Late summer in our town feels like the world is holding its breath. The air hums with heat and insects, and even the church bells sound slower. Every color looks heavy, as if the sun has melted into it.

Rylan Aiden and I were still sharing that corner behind the gym, but now the silence between us wasn’t easy anymore. It was charged like a wire humming.

He’d grown taller over the months. His hair had bleached a little from practice under the sun, strands of gold mixed with brown. Sometimes he’d lie back on the grass, shirt sticking to his skin, eyes half-closed, and I’d feel my throat tighten for no reason I could explain.

That day, I was sketching the empty bleachers when he tossed his soccer bag beside me.

“You always draw things people ignore,” he said.

“They stay still,” I answered. “People don’t.”

He crouched behind me to look at the page, close enough that I could feel his breath on my neck. “You don’t stay still either.”

I laughed softly. “I sit here for hours.”

“Not inside,” he murmured.

My pencil froze. He didn’t say more, just sat down, elbows on his knees. The cicadas were screaming somewhere far away.

After practice ended, we walked the long road home. The sunset made our shadows stretch

across the cracked pavement like two pieces that didn’t quite fit.

He was talking about his future how he might move to the city for university, how he wanted to do something “big.”

“What about you?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I’ll keep drawing. Maybe I’ll disappear.”

He stopped walking. “Don’t joke like that.”

“It’s not a joke.”

His hand brushed my wrist. Not holding, just touching. “You matter more than you think, Kai.”

I wanted to believe him. But every word from my parents told me otherwise. They said people like me were lost, confused, wrong. Sometimes I wondered if they were right.

A few days later, there was a festival in town. Paper lanterns everywhere, the smell of fried food and rain. Rylan found me near the river, sketchbook in hand as always.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing my sleeve. “You’re missing everything.”

He dragged me through the crowd, laughing when I almost tripped. His fingers lingered longer than they needed to. Under the lights, his smile looked different like unguarded, almost shy.

When fireworks started, we ended up by the water. The reflections trembled on the surface like memories that couldn’t stay still.

“Do you ever think about leaving?” he asked.

“All the time.”

“Would you take me with you?”

I turned to him, half smiling. “You’d hate it. Too quiet.”

“Maybe I’d like quiet,” he said. His voice had dropped lower, serious in a way that made me ache.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. The noise in my chest was louder than the fireworks.

He reached out, brushing a petal from my hair, fingers trembling just slightly. “You get lost in your head too much, Blake.”

“So do you,” I whispered.

The moment stretched thin. The air felt electric, a heartbeat away from something I wasn’t ready to name. Then someone called his name from the crowd, and the spell broke.

He stepped back, eyes flicking away. “I should go.”

“Yeah.”

He hesitated, then said quietly, “Don’t disappear, okay?” and ran toward his friends.

I watched the fireworks burn out and fade. My sketchbook was still open on my knees, blank. I couldn’t draw what I felt it didn’t have a shape yet.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing his voice, soft and almost breaking: Would you take me with you?

A week later, he stopped showing up behind the gym.

People said soccer training got intense before the regional match, but I knew it was more than that. Something had changed after the festival. Maybe he was scared. Maybe I was.

I tried not to think about it, but every sketch turned into him…his hair, his hands, the way his eyes softened when he looked at me.

I started avoiding the field.

Then one evening, he showed up at my house.

My parents weren’t home. The porch light flickered between yellow and dark. He looked exhausted, still in his practice clothes, sweat drying on his temples.

“Why’d you stop coming?” I asked before he could speak.

“I didn’t want to mess things up.”

“Mess what up?”

“This.” He gestured between us helplessly. “Whatever this is.”

I stared at him. The night smelled like rain. “You can’t break something that’s already confusing.”

He laughed under his breath, the sound tight. “You always say things like that like you’re afraid to want things which are complicated.”

“And you act like wanting doesn’t scare you.”

Silence. Only the sound of crickets.

He stepped closer until I could see the tiny scar on his chin from soccer practice. His voice dropped. “Maybe it does.”

For a heartbeat, the space between us disappeared. His hand rose halfway, as if to touch my face and stopped.

“Kai,” he whispered, “if I tell you something, promise you won’t look away.”

“I won’t.”

He opened his mouth, closed it again. His jaw tightened. “Never mind. I just needed to see you.”

Then he turned and left.

The rain started as soon as he was gone, light at first, then heavy. I stood under it, heart pounding like thunder, wondering what words he hadn’t said.

When I finally went inside, I saw my reflection in the window hair plastered, eyes tired, mouth trembling.

I didn’t know it then, but that night was the last time summer would feel warm.