Too much.

Liam.

He’s loud, always laughing, always pulling faces.

His pen has hit the table twenty-three times since class started.

I counted.

Each tap echoes in my head like a furious metronome.

I usually hate people like that.

Invasive. Nosy. No filter.

But him…

I don’t know.

I don’t hate him.

He’s sitting next to me now. New seating plan from the teacher.

Strategic change, apparently.

“To balance the temperaments.”

Meaning: me, the quiet guy, got placed next to the human sunbeam.

Balance, huh?

What they don’t know…

Is that I’ve spent the last three months watching him.

Always surrounded, always smiling.

But sometimes, when he thinks no one’s looking, he makes that face.

Tired. A little sad.

Just for a second.

Then he laughs again, like it never happened.

I hate it.

What he hides.

And what it makes me feel.

Today, he brushed my hand.

Accidentally, of course.

I didn’t react. On the outside.

On the inside?

Chaos.

My hand stayed warm for way too long.

Too long.

He doesn’t know.

He has no idea.

He doesn’t know I’ve read every public post he’s ever made.

That I know the name of his childhood dog, his favorite food, even the date he got his first ear piercing (spoiler: he took it out two weeks later because “it didn’t go with his glasses”).

He doesn’t know I heard him once, laughing, saying:

“I bet Noah thinks I’m a total pain.”

I didn’t say anything.

But that night, I broke a glass thinking about him.

He doesn’t know...

That he’s mine.

Not yet.

But soon.