“Listen, I’m sorry I suck at the, the . . . complicated stuff. This is new territory for me. I’ll work on it.”

Silence had lingered for a while after the girls left for their seats, Kaz gazing out the window, exhausted again, and Will fidgeting in his seat, mouth opening and closing repeatedly until he’d figured out what he wanted to say.

“On what?”

“On figuring out all the shit I’m not noticing because I’m a white guy who doesn’t have to worry about my passport or about my name keeping me from getting a job interview or whatever. All of it.” Will pulled one knee up and wrapped his skinny arms around it, hugging his leg to his chest. His eyes pleaded with Kaz when he spoke, as if it mattered to him, more than anything, that Kaz listened and believed him. “I know I don’t know shit about the world. But I know bullies. God, I’ve known ‘em my whole life. And I can’t stand watching people like the assholes who always tortured me back home fucking . . . take over. I’ve seen what happens.”

The hunted look in Will’s eyes made him want to push up the armrest between them and drag Will close until Kaz could wrap him up in his arms and squeeze the memories into submission.

“Even people who aren’t that bad—who maybe wouldn’t usually do anything more than make shitty comment sometimes—get caught up in shit when assholes start ranting. I mean, I guess you can’t be that good if all it takes is someone saying your most secret, worst thoughts out loud for you to feel like you have permission to do bad stuff, but still. I don’t know. It’s like, most people won’t actually do awful things most of the time. But when people start saying stuff out loud that they only ever used to say behind closed doors, suddenly it’s okay to start doing stuff too.

“So you have to stop giving those people a platform to say the worst stuff to the biggest audience. Because you can pretend there isn’t a connection, but I know what a mob looks like, and it starts with one guy whooping everybody into a frenzy and pointing them at someone weaker like a bullet shooting out of a gun.”

Kaz shook his head. “Sure. I hear everything you’re saying. But take a look around the next time you’re meeting up with your antifa buddies and see if everyone looks like you. And then ask yourself why that is. Ask yourself if large groups of masked black or brown people would be able to show up anywhere and be violent without provoking mass arrests or worse.”

“Shit. Yeah, you’re right,” Will said and sighed. “And I know I’m ignorant. But I’m not ready to stop fighting yet. I just got started and a part of me . . . I don’t know. I think I need it. Like, if I can’t get rid of some of this anger by fighting, then maybe someday I’m going to do something really stupid, because I won’t be able to stop myself. Besides, shouldn’t I do something with my privilege? If the consequences for me are lighter for punching Nazis, then isn’t that even more reason for me to do it, because other people can’t?”

Talking to Will was strange. He had so much privilege and unearned certainty, but at the same time he kept freely admitting his ignorance in a way that made Kaz want to keep talking to him.

God, he was such a sucker for a student who wanted to learn. No wonder he was an underpaid TA instead of an underpaid Third Secretary or Vice Consul at some tiny, remote embassy.

Somewhere in the middle of explaining, Will had stopped seeing him, eyes unfocused and vague, as if he were looking inside himself instead of at Kaz. But focus returned in a blink as Will sat up straighter and scrubbed a hand over his face, laughing randomly.

“Fuck. I need a beer. Why didn’t you order a keg for the bus? Now that would’ve been some good planning,” Will said with a sigh and a stretch that lifted his shirt high enough for Kaz to catch a glimpse of his flat, muscled stomach.

“You’re not old enough to drink,” he said reflexively, forcing his eyes up.

“Oh, please, son,” Will said, snorting. “I been drinking beer since I was thirteen. There’s nothing to do back home except drink beer and tip cows.”

“Is that a real thing?” He’d heard the phrase in America ever since he’d first arrived for undergrad, but figured it for the opposite of a urban myth. A rural rumor or whatever.

“Nah,” Will said, shaking his head. The tips of his dyed black hair swung against his sharp cheekbones. “You’d have better luck tipping a Camry.”

Kaz snorted, trying to picture it.

“Some professor calculated the physics of cow tipping once. I saw it in an article. Said you’d need five or six people and a damn docile cow. Probably ain’t ever happened.”

“So you’re really from the country, huh? Like, on a farm?”

“Yup. Like, on a farm and driving tractors and everything.”

“So how’d you end up at Carlisle?”

“I suppose I could’ve gotten farther from my hometown if I’d gone to school in Seattle,” Will said, musing aloud.

“Is that why you ended up going all the way across the country? To get away from your hometown?”

“Sort of. I mean, that’s why Massachusetts, I guess. Better than anywhere down south and I don’t like the rain enough for the northwest. But Carlisle is mostly because the only out gay guy I knew back home went to school here.”

Kaz let his surprise show on his face. “You followed a crush to college?”

“Ha, no.” Will smiled though, like the idea wasn’t unimaginable. “Jack helped me start the first GSA at our high school. Found us a staff sponsor, brought coffee and muffins to our meetings, talked to us about it gets better and all that shit, although I was the only gay kid. The other five kids were just my friends, being supportive.”

“He sounds like a great guy.”

“Yeah, well, I guess he wasn’t always. He got kicked out of school for a while for harassing this other kid whose dad was a crook whose Ponzi scheme stole all Jack’s parents’ savings. So, I guess he was probably not that great back then. But, I don’t know . . . he was the first adult who ever saw me, you know? And he’s only a few years older than me, but he was a college student and it was a big deal when he started talking to me.”

“How’d that happen?”

“He followed me into the alley behind the place we used to hang out after school when I went for a smoke break.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he did.”

“That’s what I thought too at first.” Will smiled ruefully. “Probably half-wished it, half-was terrified by the idea.”

Kaz remembered those days from his own childhood. The adrenaline rush of trying to figure out if a hot guy was interested in you or if you were risking a total public smackdown—metaphorical or not so much—by saying something that crossed the line from “I didn’t mean it like that” to blatantly flirtatious.

“He was worried about me, turned out. He played his banjo at the café, and he’d noticed me. Noticed I was having some trouble too.” At Kaz’s intent look, Will shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “The usual shit. Small town bullies and the queer kid. Nothing special.”

“It’s always special, because it always sucks.” He nudged Will’s knee with his own, wanting to reach out but knowing that wasn’t appropriate.

“Yeah, well, I know a guy who was hospitalized in high school from the beating they gave him. Missed most of his senior year.” Will’s jaw clenched and the corner of his lip curled in a snarl. “So in the grand scheme of things, my getting my ass kicked occasionally was nothing special at all.”

“Fuck.” Kaz’s voice was heavy. He knew what Will meant. It wasn’t a competition, but lots of people had experienced objectively worse shit than either of them had. “Yeah.”

“Anyway, it’s cool being at Carlisle this year, because I actually get to see him and his boyfriend sometimes.” He rubbed at his curving lip with a thumb, nail polished black.

Kaz wanted to pull the hand away and suck on that pouty lip until Will was smiling for him, and not the memory of some other guy. Because his brain was a traitor and had lost all rational thought process, obviously.

“And they don’t mind if I tag along sometimes when they study or hang out.”

Kaz cocked his head, confused. If this Jack had been in college when Will was in high school, he should be long gone from campus by now.

“Miguel is a senior at Carlisle,” Will explained, smiling at the thought of this Miguel, who was apparently also a paragon. “Jack’s boyfriend.”

Kaz told himself he wasn’t jealous. Because being jealous of someone he’d never met, who was just friends with a guy he could never get involved with, would be incredibly stupid. “He’s younger than your friend?”

“Nah. Just didn’t get to go off to school until a couple years after Jack. It worked out pretty great though. Miguel spent his junior year abroad in France, and Jack had just graduated, so he got a job teaching English and, like, babysitting, and they spent the year living together in Paris, which was pretty much a dream come true for both of them.”

Kaz had the feeling Will would’ve crawled into one of their suitcases if they’d let him. He recognized the feeling. He’d had a serious case of hero worship on one of the embassy’s Consulars when he’d been thirteen. Either the man had never noticed Kaz mooning around, or he’d been too polite or too kind to acknowledge it. Eventually Kaz had met a Brazilian boy at his school who’d let their gazes catch and linger a little bit longer than usual, and his crush on the Consular had been replaced by a sudden need to learn Portuguese and drink caipirinhas.

The steady forward march of the bus slowed noticeably and they lurched in their seats as the bus changed lanes, heading for a brightly lit travel plaza on an overpass. They were stopping for a bathroom break. Probably a good thing, because Kaz was super uncomfortable with how much it got under his skin to hear Will talking about this Jack and Miguel.

“I better give people the heads up,” he said, standing up and gesturing for Will to let him out. “We probably won’t stop again until we’re back at campus, so if you want to stretch your legs, now’s your chance.”

Then he started down the aisle, keeping his voice low for those who didn’t want to wake up, but letting students know they’d have fifteen minutes to pee and grab snacks if they wanted them.

As for Kaz himself, he needed some fresh air like whoa. Maybe it would clear his head, because he was sinking dangerously deep into the kind of late night coziness with Will that needed to be discouraged, not encouraged. Even if—especially if—he absolutely wanted it.