Friday was good. Friday started with a text from Caleb – I'd changed his contact name in my phone to Caleb, in an act that felt somehow risqué despite being completely mundane – that read; Mum's agreed to reduce my grounding if she can meet Steph. I'm never getting out of this fucking house.

I smiled at my screen, legs tangled in my sheets as my alarm rang distantly in my ears.

hire an escort?

Reece thumped the wall outside my room, and I startled upright. I slapped my hand down on the alarm, jaw tense.

But they've seen a photo...

blonde, pretty, big feet... i'm sure a quick search will garner a fuck tonne of options...

No one looks like you. Plus, I'm broke, remember?

Friday went slightly downhill once I went downstairs. Reece asked me in the kitchen whether I was coming to the garage after school to see Caleb's car off. I was tempted to say yes, just so I could see him, but then I remembered who would be likely paying for his car to be repaired. I wasn't mentally prepared for another round of scrutiny from Mrs. Proust.

"I'm going to Aaron's," I told him. "And we're going to Max's game tomorrow."

"Soccer?" Reece asked, and I nodded into my cereal. "Since when did you like soccer?"

"I'm supporting my friend."

Reece hummed, pouring himself a mug of coffee. He'd started shaving again, which didn't do much for his overall appearance, but it did make him look remarkably less homeless. "If I called Aaron's mum..."

"He lives with his aunt and uncle," I replied irritably. He'd been a part of my life longer than Aaron had, the least he could do was keep his ears open for little details like that. "And, yes. We've had this conversation before. Where else would I be?"

"With Steph," he replied automatically. "Sorry. Lauren."

His tone was cynical enough to make me pause. I turned a little in my chair. "Do you have a problem with me dating now?"

"Nope," he stirred his coffee ominously, tapping the spoon against the side. "I might have a problem if you're messing around behind that nice girls back, with someone else."

I almost spit up milk all over the tabletop. "What?!"

"Jesus, I'm not stupid, Miles," he growled. "I found blonde hair in your bedroom, not black. Dyed it. Do you think I believed that for a second? You told me her name was Steph. And you seemed pretty damn urgent about me not meeting her, or telling her mother about you two..."

I cupped my hand over my face, squeezing my eyes shut. I should have been thankful that the conclusion Reece had drawn from the holes he had poked in my story was that I was leading on two women, but it just made me feel ill. The bags under my eyes felt like they were seeping back into my skull, settling there like a dark fog that ached.

"I don't think I should need to have this conversation with you," Reece persisted, only adding to my headache. "But what you're doing is wrong. It's cruel and stupid and it's only going to end in disaster. Do you think girls don't talk? Do you think this town is big enough that it won't get back to them? No town is too big for that, I'll tell you that."

I pushed away my breakfast. "I don't want to talk about it."

"I don't want to talk about it," he echoed. "But that Lauren girl seems nice, if a little naïve. Messing around behind her back will hurt her when she finds out."

"When?" I repeated. "What, are you going to tell her? Is there any part of my life you would feel ashamed of intruding? Tell you what, why don't just tag along with me and Aaron tonight."

His mouth furrowed into a deep frown. "I'm just don't like seeing you act this way."

"I got it," I shoved out of my chair. "That's enough parenting for today. I don't want you overexerting yourself."

"Miles," he called as I bolted for the stairs. "I understand where all this is coming from. I've been in that boat before. It's a white-water ride."

I gagged at the thought, and the analogy he was attempting to make.

"I get that you liked me better when I didn't have a say in your life," he continued. "But I'm the only one around to call you on this shit. When you have no one in your life to hold you accountable, you spiral out of control. All I'm doing is making you examine your choices. It's not my fault you don't like to look at them."

I felt my veins heat beneath the surface of my skin. "And whose holding you accountable?"

Reece dropped his mug to the counter, a thunderstorm rolling across his features.

"Are you kidding me?" he demanded. "Your school. Your uncle Thomas. The courts. You. Every choice you make comes back to me, and it reflects on me. Poorly."

I swallowed back my immediate instinct to fire back. I did have to get to school at some point. "You can just keep telling them you're doing your best with what you have. Keep raking in those sympathy points. Throw me under the bus. I don't give a shit, just stay out of what's mine."

Reece's brow folded into three distinct lines, as his face fell. For a second, my naïve empathy flared up frustratingly, and I thought I'd gone too far.

Then he opened his mouth. "Well fuck me for caring. Don't let me giving a shit get in the way of you throwing your life away."

I glued my lips together despite my eagerness to get the last word and turned my back on the kitchen. Take the high road. It had not been a value taught to me by my mother, who never walked away from a fight, but it was a nicer way of phrasing my personal motto; retreat never fails to make a statement. If it doesn't, at least you won't get punched.

Friday got better after that. My most recent modern history essay came back with 65% and I could barely contain a fist pump. Miss Riley kept me after class to run me through the rubric, but I barely took in a word she said, riding the cloud nine of a passing grade.

Max was wearing the M sweater once again at lunch. Aaron was sitting on the opposite side of the table from him, obviously distancing himself from his brother.

"What did you do?" I asked as I slid onto the visibly safer side of the table, next to Aaron. Max rolled his eyes.

"It's just a precaution," Aaron took a large bite of his apple. "Now that he is Georgianna McCaffrey's boyfriend."

"Miles, tell him he should be thanking me," Max scoffed. "I've just granted us body armour for the rest of the school year."

"Oh?" I quirked an eyebrow. "So you plan on sticking out this totally monogamous relationship until October?"

Max made a face. "We haven't discussed exclusivity yet."

Aaron and I exchanged equally apprehensive glances. The last time I'd pissed off Aidan, it had been entirely my fault. The thought of getting on his bad side again by association, when Max and Georgianna inevitably broke up...

Aaron and I stood up in unison.

"Guys," Max protested, as we slid out from behind the table. "Come on, really?"

"Go sit with your girlfriend," Aaron suggested, and I shot him a sympathetic smile. He rolled his eyes at me and waved me off with a dismissive hand, permitting us to sit far away from his dumbass, high-risk self.

After school, Max disappeared into a car with Georgianna and a bunch of her friends; Aaron and I took that as a blessing to leave without him. We took the scenic route through the Nandos drive-thru before returning to his house, a boxy bungalow in the outer suburbs of the school district. His aunt and uncle worked late, so we had the house to ourselves, sprawling out on his couch with his laptop plugged into the television, projecting a playlist of music videos from Aaron's various celebrity crushes.

"Do you remember when the music video for Death of a Bachelor came out?" I sighed as Harry Styles danced through an absurd amount of lens flares. "I nearly came out just so I'd have an excuse to talk about Brendan Urie's face to someone."

"It's freeing," Aaron agreed. "It was stressful, clarifying to Max that I didn't mean it that way whenever I said something perverted about Henry Cavill. Speaking of which..."

"I still can't believe he was surprised when you told him," I told him as he pulled up Netflix. "Sometimes I worry about that boy."

"Max takes people as they are," Aaron told me. "But he is, like the rest of this country, socialised to believe everyone is straight until proven otherwise. Which means he'll keep trying to hook you up with girls until you tell him, if that's any encouragement."

I felt a pang in my heart. "I'm sorry I'm making you keep it from him. I'm just not... ready."

"You're not making me do anything," he insisted, turning to glare at me. "Don't you dare feel bad for telling me."

I put up my hands, and he began to stream the first episode of The Witcher to the television. We sat on opposite sides of the couch, legs tangled in the middle, and watched in moderate, comfortable silence.

Maya came back as the sun went down, wrapping my shoulders in a hug, kissing the top of my head and announcing she was making lamb cutlets in celebration of me coming over. It reminded me of how long it had been since I'd spent the night at Aaron's, and immediately filled me with guilt. Aaron seemed to notice this and slapped my calf sharply. When I gaped at him, incredulous, he mouthed, Don't you dare.

Max returned with half-heart excuses for his lateness. His fly was obviously down. I coughed into my hand and signalled this to him, and he immediately turned red and escaped to his room to the exasperated tutting of his aunt.

Dinner at the Sanchez household always provided me with a much-needed dose of normality. Colin asked about school and seemed genuinely interested in the state of my life, and Maya ranted about office drama as if I was a member of the family who'd been present for every update. Max dipped his fingers in his water and flicked it at me when I made a joke about his desperation for play time on the pitch; and got solely told off by Maya despite my immediate retaliation of smearing my greasy fingers on his hand. 

There came inevitable comments about my love life, and Aaron didn't so much blink as I carefully navigated my way around that line of questioning.

Later in the night, or rather earlier in the morning, after finishing the entire series in one sitting, Aaron set me up on an air mattress on the floor of his crowded bedroom. In middle school, there had been no issues with sharing the bed, but since his growth spurt it barely contained him alone, and I had been reassigned to the floor. He hung off the end as I stared at the ceiling, talking lazily about everything and nothing.

"You know," Aaron's voice was weary, not far off sleep. "If you were out at school, people would probably think we were an item."

I spluttered out a laugh, and then thought about it. "Do you think so?"

"Yeah," he muttered. "Because we'd be the only two gay kids at Truman, and people lack imagination."

"I think there's a kid in middle school whose bi," I corrected, his name eluding me. "And there's Raegan and her girlfriend. It's not like we're at an early Victorian prep school."

It did make me think about the other kids potentially hiding behind a veil of performed heterosexuality at Truman. It wasn't the most openly inclusive school in the district. Even Our Lady of Tranquillity had a Zero Tolerance policy. Truman certainly didn't encourage the homophobia displayed by its students, but it didn't do a thing to support kids being anything other than the norm. It reminded me how brave Aaron was, and how I didn't tell him that enough. 

I said as much.

"No, I'm not," he argued weakly. "I was just tired. I wore what I wore and spoke how I spoke, and everyone decided I was gay. I knew who I was. One day, I just decided to stop telling people I was something else."

I rolled onto my side. "I don't think I've ever told anyone I'm straight. But no one ever asked. I don't know what I'd say if they did."

He smiled kindly. "I mean, you never deny being straight."

"I don't think that's the same thing."

"It's not," he assured me. "But I think it would surprise people. And surprise means attention, and attention means dickheads, and... what I'm saying is, I get why you don't. Come out."

"It's not because people would think we're dating," I assured him. "I would be so lucky."

He smirked, rolling over so his hair flopped heavily over his brow. He could probably have done with a haircut. I felt like to a certain extent he was only tormenting Max. "Yeah?"

"You're too good for me."

He considered this. "You're extremely correct."

"Hey," I played offended. "You don't need to agree with me."

He slapped a hand down on my hair and scrubbed my bangs into disarray before I had the chance to wave him off. "It's not just your terrible personality. You're too short for my taste."

"I'll have you know I'm five-ten in heels," I blurted out automatically, and immediately felt the blood leave my face. Thankfully, Aaron laughed it off, not taking it seriously for a second. "I thought your type was anything gay in this heteronormative cesspit."

He screwed up his nose. "Yeah, but like... not you. No offence."

I snorted into my pillow. Aaron was quiet for a long time, so long that I almost fell asleep.

"What's your type?"

I let my head hang heavy, considering my answer for a while. "Dark hair, mysterious, brooding. Tall. Nice arms. Dresses nice."

"So typical," Aaron tutted.

I battered him with my spare pillow. Aaron always lent me two of his. "Well, I'd get into specifics, but then you'd know who I was crushing on and we'd never get to sleep."

"What?" he sat up loudly, and I groaned into my pillow. "You can't leave it at that! I call best friend privilege. You can't keep crushes from me."

I turned my head slightly. "We have a soccer game tomorrow, remember?"

He hit me back with the same pillow I'd used against him. "You're a cryptic asshole and I'm getting tired of it. Haven't I proven myself? I'm excellent at keeping secrets. Especially scandalous ones."

I shook my head fervently. "Sorry. I can't tell you."

"Christ, that bad?" he frowned in the dark. "Is it someone embarrassing?"

I yawned obviously. "I'm drifting... falling... the world is turning black..."

"Miles," Aaron implored. I blew him a kiss, rolling over onto my side. "Right, well. Until you tell me I'm going to imagine that it's Aidan McCaffrey."

I immediately snapped back to fully awake. "What? Fuck you."

He was already crawling under his covers. "I always thought you two had some unresolved sexual tension. Yup. Until stated otherwise, I'm going to assume it's McCaffrey."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "You can't break me."

Aaron huffed under his duvet. "You know I won't even try."

I did. And fell asleep, comfortably, with that knowledge in my brain. I had to admit it was a little thrilling, walking the line with Aaron. If he knew how desperately I wanted to talk to someone about Caleb, he might have pushed a little harder.