli’s eyes looked like they were about two seconds away from falling out of his head and rolling around on the pavement. “I did not think that was what you were gonna say.”

“I uh—I didn’t either?” I said with a weak laugh. “But I want to be your—your something, at least.”

“Something, anything—I’ll take it.” Eli shrugged. “Honestly, whatever you want.”

I sighed and took his hands, pulling him off to the side and out of the flow of foot traffic.

“That’s the thing though.” I leaned back against the building we were standing next to. “I don’t know what to do to make this fair to you. There are things I don’t feel comfortable with us doing, but I don’t want you to just accept whatever boundaries I impose.”

“But what’s wrong with that?” Eli peered up at me. “If that’s honestly how I feel?”

“Because this—whatever it is—it has to be equal between us. It can’t just be me dictating terms and you saying yes because you’ll take what you can get.”

Eli arched an eyebrow. “I feel like I should be offended that you think I’m that much of a pushover. Except that when it comes to you, I kinda am.”

“You see?” I looked at him helplessly, tugging on his hands. “That’s exactly what I mean. Tell me what you want. Not what you think I want, or what you think I want to hear. Tell me what your ideal situation would be. Between us, I mean.”

Eli studied me, then took a deep breath.

“Okay. Well. If I’m being completely honest, but also unreasonable, what I’d like is for us to buy a beat-up Airstream from an old woman named Tulip, and we painstakingly restore it on her property while she regales us with stories of her travels out west and brings us cups of pine-needle tea, and when we’re done, we pack up a suitcase each and hitch the trailer to your car and we just get on Route 80 and drive until we run out of road, and we start a really successful Instagram account and get sponsorships that support us while you offer internet-based sermons and I write the next great American novel. How’s that sound?”

I’d started smiling somewhere around the time he’d decided on Tulip’s name and by the time he was done, I was laughing helplessly.

“That sounds pretty alright, actually. Can we also adopt a really old golden retriever, when she just starts following us around one day at a rest area, being extremely well-behaved but also clearly in need of rescuing?”

“Absolutely.” Eli grinned. “We’ll call her Chuckles and feed her jellybeans and pineapple Fanta. We’ll get you a second hat, too, designed in her likeness.”

“I think Chuckles might not be with us very long, on that diet. But, yeah, okay. Sounds perfect.”

“Good.” Eli swung our hands back and forth. “But since, at the very least, I have to save up some money for the Airstream purchase—because we’re going half-and-half on that—can I suggest an interim plan, too?”

“Go for it.”

“I’d like to see you again,” Eli said. “Maybe next weekend. Or sometime soon. And I’d like to keep seeing you. Regularly. If that’s okay. And I know you told me not to think about what you want, but I meant it when I said that I want what you want. So if you don’t even wanna kiss me again until I graduate or whatever, that’s fine.”

“But don’t you—”

“I can even try to stop pouting about it, though I can’t promise I’ll be perfect,” Eli went on. “I mean, yeah, obviously I want you to take me home and ravish me or whatever, but what I want most is just to spend time with you.” He wrinkled his nose. “Pretty gay, right?”

“Are you serious?” I squinted, not sure I could really be hearing this. “Is that really what you want? Wait, how did you know I didn’t feel right kissing you until—”

“Nick. I know you’ve got this whole dark and mysterious thing going on, but on some topics, you’re honestly not that hard to figure out.”

“Well, that’s encouraging.” I tugged Eli towards me again, all the way this time, and wrapped my arms around him. “You’re sure you’re okay with all this? The waiting until you graduate part?”

“Hey, if that’s what it takes to get to keep seeing you.” Eli squeezed me back. “Just don’t go pushing me away again, okay? No more panic attacks about how I’m in high school and you’re corrupting me and you’re going straight to hell?”

“Universalists don’t believe in hell, you know.”

“I know that, dummy. I just wasn’t sure you did,” Eli snorted. “You promise?”

It was better than I could have hoped. I still felt a little uneasy about what we were doing, but I’d never dreamed Eli would be okay with a situation like this. A relationship like this, I corrected myself. So completely unexpected. It felt like a miracle.

“I promise.”