I meet Shaun at his locker after homeroom. He gives me a dead rose and I give him a burnt heart-shaped cookie, and then we hold hands on the way to AP English. No one even looks at us funny. “Are you sure you can’t just be straight?” I ask him. “It would make everything easier.”
“It would.” Shaun’s tone is more earnest than usual, making me wonder what’s going on with him.
“How’s Kirk?”
“Fine, I guess.” Shaun heaves a long, deep sigh. “But I wish he was here and we didn’t have to be long-distance. We could go to a movie or do our homework together or make out on the bleachers or whatever people do when they live in the same place.”
“Making out on the bleachers isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You’re either too hot or too cold, and someone is always at an uncomfortable angle.”
“It’s got to be better than this.” Shaun pulls me to a halt. He reaches for my other hand, and as kids flow around us in the hallway, he closes his eyes. “Nope.” He shakes his head. “Not good.”
“What are you doing?”
“Close your eyes.”
I oblige, because it’s Shaun. “Now what?”
“Pick someone. Someone like Itch, from your past. Or someone else. Whoever, just as long as it’s someone you know. Try to picture him.”
I imagine Shaun. “You look cute today. Nice shirt.”
Shaun squeezes my hands. “Come on, someone who makes your heart go whammo.”
Oliver rises behind my lids. He’s grinning so I can see the top row of his teeth. His eyes are crinkling straight at me and he’s happy—so happy it makes the corners of my mouth tug upward in response.
“Got someone?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” says Shaun. “Can you see the person? Like really see him?”
My imagined Oliver’s grin widens. He leans toward me and suddenly I can do more than picture the way he looks. I can smell the clean, soapy scent of him; I can hear his laugh the way it sounds when it rings out in the behemoth. “Yes,” I whisper. Shaun doesn’t answer, so I open my eyes.
He’s looking at me with sadness written all over his face. He gives me a smile that is rueful and agonized and heartbreaking all at once. “When I close my eyes, I can’t see Kirk anymore,” Shaun says. “I used to be able to picture him so clearly. There was this hallway downstairs in the main building where we met at Rutgers. The first time we kissed, it was in a corner down there, under one of those crappy fluorescent lights that make everyone look terrible. Everyone except Kirk. Even under that flickering, greenish light, he still looked like a Greek god. That’s what I could always picture, what he looked like under those lights.”
“But technology,” I say. Because it’s Shaun, he understands.
“It makes it worse. We talk on our phones or our computers and it’s supposed to be better, it’s supposed to connect us, except now when I close my eyes, all I can see is the tech version of Kirk. He’s pixelated or blurry or frozen because the connection has died.” Shaun sighs again and my heart hurts for him. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe our connection has died.”
“You’re such a poet,” I tell him, and his eyes snap to mine. Then he grins really big, because he gets it—that I’m defusing, I’m softening, I’m making it better the only way I know how.
“You’re such an asshole,” he tells me.
“I love you,” I say, and hug him hard.
“I love you, too.”
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Shaun.”
“Happy Valentine’s Day, June.”
After lunch, I’m trudging toward Spanish III when everything goes dark red. Someone has covered my eyes with their hands. I spin, which puts me right in the circle of Oliver’s arms, and I’m looking up at him. We both immediately break apart, stepping backward. “What are you doing?” My tone sounds belligerent, which is the opposite of how I feel.
“I have a present for you.”
Color rises up my chest and past my collarbones, making me feel the unholy triumvirate of flushed, pissed (at myself), and embarrassed. “Oh, really?” It’s supposed to come out nonchalant, but…
But it doesn’t.
Oliver reaches under his jacket and I see that his left side is bulky because he’s got something hidden there. “I made it myself.”
My blush deepens, and I try to distract from it with a glare. “Why?”
He laughs. “You’re so dependable.” He pulls out the thing that’s been in his jacket, and presents it to me with a flourish. I accept it and…stare.
“It’s a pillow,” I say.
Oliver laughs again. “Your powers of perception are overwhelming.”
“Thank you?” I am honestly not sure what I am supposed to do with a pillow that might be made out of felt and is definitely turquoise on one side and hot pink on the other. Also, one corner is truncated, like someone lopped it off and sewed it back together.
“It’s for the mornings,” Oliver explains. “Because you think my car is too big and you’re never quite comfortable. You can sit on it.”
What Oliver has just given me is—by a long shot—the most awkward gift I have ever been given, but that’s not why I feel awkward. I feel awkward because it is a gift. All I can manage to do is accept the pillow and mumble some gratitude. “Thanks.”
“Happy Valentine’s Day!” Oliver says, and he doesn’t look at all awkward. He just looks happy.
Damn it all to hell, Oliver is more than good-looking.
He’s beautiful.