Luke’s voice was droning in my ears. I was used to that—our cubicles were close enough together, even being in different parts of the Quad—but there was something decidedly nicer when I heard it reverberating from his chest, his hand stroking through my hair.

My eyes were closed, but I could imagine Luke’s face as he spoke to his grandmother on the phone. I was thankful I had resisted the urge to make fun of him for calling his grandma when he first mentioned it. He had explained his family, how his grandparents had raised him, how close he was to them. I could hear it in his voice now.

“Yes, we’re—getting along. It’s not so bad, not as bad as I thought it might be.” He tugged at my ear, and I fought to stay quiet. He had asked me not to say anything incriminating.

I had rolled my eyes, but—now I heard it. In his voice. The words he carefully chose when he spoke about the trip. It was more than just not sharing your personal life with your grandparents; it was Luke, carefully walking the line of not coming out.

He would never be able to tell his grandma the truth. I could hear it, easily. The formality, the slow execution of his phrases. It made Luke make more sense to me; every interaction we’d had before this trip, hell, halfway on this trip, had been Luke using the same tone. That careful, dedicated quietness.

He was never going to tell them he was gay.

The knowledge made my chest ache in a way that was almost as surprising as it was painful.

Luke’s hand stilled in my hair as he hung up the phone. “I’ve got to go. Tell Grandpa I called. Yeah—yeah, okay. Okay. Sure. I love—yes, I love you, too. Bye.”

I hid my smile in his shirt. “You’re a grandmama’s boy. That’s embarrassing.”

“Fuck off.” Luke rubbed my head. I nearly purred.

We were sprawled across the motel bed, a rerun of an old sitcom playing on the small TV. It was relaxing in a way my life hadn’t been for, god ... years.

I couldn’t remember a time when there wasn’t work to focus on, Mom to check on, Stella to manage. This motel was starting to become something more like a haven than a place we were trapped. Especially with Luke’s hard chest underneath my cheek.

Oh, fuck.

I was starting to like him.

Like him, like him.

The kind of like him where Stella would laugh, and this closet case was going to have power over me. Fucking hell.

I pushed off of his chest and sat next to him. My back pressed against the headboard and Luke glanced at me once before intertwining our fingers.

Fucking dork. I squeezed his hand.

“How is she?” I asked after a minute.

Luke frowned at me. “Who? Grandma?”

“Obviously.” I rolled my eyes.

He smacked my shoulder. “She’s good. It’s—I usually see her every few days, just go over to the house to check on them. Grandpa’s getting older, can’t always do everything he thinks he can. Grandma, at least, is aware of her limitations. So, it’s weird. Being this far away.”

I hummed. “Do you think you’d ever leave? Like, leave-leave?”

“Leave Seattle?” he asked.

I shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah. Like, I don’t know. Just leave?”

Luke breathed out of his nose, frowning. “I’ve never thought about it.”

I turned to him fully at that. “Never?”

“No,” he admitted. “It just hasn’t really occurred to me. I don’t know. Probably not. What if they needed me?”

My eyebrows raised. I said nothing. We watched a bit more of the TV.

“Do they know?”

“Know what?”

I raised an eyebrow. Luke’s mouth fell open a little, and he turned to the TV, so I spelled it out. “That you’re gay.”

“I’m not—” He stopped and frowned. “Okay. So that might be a bit more automatic than it is true.”

I laughed, and his lips twitched in a smile. I waited. Luke didn’t say anything.

I nudged him with my foot. “Luke.”

He nodded while still looking at the TV. “Um, so. No. They don’t.”

I blurted out my next question without even pausing. “Will they ever know?”

Luke swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. He didn’t answer.

The TV droned on, the laugh track feeling almost purposefully pointed when Luke’s silence was so loud.

Luke liked me—I knew that. It was more than just fun to fool around, I could tell. I’d had fuck buddies—I'd had a lot of them, in college and after. I’d even had a few closet-case fuck buddies.

They were ashamed of me, usually, or mad at me. They weren’t holding my hand while calling their grandmas kind of guys. They weren’t like Luke.

Luke hated my guts, except that he didn’t; he was gay, except that he wasn’t. If a tree fell in the forest, did anyone even hear it?

I didn’t really understand the thing in my chest that flipped and pulsed when Luke looked at me, but I knew it was there, and I knew it was real. I knew that this something could become the something, or the—I didn’t know.

I just knew that if Luke wasn’t willing to move past glaring at me in the office because of how I made him feel, then we were never going to have it. Not really.

I’d come out so long ago, it was difficult for me to remember that feeling; that pressure all around you, keeping you stifled. Sometimes the pressure was other people, sometimes yourself—it felt the same either way.

But still—Luke wasn’t being himself. Not like this. How could he be happy not being himself? Hiding this huge part of himself from so many people?

Was he ashamed? Embarrassed? I couldn’t work it out. How could Luke truly commit to anything, or anyone, if he was lying to himself and everyone around him?

The anger I felt was partially unjustified, and I knew that. But it grew just as strongly as if it was deserved. I looked away.

“You’re—angry?”

I couldn’t look at him. I hated the feeling inside of my chest, the one that was bubbling up and mad. I didn’t know when, during this trip I had switched into really, actively wanting something from Luke, but I did know that right now was when I felt it being taken away from me.

It stung. I was stinging, and Luke said my name twice before the stinging stopped hurting long enough for me to look at him.

His eyebrows were pinned together and his lips were pursed, turned down at the ends. He had the same look of concentration he’d wear during exams, when we had a meeting with a team leader. I didn’t understand what was going on, but it looked like Luke didn’t either, even though he desperately wanted to do well.

“How did you do it?” Luke asked. “How did you come out to your parents?”

I turned the TV off. Luke bit at his bottom lip, worrying it between his teeth.

In a flash, the anger started to seep away. I retook his hand. I hadn’t even realized I’d dropped it. I cleared my throat.

“I was sixteen. I had just met Jeremy. I had known for years, but after meeting him—well, there wasn’t really any hiding it after that. I told my mom as soon as he asked me out.

“I got so excited I forgot to actually come out. I just told her I had a date with the most popular guy in school, and we went to the store and bought new pants.”

“New pants?” Luke looked surprised.

I shrugged. “I had a date. Needed to look nice.”

He let out a surprised laugh, and after a second, I laughed with him. “That’s so—uneventful.”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, yeah. It was uneventful, but it—it doesn’t have to be a big deal, you know? Gay people exist.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Don’t turn this into an After-School Special.”

“I’m not—no, Luke, seriously, I just. I don’t get it, you know. You not wanting to say anything, and I don’t get it, but I can try. I will try. But for me, it just—I don’t know. I had a date, you know. I wanted to tell my mom.”

Luke looked at me hard, his green eyes burning in their search across my face. He looked away. “I—I’m not like that.”

“Like what?”

“Carefree.”

“Carefree?” I parroted.

Luke sighed. “I—I just mean. I don’t have that kind of—I’m not like that. You’re so put together, you’re so willing to just be.”

Luke huffed in frustration, struggling to get whatever he was trying to say out. “I’m jealous, I guess. I’m not like that.”

I considered what he’d said. And then I laughed. “Luke.” I scooted closer to him and gathered both of his hands.

“I’m not like that either. I don’t have it together. I just—can do what needs to be done. Life’s too short. And, hell. Maybe I need to be more like you.”

Luke surged across the remaining space and kissed me. He framed my face with his hands and kissed me, hard and sure and possessive in a way that had me rolling onto my back and tugging him down with me.

He kissed me until we were both breathless.

“I like this,” Luke said. His words came out a little breathy, too full of air, and he had his eyes closed. He hovered above me and licked his lips nervously. “I like this and I—I like you.”

He looked pained to say it. I grinned. “I like this, too.”

His eyes popped open. He looked nervous. I wondered if the flipping butterflies in my chest were the same as the ones in his; wondered if he felt as breathless as I did, just from the words that we had let out.

“Does this mean I have to be nice to you at work?” Luke asked.

I laughed, burying my face in his neck. I nipped at the skin there and pulled away to fake glare at him. “Hey, Luke?”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck off.”

“Okay,” Luke smiled and kissed me on the bridge of my nose before rolling off of me and turning the TV back on.

The sitcom was at the end, everyone smiling and laughing together. The laugh track wasn’t quite as annoying anymore.

He slipped his hand into mine, and I didn’t think about insecurities for the rest of the night.