Lena and I exclude ourselves from the rest of the conversation as we discuss our art assignment. I gently remind her that she promised me her final product. In response, she asks me if she could have mine. When I try to argue that it would be of lesser quality, she tells me that we are always the harshest judges of our own work.

I end up promising her my work. Somehow, drawing for someone feels more important than drawing for an assessment, as if I need to try twice as hard now. Although the project had already been assigned, it really feels like I have a project now. I don’t really know how to explain it…

Austin asks something to Lena, leaving me with my thoughts for a few moments. I wonder what happened after Lean and Noah left my house on Friday. Did they discuss the box I wouldn’t open or the picture I wouldn’t explain? Did they simply let it go, or have they noticed my discomfort? If so, what did they think about it?

Lena doesn’t seem any different today than she was on Friday, so they must not have found me too weird, but still… maybe it was too soon. You don’t test a blossoming friendship. If that’s even what this is. It’s been a week.

Not that time matters. One misstep can cost you the oldest of friends. Maybe friendship is a lie and the best you can get is people you can share a good time with and unpack a few boxes. If that’s the case, I should already be very grateful for what I have. And I am.

Just as I acknowledge my luck in forming the best possible friendship in a week’s time, Noah appears.

“Hey! Where were you?” Austin asks.

Noah just shrugs, and everyone seems to get that this is the best answer any of us is going to get. I don’t think he’s being secretive; I think he genuinely doesn’t see any relevance to where he was.

Noah sits down next to Emma and she shifts slightly to put a kiss on his cheek. Oh, so she’s the famous girlfriend that Lena mentioned on Friday. I have very mixed feelings about this, even if I am not entitled to any…

“What’s that about you not coming on Wednesday?” Emma questions him.

“Yeah, I’m busy.”

“But you’ll come for the first game?”

I notice that she didn’t ask him what he would be doing. Is everyone just used to Noah never answering questions about his life outside of school? Because if that’s the case, maybe it’s fine for me to not answer questions either.

“I’ve always been there for the first game,” he replies. It’s a fact more than an answer, but Emma and Austin seem happy with it. They know him better than I do, I guess.

Noah whispers something in Emma’s ear and she chuckles. The two of them then share a glance that shows their bond, understanding, and intimacy. I take back what I thought before. Noah shouldn’t dump his girlfriend to get with Lena. What he has now seems special. They both seem happy.

I have to be truthful with myself. If I wanted Noah and Lena to be a thing, it wasn’t for them. It was for me. I needed Noah to be forbidden by more than social conventions. I needed him to be more than straight and taken. I needed him straight and taken by someone I like.

I didn’t care that much that Noah had a girlfriend. I would have cared if that girlfriend was Lena, because I would never have let myself daydream about her boyfriend.

But the reality is just as good. I like Emma. I’ve seen the two of them together. Surely, that should be enough to kill a vague forming crush I have on a guy just because he is cute and he was nice to me once or twice.

I really want to be Noah’s friend. He’s great. But I don’t like that in less than a week, and without even trying, he has wormed his way into my mind.

It has nothing to do with Noah anyway. It’s a promise I made to myself a few months ago, when I understood that coming out in high school just wasn’t worth it: I won’t let myself fall, even in the slightest, for any boy before college. Not a gay one, and especially not a straight one…

Austin waves his hand in front of me. “Still with us, Will?”

“Yes, sorry. What did you say?”

“Do you want a cookie?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Noah replies with an amused smile, and Lena looks at me once more like I’m a weirdo.

That night, I still have to actively not think about Noah. More specifically, I have to stop myself thinking about the nape of his neck. How weird is that obsession? More importantly, can you come back from counting someone’s freckles?

On Wednesday morning, the desk in front of me is empty. Noah isn’t in school today. I hate that I notice. I never learn, do I?