Aiden's foot steps forward. “I don't want to take,” he says. There's a firmness in his voice. “That's selfish and awful, and I'm not...I'm not that kind of person.”

“I'm saying you could,” I say, tearing my eyes away from his feet. They drift to his face, minutely disgusted at me, brows knitted together and eyes wide and his easy smile nowhere to be seen, and fearful of the next words to come out of his mouth.

“I don't want that,” he whispers, as if Aiden's checked his tone. He's slipping. It's so strange to see, but kind of invigorating. He holds himself stiff as a board, standing like a nutcracker, before he continues, “I need someone to give.”

I frown. “Everyone gives. The cast made that awful...terrible succulent for you.”

“I liked that succulent.”

“You hated it.” I look him dead in the eyes. “I know you still think about it.”

He shudders. “That's not – ”

“I hope you throw it away. No, actually, I hope you smash it in front of everyone and crush it under your feet.”

“That's so mean.”

“So is having Mrs. Daye scream at you when it wasn't your fault.”

“They made me that as a gift. They made the effort – ”

I tear my eyes away from him. “I have no power, Aiden. No one remembers my name. I have no reason to take like you do.”

“I don't want to take,” he says again.

That makes me look back at him.

“I need someone to give.” Aiden sighs, faltering, unable to find the words to explain. “Sometimes, you...need someone to give to realize how tired you are of giving back. How lonely it can be to give and give until there’s nothing left inside you to give out.” He brings his hands to his chest, flattening them over his heart; he laughs, and the sound drips with the taste of melancholy. “I...can't do that. I can't be that selfish like that, Tom. That's not how I survive.”

I raise a brow. “You make survival look so easy.”

His easy smile returns, tinted blue and black. “Said by someone who understands how to do it as well as I do.”

I soak him in now, unable to break eye contact with him. The display is awful and vulnerable and the ricocheting feeling in my chest draws me closer to him. “...what happens if someone gives you nothing?”

“I don’t know,” he answers on cue. Maybe he baited me into the question, but Aiden smiles as if the entire conversation hasn’t been about being used and abused. He steps closer until his elbows land beside mine on the back of the couch. His gray eyes linger on me for what feels like an eternity before he asks, “What are you supposed to do?”

The air burns, and I don't know how to answer that. I wouldn't even know where to begin articulating the answer in my own head. The concept of whatever answer scares me shitless.

“Have you...” he ventures. He grunts and starts over. “Being selfish like that, it...” Aiden presses his hand to his chest. “...feels like a balloon inside me, filling and filling until I could pop. It scares me, and it makes me dizzy. I don't – ” He looks at me before abandoning eye contact, huffing. “Is it selfish to hope and want, and...sometimes pray, that things turn out the way you hope them to? Or is that, just...normal?” Silence comes after, and it makes me shy away from him.

I wouldn't know how to answer that, to start with. Being selfish is a cruel personal thing with no benefit for me. It’s a want, from the word’s concept down to the ones I ignore. For him, he works so hard, harder than most of the people around us, to be a decent person, and Aiden deserves the right to be a little selfish. Me, I don't. I do what other people ask and tell me. That's my lot in life, and that's...fine by me. It's fine by me. It's fine by me.

Aiden's stare moves around my face, and for the first time, his easy smile falls away and doesn't immediately come back. “Do you even want to be at Brookfell?”

The question is cold. I look away. “School is school, no matter where it is. Public, private, it doesn't matter to me. My mom needs me here – ”

“But do you want to be here?” There’s a gentleness to his tone, soft and velvety, and those seven words fill my chest with such heaviness that it makes me want to burst into tears.

I don't like that I have a choice, even if it is a hypothetical scenario. I don't like the idea that there's options for me, and that someone like him is asking it. If I answered honestly, I would go to public school and fall into obscurity, and we'd never see each other again. Him bound to his obligation and me bound to suffering under Mom's Master Plan to make sure I get into Harvard. And he would forget me, and I would always remember his easy smile and how he looked at me.

“I'm glad you're here.”

My heart aches.

“I got to meet you, but who cares what I want? What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper, my voice wavering as I cover my face. I want to be needed. Intrinsically, so fundamentally important to something that people would look at me when I walk into a room and be relieved I'm there. I want to be irreplaceable to something, but that isn't a job. That can't buy food or pay bills and can't get me through college. Hard work does that all. “Will anything I do make any difference to anyone ten years from now?”

Aiden huffs. “You'd be surprised, Tom. Small things make ripples. Butterfly effect and all that.”

“The butterfly effect can lead to disaster.”

“But it still changes things. Tom.” He touches my arm, and it scalds.

I withdraw. When I meet his gaze, it's soft. Unbearable. His ears are pink, and exhaustion hangs in his eyes like a noose around a prisoner's neck. I've crossed so many lines and broken through so many barriers that I will remember it as punishment for the rest of eternity.

I didn't want this. “If you can't have what you want, then maybe it's for the best, then.”

Aiden glances down. He curls inward. “Maybe.” He looks at me again. “But is it selfish of me to sit and quietly hope?”

Yes. “But you said it's overwhelming. Don't you, just, wish you could take what you want? Or even cut out that part of you so you didn't have to deal with it anymore?”

“No,” he answers definitively.

“Then why don't you, just, take it? You could fucking cheat on your finals and get away with it. Hell, that would make you more popular.”

His face barely moves, but I know I struck a nerve. Eyes narrow slightly, arms crossing in front of him. Shoulders hunching forward. “I know I could take,” he whispers with little hesitation, “but I'm not selfish enough to do that. I'm fine with sitting on my hands.” Lie. “I...don't want to ruin anything.” He smirks, different from his easy smile, and glances away.

It hurts. I want to touch him and wish I could take that away, whatever it is. “Same as me, I guess.”

His gray eyes drift back to me, but nothing else does. Aiden Martin has turned his back to me, and the world feels like it's rocked under my feet. “Yeah,” he finally whispers, a period of silence too long for even the perfect Aiden to normally suffer though. “Same as you.”