By the time Harper texted Charlie to say that she would be back in about half an hour, Ryan and Charlie had watched several episodes of Community and Charlie had finally cracked a smile. "Isn't this show hilarious?" Ryan asked. "Jacky and I binge-watched all the seasons over winter break when he had the flu."

"Who's Jacky?" Charlie asked.

For a long second Ryan thought Charlie must be psychic. How else could they have plucked that name out of thin air? Then he realized. He had said Jacky's name and it didn't even register on his consciousness, because being with Jacky was how it was, how it had always been, at least for the past year and a half. He had entirely blocked out the little fact that Jacky had dumped him on the steps of the group home just four days ago.

"My ex-boyfriend," Ryan said finally, looking down at his hands, which were resting palms-up on his lap, as if he didn't have the energy to move them.

"Ah." Charlie nodded. It was the kind of nod that said they knew exactly how Ryan felt.

Ryan felt the need to fill the quiet. "We broke up just before we left for college."

"I remember... You said." Charlie paused, gazing away. "At the party."

Ryan tried to remember what he'd said about Jacky at the party.

"You said it was complicated," Charlie finished, and finally looked at Ryan. Their eyes looked sad, but maybe that was just the eyeliner.

"I guess it isn't." Ryan picked up the remote like he was going to play the next episode. Instead he added, "I mean, he broke up with me. I guess I was suffocating him or something." Ryan did his best Jacky impression, scoffing out the words, but he had never been as good at being mean as Jacky was. He just sounded bitter and sad, which he supposed he was.

Charlie nodded. "You accept the love you believe you deserve."

Those words sank into his chest. They were possibly the most accurate words Ryan had ever heard. "Wow," Ryan said.

"I stole that from Perks of Being a Wallflower." Charlie chuckled, only for a moment before their face went serious again. "And it's pretty true for me."

Ryan saw the opening to ask the questions he'd been wanting to ask this whole time. "Yeah?"

Charlie sighed and gazed past the TV, out the window with the view of the house's siding next door. "Yeah. A lot of times I feel like a freak, so I just assume that people aren't interested in me."

"Did something happen today?" Ryan asked quietly.

The television filled the silence as Ryan waited for Charlie to answer. "I got my hopes up, that's all," Charlie sighed out.

Ryan wanted to say how he couldn't believe Charlie had self-esteem issues, since looking at them, Ryan could see so much beauty. Plus Charlie seemed quiet and shy, but also open and vulnerable. He had an urge to pull Charlie into a big hug, like that would solve everything. Ryan didn't really know what it would be like to be nonbinary, how that would feel walking through the world. His own experience with coming out had taken a long time, and he'd only had a few people be assholes about it. He couldn't imagine what it would be like trying to ask people to use different pronouns, or even a different name. He'd never thought about his gender identity.

Ryan's thoughts circled back around, and he tried to forget about all that. Charlie had clearly been flirting or something with someone, and that person had rejected them. "Whoever they are, they don't know what they're missing," Ryan said, a fierceness in his voice that made Charlie look up with those beautiful, black-rimmed eyes.

Something might have passed between the two of them, but at that point they both heard the sounds of someone stomping up the stairs. Flinging open the door, Harper took one look at Charlie and said, "Okay, who do I need to kill?"

"Are you hanging out with your straight friends tonight?" Billy asked two nights later, buffing a layer of highlighter onto his cheekbones. Jacky wished he didn't know any other kind of highlighter other than the neon markers he used in his textbooks, but lately Billy had been watching makeup tutorials and he kept losing his Airpods, which meant Jacky had to listen to the makeup tutorials as well.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jacky snapped.

"I mean," Billy turned around as smoothly as if he sat upon a spinning stool, "the straight boys across the hall."

Jacky clenched his jaw. After weeks of feeling sexually frustrated – he still couldn't feel comfortable masturbating in the dorm room when Billy might waltz in at any given moment - he didn't feel like dealing with Billy's attitude. Determined not to rise to Billy's bait, Jacky opened his laptop and was confronted with Braedyn's Instagram profile in an incognito browsing window. He knew exactly what Billy was talking about. Braedyn's Insta was so straight it was almost gay: pics of him and his pals shirtless at the beach and at the gym and drinking beer by a campfire. They were occasionally joined by beautiful girls.

And yet he had a feeling that Braedyn was not totally straight, simply based on how much Braedyn seemed to want to be his friend.

"They invited me to a frat party," Jacky said. "I don't see you inviting me anywhere."

"Ooh, a frat party. Guess you enjoy watching latent homosexuality, or perhaps it's the date raping you like?"

"They're not like that," Jacky protested, but he was pretty sure some of them were like that. He hoped Bradyn wasn't like that. "And again, it's not like I have a lot of options," he added pointedly.

"You'd have tons of options, if you stopped being a Grumpy Gus," Billy cooed. "The LGBTQ Club is having a party tonight, which you'd know if you joined the club. Or maybe pulled your head out of your ass and noticed the flyer on the bulletin board downstairs."

Jacky had seen the flyer. He had even thought about going. But a flyer on a school bulletin board would be a lame party, right? At least, that's what he assumed his friends across the hall would say.

"You're going?" Jacky said as sarcastically as he could. "Doesn't seem like your thing."

"Honey, anything gay is my kind of thing." Billy blew him a kiss. "Come on, come meet some gay boys with me," he whined.

"I never thought I'd live to see the day you'd beg me to hang out with you."

"What I'd love is if you could get yourself laid. You're a crabby crab apple of a roommate. You used to be fun back when we were together. Remember that time we went skinny dipping?"

Jacky didn't want to remember, but the smell of the chlorine of Billy's indoor heated pool took over, the way the water steamed, and how silky it felt on his bare skin. Billy's mom had been out at some gala, and had been cool with Jacky sleeping over the house. That was eighth grade; his mother had to have known her son was as gay as the day was long. Wanna go skinny dipping? Billy had asked with a smirk. It sounded so grown-up. Then they both stood by the pool, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Jacky had never been keen on waiting. He'd kicked off his shoes, pulled off his shirt, then lowered his pants. Even though Jacky and Billy had only kissed a few times, Jacky stepped forward and started unbuttoning Billy's shirt. He remembered turning around to make sure Billy got a good look before Jacky plunged naked into the water.

But that was before the accident. Billy didn't seem to realize that Jacky had been through a massive life-changing event. Jacky suddenly realized that Billy really did think Jacky's attitude was because he was sexually frustrated.

And.... Maybe Billy wasn't wrong.

"Fine," Jacky said, standing up. "I'll come with you this one time."

"Oh honey, I can make you come more than once."

Jacky ignored that, jamming his feet into his Vans. "So when did you want to leave?"

Billy looked Jacky up and down. "You have enough time to change, if that's what you're asking."

"I wasn't." Even though Jacky refused to look down to reassess his outfit, he wondered if he should put on his hoodie. Pros: people wouldn't immediately see that he was an amputee. Cons: people wouldn't immediately see that he was an amputee.

With a sigh, Billy turned back to his vanity mirror to apply lip gloss. "Give me twenty minutes." He puckered, then added, "And hey, while you're standing there impatiently, how about you grab that bottle of Citron out of the minifridge and pour us a couple of shots?"

"Ooh, am I worthy of your secret stash?" Jacky mimicked Billy's usual tone even as he pulled out the bottle. His first couple weeks at college had introduced him to many kinds of alcohol, but Jacky had never tried Citron. It appeared to be a flavored vodka. He had tried vodka. It wasn't the worst. Jacky locked the door, then set up the shot glasses.

"Cheers," Billy said, suddenly right there. They clicked the little glasses and Jacky tossed his back. When he finished, he saw that Billy was watching him with a little smirk. "You do that like a pro."

"Don't get too excited," Jacky snapped, and poured himself another. He'd need it if he was going to put up with Billy all night.

By the time they were ready to go, Jacky had forgotten all about wearing a hoodie. The September chill in the air barely fazed him. In fact, his skin buzzed with excitement. He was going to a party full of his people. The possibilities would be endless.

That night, as Ryan lay in bed, he found himself scrolling through his social media accounts. He hadn't had much time to go on Facebook or Instagram, not that he ever really did social media anyway. Sure, he'd go in and like his friends' posts and maybe leave a comment, but he never felt the need to share his private life with the world.

To be fair, for most of high school, Monica had done that for him. She was always tagging him in photos, even after they'd broken up, and after he'd come out about being gay and dating Jacky, she'd tagged both of them. Jacky was more likely to post on social media, but he didn't have many followers. He liked to take selfies of the two of them, arty ones in black and white or with vintage-looking filters. But Jacky never added hashtags and he also never tagged Ryan. Of course, Ryan usually had his arms around Jacky while Jacky was posting said selfies.

Now, Ryan realized how much he'd missed in his friends' lives not seeing them almost every day. Monica had documented almost every part of her new college life – there were pics of her dorm room and selfies with her roommate (#roomies, #dormlife), images of the meals she ate at the dining hall (#mysterymeat, #bagelseverydamnday, #icecreamdinner), carefully arranged photos of her notes in font-like handwriting with highlighters and sticky tabs and colored paperclips. She wasn't doing cheerleading that he could tell, but a few posts were tagged #NUDANCO and #danceteam and she looked truly happy.

Lance had a football scholarship to the University of Rochester and his posts were all blurry party pics with emoji captions that didn't make sense to Ryan. Alex and Peyton were going to the same school, and they had posted the most photos out of any of Ryan's friends other than Monica. They were doing the fraternity/sorority thing, and after only a couple of weeks of school they looked like they had an established social circle just as they had in high school. Matt hadn't posted anything.

Then a picture of Cody Mitchell, Jacky's best friend, popped up on his feed. It was a moody selfie of Cody exhaling a cloud of smoke, making it easy to know what Cody was up to when he wasn't working. Cody had always seemed suspicious of Ryan's intentions with Jacky, fiercely protective of his friend.

And now Ryan was thinking about Jacky.

You weren't supposed to stalk your ex online, right?

Ryan continued scrolling. Then he thumbed over to the search box. It was a rule or something. What did he expect to see? What did he want to see? Did he really want to see pictures of Jacky with some other guy? And if Jacky was posting depressing selfies with vaguely suicidal quotes, would he rather see that?

Yet he seemed unable to stop his fingers from typing in Jacky's username, jackoffjennings, and heading over to Jacky's profile.

When he saw that Jacky hadn't posted a single thing in the past several weeks, he forced himself to take a breath. Then he pulled up Jacky's most recent post, a selfie they'd taken during the weekend everyone had spent at Alex's lake house, when they'd built a bonfire on the beach. Their faces were warm and orange and Ryan could tell Jacky was drunk by the redness of his lips and the way his eyes were droopy and happy.

Ryan heaved out a breath and closed out of Instagram, wiped out all his open apps, turned off his phone. Then he opened his phone again and opened Instagram.

This time he pulled up Harper's Instagram account and searched through her friends until he found Charlie. 

---

Knowing that Ryan and Jacky are endgame, how do you feel about the current possibilities?