Page 12 of Open Water
He leaned in. I kissed him. Slow. My lips against his. The specific taste of Alex that I'd been carrying around in my head since Boston.
It was only a few days and I missed the way he felt already.
He kissed me back. His hand finding the side of my neck, his thumb against my jaw.
I pulled back just too look at him.
"I'd cross into enemy territory for that any day of the week."
"Very brave."
I took another bite of the bagel. "I could've been spotted by a Kingswell patrol."
"We don't have patrols." Alex tilted his head.
"You have a guy who rakes the quad at dawn. I've seen him. He's intimidating."
Alex laughed.
"That's Gerald," he said. "And he's seventy-three."
"Gerald could end me."
His whole face changed and his jaw relaxed and eyes crinkled at the corners. This was the face nobody at Kingswell saw. The face his father probably hadn't seen since Alex was a kid.
For me. That face was for me.
His laughter trailed off and he shook his head.
"But really, what's going on with you?" I said.
"What do you mean?"
"You're different." I studied him.
"I'm good." He said it simply. Like it surprised him too.
"That's new."
"Yeah." He looked at the river. "I had lunch with Ethan yesterday. Talked about some things — my father, the texter, all of it. And I think that I want to come out."
My stomach dropped. Not the warm thing from a minute ago.
"Come out," I repeated.
"Not right away. But I'm done with the performance, Liam. All of it. Checking who's watching, pretending, worrying about everything. It only has power because I'm hiding. If I stop hiding—"
"Then what? It all just goes away?"
He heard it. The edge in my voice. He turned to look at me.
"No. But it stops eating me alive." He paused. "I feel like I can breathe for once. That's why I'm different this morning."
And there it was. The gap. Alex sitting next to me glowing because he'd saw a pathway to freedom and me sitting next tohim with Emily's face still burned into the back of my eyelids. So I figured I'd tell him.
"Something happened last night," I said.
He read the shift. His hand found the back of my neck. Rested there.
