Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Matteo stares at the lamp next to David’s bed. David has painted a torso of a man onto the lamp’s short, squat base, so that the painted torso disappears at the shoulders, bottlenecking into the lightbulb. It sits right against the wall on a side table—one David says he picked up off the street once, abandoned outside an apartment building. He painted this too, black legs with a checkered top, like a chess board. David’s room is filled with little items like these, and Matteo loves them, not just because David has hand-crafted them, but because David has put so much love and care in each and every thing he brings into his home. He has a little story for everything: vintage gold-leaf picture books he bought at a garage sale he stumbled upon on a long bike ride, a painting he fell in love with at a flea market, which the seller insisted he could have for free if David gave him his jacket (he was a little cold walking home, David says, but it was worth it), a coffee mug that once belonged to a favorite teacher. Matteo wonders about how particular and personal David is with all his belongings: he wonders if it’s because David had to build it all from the ground-up, so his things mean more to him, or if it’s because David’s an artist, and this is just how artists are. Matteo wouldn’t know. He can’t remember how he came to have anything: even most of his clothes were hand-me-downs from Jonas, Carlos, and Abdi. He has one box: one tiny box of shit he still cares about. A photo album he can’t bear to look at most days. An ancient, stained recipe book that once belonged to his grandmother. Smooth green sea-glass his mom brought back from a beach in Italy close to where she grew up, where they used to spend their summers when he was little.

But David’s things, on the other hand, Matteo has spent hours looking at and asking about. The lamp, in particular, mostly because it’s right next to David’s bed, and that’s where Matteo spends most of his time. The lampshade itself is plain white, a round cylinder, so the light spreads from both ends in mirrored images of each other. Matteo tells David it makes him think of that optical illusion of the two faces, with the goblet.

“Do you know what I’m talking about?” says Matteo. He and David are in bed. David’s chest presses against Matteo’s back, an arm slung over his waist, his chin on Matteo’s shoulder.  “It’s like a goblet, or a vase, but it’s also two faces, like mirror images.”

“Rubin’s vase,” says David. “I think that’s what it’s called. It’s like, you think what’s around the vase is just negative space, but if you look closer that negative space is a picture of it’s own. Faces.”

Matteo tells David he thinks that’s what those shadows are like. The space where the light can’t meet. It opens above and below the lampshade, but not between.

“It’s just a lamp,” whispers David, teasing. Matteo laughs. He likes that David is teasing him again—it’s been days since David’s done anything but hover near him, with that terrible, concerned expression, constantly asking Matteo what he needs, like he’s a hospital patient, or a child.

But Matteo finds himself still thinking about that shadow. That space where the light can’t meet. That’s what he feels like. He can see the light, he can even touch it, but he can’t leave the shadow. He gets glimpses of the light, he can taste it, sometimes he can drink from it—that’s what kissing David feels like to Matteo. But in the end he is a lonely planet, condemned to orbit the sun, but never leave his own axis.

If he could leave his axis, he’d drift right into the sun’s flames. He’d let it burn him alive.

—

“What does it feel like? Try to describe it to me.” David’s voice is gentle. He’s so gentle with Matteo that sometimes it makes him feel worse. Sometimes he wonders if it would be easier if David yelled at him or hurt him or pushed him away, if he said out loud all the thoughts running their bruising circuits into the soft, wounded parts of Matteo’s brain. But no. David pets Matteo’s hair and holds him close and murmurs sweet things in his ear and Matteo loves it, he loves it so much, and at the same time the other part of him—the part that’s rotting, the part that’s eating him from the inside, the parasite—that part of him is screaming. They are at war. There is a whole battle playing out under the numb, glass-smooth surface of Matteo’s misery. He is so tired.

David runs his fingers through Matteo’s hair, waiting for him to answer. He is so patient it makes Matteo want to scream. He hasn’t left this room in three days. Surely David is tired of this by now. Tired of him.

“I don’t know,” Matteo whispers, honestly. He doesn’t know how to describe how he feels. Sometimes it feels like he’s a shadow that light can’t touch. Sometimes it feels like there’s a weight on every inch of his body, holding him down. Other times it feels like he’s a ghost. Like you could put a hand right through him. Like he’s stopped existing entirely, and nobody’s noticed yet.

“Do you think you can go somewhere with me tomorrow?” David traces patterns on Matteo’s arm.

“Where?” Matteo asks.

“Anywhere you want,” says David. “The dining hall. Or maybe the coffeeshop. Even just a walk.”

Matteo turns over onto his side. He stares at the dark shadows that lamp makes against the wall. He can feel David behind him, not touching him. Maybe this time David will leave. Maybe Matteo has finally broken him, too.

But David doesn’t. He presses against Matteo’s back, against the entire length of it. He hugs Matteo tightly to him, so tightly it almost hurts, but that’s how Matteo likes to be held. He exhales, leaning back into David, allowing himself this touch.

“How about you decide tomorrow?” David whispers. Matteo nods. David kisses the back of his neck, and his shoulders, until they fall asleep.

—

After five days, David stops asking Matteo if he wants to leave his room. Matteo had hated when David asked—it made him feel weak (he was) and broken (he was that, too), like he needed somebody to take care of him (he did).

But Matteo hates it even more that David has stopped asking.

—

It’s late when David comes home the next night. His cheeks are flushed pink, like he’s been drinking, and Matteo can smell beer. He’s not an idiot. He can count the days, even if they all bleed together some times. Six days ago Matteo was called into an austere-looking building on campus, sat in front of three stony-faced school administrators, and told he was getting kicked out of school. Hamlet has a six-day-long production run, which means tonight was the long-awaited final night, after which was the long-awaited after party. They’d talked about it for weeks. Matteo, who never put anything in his schedule, had even added it to his calendar, back when they were still in the rehearsal stage.

Hours ago, a little notification had come up on Matteo’s phone, a taunting little white window at the top of the screen when Matteo was playing some stupid game: “Final Show After-Party.” Matteo had stared at his screen for a full thirty seconds before throwing it to the floor.

It didn’t break, this time. David bought him a shatter-proof phone case.

“How was the party?” Matteo asks, trying to sound normal. David doesn’t look at him as he puts his bags down on his desk.

“Eh, it was fine,” says David lightly, too-casual. David is good at a lot of things, almost everything, it seems, but he’s not a great actor. Matteo’s eyes drop to his lap.

“There was lots of food there—Helena went all out,” says David. “I brought you some.”

He pulls out a plate, plastic-wrapped, and puts it on the nightstand next to Matteo. There’s a bunch of little hors d’ouevres, a little bit of everything, it looks like, and some cookies. Matteo takes a bite of a cookie, chewing slowly, but he still doesn’t have much appetite.

David slides into bed next to him. Matteo tenses. He can feel David watching him. The silence thickens.

Then Matteo feels David’s thumb run along his wrist bone, back and forth, over and over again. Matteo’s head tips back against the bed frame, his eyes lifting to the ceiling. He can’t look at David. His eyes burn. He doesn’t know why.

He does know why. Of course he knows why. David does, too.

“Talk to me,” David whispers, finally. “Please talk to me.”

Matteo closes his eyes. What is there to say? I’m sorry I can’t let you enjoy anything and I’m sorry I’m like this and I’m sorry I’m still like this and I’m sorry if they all hate me, I’m sure they do and if they don’t they’re fucking stupid because they should—

(And so should you).

“I’m sorry—”

“Matteo, I told you to stop saying sorry,” says David. It’s true. He had. Yesterday, David had joked that he was going to get one of those tiny water guns and spray Matteo with it every time he apologized for something he shouldn’t. Negative reinforcement. Matteo had cracked a smile, a pale, lopsided, only half-real smile, but it was a start.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Matteo says. He finally looks at David. David looks back. His eyes soften, and Matteo wishes, for the hundredth time, that he could just sink into the darkness of those eyes and disappear.

“Don’t spray me,” says Matteo, after a beat. David laughs, pressing his face into Matteo’s shoulder.

Matteo slumps down in the bed, letting David pull him close, so his head is on David’s shoulder. He inhales, deeply, burying his face in David’s neck.

David puts on a movie—something light and funny, something that eases the knot in Matteo’s stomach.

“I wish you’d eat something,” David whispers. “You’ll feel better.”

Matteo doesn’t say anything.

“Will you try?”

Matteo swallows back the spike of anger that lodges itself in his throat. He doesn’t even know why that makes him angry.

He closes his eyes, trying to focus himself. He imagines himself sitting up. Taking the plate. Chewing, swallowing. Over and over again. He still doesn’t have any appetite at all, and even that, that simple task—eating—feels like so much work.

“Okay,” he says. He sits up. He takes the plate. There’s lots of finger food—little sandwiches, chips, some fruit, the cookie he took a bite of earlier. Matteo takes the sandwich.

It takes him almost an hour to eat everything, but he manages it. David takes his empty paper plate and throws it away—Matteo can tell David’s trying to be casual about it, not to look too pleased about the fact that Matteo’s finally finished a plate of food, so he doesn’t make Matteo feel uncomfortable.

“I’m uh,” says Matteo, “I’m gonna take a shower.”

“Cool,” says David, too-casual. Matteo almost laughs at how bad David is at trying not to look too openly happy about this announcement.

Matteo can feel his mood lifting, ever so slightly, after eating an actual meal. The shower helps even more.

He puts on one of David’s big t-shirts when he’s done and crawls back into bed, his hair still damp. In the corner of his eye, he sees his phone light up on the bedside table.

Matteo picks it up, bracing himself. He hasn’t looked at it since that night. The premiere. He couldn’t bring himself to. The opening screen is an endless scroll of messages, mostly from Jonas, but Carlos, Abdi, Amira, and Hanna have sent him plenty too. Near the bottom are messages from the night of the premiere, from Leonie, Sara, and Laura. Matteo reads them all at once.

“Matteo, stop,” David says.

Matteo looks up, dazedly. “What?”

“You don’t need to read any of those,” says David. “I’ve already explained what happened. I told you—no one’s mad at you.”

Matteo laughs through his nose, an incredulous, miserable little laugh.

“I’m serious,” says David. “Everyone understands. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Matteo whispers.

“I don’t know how many more times I can tell you that it is,” says David. “Why are you so determined to convince yourself that everyone hates you?”

A lump rises in Matteo’s throat. He doesn’t know what to say. All he knows is that David is wrong.

“Okay,” says David, “Give me your phone.”

“Why?”

“I’m deleting the messages.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re just going to keep reading them.”

“No, I’m not.”

David raises his eyebrows. Matteo sighs and hands over his phone.

“Here’s the thing,” says David, taking Matteo’s hands in his. Matteo finds himself staring at David’s hands. He has beautiful hands. Artist’s hands. Strong, craftsman’s hands. “Can I tell you some facts? You like facts, right?”

Matteo rolls his eyes. The corner of his mouth lifts, just a little. David smiles.

“Here’s some facts: everybody in that theater thinks you’re talented as shit and would love to see you get to perform. Here’s another fact: everybody knows you’re having a hard time—and even if they didn’t understand it the night of the premiere, it’s just because they didn’t know what they know now. Okay?”

Matteo closes his eyes.

“I don’t know what to do,” Matteo whispers, finally.

“You’re gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna figure this out. This thing with the school—it’s all gonna work out in the end. I promise you. Okay? I promise.”

Matteo is not sure how long David holds him, how more sweet things he whispers in his ear. He wishes he could hear them. Really, properly hear them.

In the morning, David gets up for class, and Matteo gets dressed with him. He is not sure where he’s going to go today. But he does know this: for the first time in seven days, he is going to leave this room.

The morning air is bracing on Matteo’s face. It feels good. As much as he loves David’s bedroom, there are only so many times he can study the book spines on his shelf and the knick-knacks on his desk and the art on his walls until he goes mad.

He decides to walk to the coffeeshop after David leaves for class. It’s a nice walk—a grayish, foggy morning, but the fresh air feels good. He can feel his body returning to life after remaining still and stiff for so many days. He even thinks he might be able to eat something.

A bell jingles as he opens the door to the coffeeshop. It’s not too crowded. He scans the pastries behind the window, determined to actually eat breakfast for once. He buys a croissant and some fruit and a coffee and takes a seat by the window.

He pulls out his phone and reads his most recent message from Jonas, the latest in a long stream of worried, unanswered texts.

Matteo begins to type: “Hey, Jonas. I’m sorry—

A hand swipes in front of Matteo’s face. He jumps, nearly spilling coffee all down his front.

“Sorry!” Amira exclaims. Matteo throws a hand over his heart. Amira laughs, grabbing a handful of napkins and dabbing them on his shirt collar, though barely any actually spilled. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” says Matteo, laughing a little, shaking his head, “You just scared the shit out of me.”

“Can I sit?” Amira asks.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Matteo, gesturing to the empty seat across from him. He pushes his uneaten fruit cup towards her, and she takes a strawberry.

“How’ve you been?” Amira asks, in the same forced-casual voice David uses. Matteo busies himself with tearing off a piece of croissant.

He shrugs. “Eh, you know. Alright.”

“I, um,” Amira plays with the lid on her latte, “I heard—or, David told me what happened.”

Matteo lifts his coffee cup, with a mirthless smile. “I’m officially a college dropout.”

Amira stares at him, anxiously. “You’re really dropping out?”

“Don’t have much choice, do I?” Matteo mumbles, his face collapsing. “They’re kicking me out.”

“Yeah, but, maybe—” Amira starts.

“It’s done,” Matteo cuts her off. “I failed all my classes.”

“Have you even tried to go talk to them?”

“What am I gonna say, Amira? ‘Oops, my bad—won’t do it again,’” Matteo says, sarcastically.

Amira leans back in her chair, her expression unreadable. Matteo pushes the rest of his food away from him, feeling suddenly sick.

“David thinks they’re might be something you can do,” Amira says finally.

“David should lower his expectation,” Matteo mumbles.

“Of you?” Amira says.

“Yeah,” says Matteo. His eyes bore into hers. “Of me. Doesn’t he get it? Don’t all of you get it, yet? You all had it right from the beginning. I’m a fuck up. That’s what I do.”

Amira is silent for a long time. Matteo looks away first. He knew this was a bad idea. He never should have left David’s room. He never should have come here at all.

“You know something, Matteo,” says Amira. “You’re right. When you showed up at that first workshop with that sulky look on your face, we all thought you’d find some way to just slack off or disappear. When David cast you as Ophelia, we thought he had lost his mind. We did. And when I confronted him about it, you know what he said?”

Matteo clutches the coffee cup so hard he’s afraid he might crush it. He stares at the table, bracing himself for the worst.

“He said, ‘It has to be him.’ He wouldn’t accept anyone else. He knew. He just…knew. He saw something in you the moment he laid eyes on you. He knew how much shit he was going to get after he cast you, but he did it anyways. He believed in you that much.”

Matteo’s eyes burn.

“I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty. I know you wanted to be there that night more than anyone—I’m not trying to make you feel bad about that. I know this week has been difficult for you. I just want you to know that David thinks you’re the best fucking thing that’s ever stepped onto that stage. I’ve seen him every day this week, taking down the sets from the show. Matteo, you’re all he ever talks about. Did you know that? I mean, you’re literally all he can think about. You mean everything to him.”

Matteo shakes his head. He can feel his eyes burning. Amira reaches across the table and grabs his hands.

“God, I could just fucking shake you right now. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to see you beat yourself up like this? Look—I have days like this too. There are days when I’d like to be just about anybody else. But Matteo, you have to understand that the way you see yourself, all this self-hatred you have right now—you’ve got to find a way to dig yourself out of that hole. Because no one else sees you the way you do. Especially not David.”

He can feel his most private thought right behind his tongue, the one he finds himself dwelling on over and over and over again, like clockwork: But he deserves so much better than me.

He doesn’t say it out loud. But Amira is looking at him like she knows exactly what he’s thinking.

“What are you gonna do now?” she asks him.

Matteo looks at her, like he might find the right answer written on her face. He shrugs.

“I can’t make you do anything,” she says. “I wish I could. But that’s not how this works. You want to feel like this forever?”

Matteo crumples up the wrapper from his pastry in his fist. “Of course I don’t,” he mutters.

“Okay,” says Amira. “So what are you going to do?”

—

The next morning, Matteo texts Jonas. He meets the boys on the quad, where they used to hang out between classes. Kiki is there, too, sitting between Carlos’s knees on the bench.

None of the boys ask Matteo where he’s been, and he’s grateful for that. He sits with Jonas in the grass, sipping his beer, watching Abdi nearly take out a group of nearby first-years with a frisbee. Carlos runs after it, and Kiki sits on the grass next to Matteo.

She turns to Matteo, as if to ask him something—something Matteo is dreading—but before she can, Jonas jumps in, “So, Kiki, how’s everything?”

“Good!” she says cheerfully. “Really good, actually. Yesterday I ate pizza for the first time in like…three years.”

“Really?” Jonas says, making eye contact with Matteo. They both fight back a grin.

“Yeah,” she says. “It wasn’t as good as I remembered it being.”

Carlos throws the frisbee back in their direction. Jonas leaps to his feet, catches it, and launches it back in Abdi’s direction.

“My therapist—she’s been encouraging me to stop feeling scared of foods I used to love. She’s been helping me a lot.”

“Your therapist?” says Jonas. “Who d’you see?”

“Dr. Klein—she’s on campus, actually. We get free counseling, did you know that? I used to go to someone in the city, but it was really expensive. Carlos found Dr. Klein and I started seeing her. She’s really good.”

“Nice,” says Jonas. Matteo can feel Jonas glancing at him. He takes another long sip of his beer.

“What’s David up to today?” Jonas asks, nudging Matteo with his elbow. Kiki runs back over to Carlos, kisses his cheek and hurries off to class.

“They’re taking down the last of the sets today,” says Matteo.

“Oh yeah?”

Matteo nods. He feels his phone buzz. Matteo pulls his backpack between his knees to check. A piece of paper catches his eye.

He pulls it out. It’s a drawing.

A drawing of him.

Matteo runs his fingers along it, marveling. It’s undoubtedly one of David’s—Matteo has spent so many hours poring over David’s sketch books that he would recognize his art in a heartbeat. Matteo is wearing a white sweater, the one David lovingly calls his grandpa sweater. He’s standing on stage, holding a copy of Hamlet. There is a sign posted in the background that says “Auditions.” Only Matteo’s outline is clear: thick, bold lines of charcoal. In the background is David’s familiar, looping handwriting, smudged in black lines: “How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears.” In the corner of the page, it says “flip over.”

He flips it over. In red ink are the words: “1. Your Voice. It’s soft and silver-sweet.”

Matteo stares at it. He can see Jonas reading over his shoulder.

Jonas takes the drawing from him, studies it up close for a moment. He starts laughing.

“That romantic son of a bitch,” he says, shaking his head.

“What?” says Matteo.

“This is gonna be one of those big romantic, List of Things I Love About Matteo. Honestly, can you tell him to chill out for once? Your boyfriend makes the rest of us look like fucking garbage.”

Pink floods Matteo’s cheeks. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used to Jonas calling David “his boyfriend.”

“You are garbage,” says Matteo.

“We are?” says Carlos. He and Abdi lean back in the grass opposite Jonas and Matteo. Abdi tosses the frisbee into the air and catches it. “What did we do now?”

“Carlos, it’s not what we did,” says Jonas, “it’s what we didn’t do. Have you ever given Kiki a drawing of her with some fucking Shakespeare quote, talking about how much you love her voice?”

“Uh,” says Carlos, “Am I supposed to?”

“Seriously,” says Jonas, turning back to Matteo sternly. “He’s making us look terrible.”

“I don’t think we need David to look terrible,” Abdi laughs. Jonas plucks the frisbee from Abdi’s hands and smacks him in the face with it.

Matteo leans back, watching Carlos, Abdi, and Jonas wrestle in the grass. He looks back at the drawing again, a small, private smile playing on his face.

After the boys leave for class, Matteo walks down the street outside campus. He ducks into the bookstore—he knows David doesn’t have a shift there today—and picks up a new novel from a writer he knows David likes. He walks to the river and pockets a strange, smooth amber rock he’s sure David will turn into something crafty and interesting.

The sun is setting by the time Matteo walks back to David’s dorm. When Matteo walks inside, David is waiting for him with his favorite takeout from the Thai restaurant they both love.

“I know I’m no Chef Luigi,” says David, “but it’s the best I could do.”

They still don’t have a proper table, but Matteo sits in David’s lap and makes fun of the way David holds his chopsticks, and David laughs when Matteo accidentally eats a chili that’s too hot for him, until he finally takes pity on him and brings Matteo ice water.

Matteo gives him the book and the weird little rock. David’s face lights up—he loves shit like this—and holds it close to his face, then adds it to his box of similar little knick-knacks: a strangely-shaped pinecone, a drawer pull, a chipped tea-cup, a seashell, a geode.

They’re still curled up in the chair. Matteo rests his head back on David’s shoulder. David is flipping through the book Matteo bought for him, studying the illustrations, his fingers in Matteo’s hair.

“I found your drawing,” Matteo whispers.

David’s fingers pause. Matteo lifts his face to look at him, and they study each other quietly, for a long moment. Then David runs his thumb along Matteo’s bottom lip, thoughtfully.

“You have no idea how many of those I have,” David whispers.

Matteo shivers. He has to look away. He never knows what to do when faced with David like this. When David states his desire for him, so plainly. The blunt, straightforward force of it. He turns his face into David’s chest.

“Come on,” David says quietly, his fingers returning to Matteo’s hair. “Let’s go to bed.”

—

The Student Health Center looks a little bit like a prison: it’s squat and gray with rows of tall, thin windows, like rows of teeth. It’s hidden behind the dining hall beneath a low, shady canopy of trees, like a strange fortress in the jungle.

Matteo approaches the counter. The waiting room is small, filled with chairs grouped close together against the wall. A student sneezes loudly into the collar of her sweatshirt. Matteo grimaces, waiting for the secretary behind the desk to acknowledge him.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

Matteo watches as the Sneezing Girl muffles a loud coughing fit into the crook of her arm.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, distractedly. “I wanted to make an appointment with Dr. Klein.”

“Dr. Klein,” says the secretary, pushing her glasses up her nose. She turns to her computer screen. “Have you seen her before?”

“No,” says Matteo. “I uh. I don’t really know how this works.”

The secretary has long, pink fingernails which match the frames of her glasses. She smiles at Matteo.

“No problem,” she says. “Why don’t you take a seat right here and I’ll see if Dr. Klein has any availability this afternoon. Sound good?”

Matteo takes the seat, digging into his backpack to find his headphones.

Inside his backpack is another folded sheet of paper. Matteo opens it.

Another drawing of him. This one is just a close-up of his face, a pencil-drawing. On the back of it are calculus equations. It looks as though David had drawn this absent-mindedly when he was in class. Scrawled diagonally across the page are the words: “Hear my soul speak. Of the very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly at your service.”

Matteo flips over the page: “2. You are my favorite distraction. Note the date.”

He looks at the corner of the page. David’s math homework is dated many weeks back, before production on Hamlet even began.

His heartbeat stutters. How long ago had David drawn this?

He texts a photo of it to David. “Stalker,” he writes.

David replies immediately: “Can you blame me?”

Matteo’s face colors. He barely notices the secretary waving in his direction.

“Hello?” she shouts behind the desk. Matteo startles, looking up. He folds the drawing and puts it back in his bag then returns to desk.

“I was worried about you for a second there,” she says, “I called your name like five times.”

Matteo flushes even darker. “Sorry,” he says.

She waves off his apology. “Good news. Dr. Klein actually has a free window open right now if you’d like to drop in.”

“Oh,” Matteo says. He didn’t expect to actually get to see her today. He didn’t expect anything really. When he’d woken up that morning, he hadn’t expected to come at all. But then he saw the “Voice” drawing again, folded sweetly in his backpack, as he and David got ready together that morning. He decided he might as well try.

“If you’re worried—don’t be. Dr. Klein is great with people who are new to therapy.”

Therapy. Even just the word sends a bolt of ice to Matteo’s stomach.

“Okay,” he mumbles, after a beat. The secretary grins.

“Great,” she says. “I’ll walk you down the hall.”

She leads Matteo down a brightly-lit hallway. At the very end is dark, polished door with a clean, silver name plate.

The door opens, and a short woman with long, grey hair and blunt bangs appears in the frame.

“Are you Matteo?” she asks, holding a hand. “I’m Dr. Klein. Please, come in.”

Matteo steps inside, hesitantly. It’s a brightly-lit office with an aquarium in the corner of the room. The walls are palest green, and there’s a light fixture shaped like a coral reef hanging from the ceiling.

He sits down opposite her.

“So, Matteo,” she says, “This is your first time seeing a counselor?”

He nods.

“I, um,” he starts, “I’m only allowed to stay until the end of the semester. So I don’t know how many sessions we’ll get.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” says Dr. Klein. “Let’s just focus on this session. Anything in particular you’d like to talk about?”

Matteo studies an orange goldfish, darting into a miniature model of a ruined ship. Bubbles stream to the surface.

“I’m getting kicked out school,” he says. He studies the carpet: it has a weird, repeating geometric pattern. It’s a hideous carpet, but Matteo would rather study it than look into Dr. Klein’s face.

He can see her write something down on the clipboard in her lap.

“Okay,” she says. “Do you want to talk about that?”

Matteo shrugs. He tells her, haltingly, about how he stopped going to class. How at first it began slowly: sometimes he’d even make it all the way to the door. He’d watch the students filing into the lecture hall. Then he’d turn around and walk home. He did this twice before he finally stopped leaving his room for class altogether, except to go to Acting Workshop.

“Has this happened to you before?”

Matteo unknots a long string dangling from the hem of his sweater. He knots it again.

He nods.

“Can you talk to me about that?”

—

He’s sixteen and he can’t leave his bed. He lays there just day-dreaming about what he would do if he could: he would walk to the kitchen and get a glass of water, because his throat hurts and he can’t remember the last time he had something to drink. He would take a shower. He would change out of the clothes he’s been wearing for the past three days. He would walk to a coffeeshop where there are people, other people, and he would talk to the barista when he orders his drink. He would go on a walk. He would go and see Jonas. They would play video games in Jonas’s bedroom. Maybe Matteo would fall asleep on his shoulder. Maybe Jonas would let him stay. Matteo closes his eyes, still day-dreaming of leaving his bed. He falls back asleep.

—

It’s raining when Matteo walks home, and he doesn’t have an umbrella. He unlocks David’s door, soaking wet, and stands on the threshold.

The apartment is empty. Slowly, Matteo puts his backpack on the floor. He wrings out his jacket in the shower and hangs it on a hook on the back of the door. He changes into dry clothes and curls up in the middle of David’s bed.

He texts David: “where are you?”

A minute later, an audio message comes in: “Sorry. Working on something. I’ll be home in a few hours.”

Matteo buries his face in the pillow. He knows it’s not fair of him to be upset: David has a life separate from him, a life Matteo wants him to have, a life David deserves.

But he wants him. He can’t help but want him, always. He wants David’s arms around him, he wants to lose himself in his touch. He wants to escape the prison of his own mind.

After a few minutes, Matteo rolls out of David’s bed. He takes a shower. He doesn’t have much appetite, but he makes himself a sandwich with what little food David has in his fridge. He watches a stupid television show on Netflix, something light and funny that doesn’t quite rip Matteo from his mind, but at least dulls the misery a little.

Matteo is asleep when he hears the door open. He hears David’s quiet footsteps as he takes off his shoes and puts down his bags. He feels the covers rustle behind him. David presses his lips to Matteo’s shoulder.

“You’re back,” Matteo whispers.

“I’m back.” David kisses him again. “Can I turn on the light?”

“Yeah, of course,” says Matteo, sitting up. David turns on the light and crosses the room again, changing into sleep clothes. Matteo watches him quietly, hugging his knees to his chest.

“How was your day?” David asks, from the bathroom. Matteo listens to him spit a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink.

Matteo pulls the covers around his shoulders, feeling cold again. He doesn’t answer.

“Matteo?” David asks, wiping the back of his mouth. Matteo glances at him—David looks unbelievably good, his hair still a little damp from the rain, his t-shirt clinging to his arms and shoulders in a way that makes Matteo’s throat run dry. He looks away again.

David climbs into bed with him. “What happened?” he asks quietly.

Matteo sinks back into the pillows. David leans on his elbow, hovering over Matteo, combing his fingers through his hair.

“I saw a therapist today.”

Matteo closes his eyes. Whatever expression is on David’s face—concern, surprise, relief—he’s not ready to see it.

He feels David shift beside him.

“Okay,” says David quietly. He sounds like he’s trying to be casual about it. “And how was that?”

Matteo shrugs. “It was good, I guess. Kind of weird.”

“I saw a counselor once,” David says.

Matteo opens his eyes. “You did?”

David nods. “Sure. When I left home. Laura pushed me to do it. I…didn’t like it much at first. It was hard, opening up, you know, to a total stranger. But I got used to it. It helped me, a lot, actually.”

Matteo chews on his lip. He felt so raw after talking to Dr. Klein. It was like playing with an open wound.

“Do you think you’ll go again?” David asks.

“Do you want me to?”

David kisses his forehead. “I want you to do whatever makes you feel better.”

“But do you want me to?” Matteo repeats.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” says David.

“Yes, it does,” says Matteo. “It matters to me.”

David swallows, roughly. “Matteo, I’m not gonna lie to you. It hurts seeing you like this. It does. But I don’t want you to do anything just to make it easier on me. I’m here, no matter what. You know that, right?”

Matteo pushes his face into David’s shoulder, feeling even more raw than before. A different kind of raw. Like David could ask anything of him right now, anything at all, and Matteo would say yes. He feels David’s arms fold around him, holding him close. There is so much more Matteo wants to say but knows he shouldn’t: that he wants to be better, that he doesn’t want David to worry about him, that he wants everything to go back to the way it was before David discovered that Matteo was wading too deep into the river.

But for the first time, Matteo thinks he might be able to swim back to shore.

—

David brings Matteo to breakfast in the dining hall with Laura and Anna. Matteo hasn’t seen Laura since before the play, and he’s so nervous to see her that he almost backs out at the last minute.

“I’m not hungry,” says Matteo, watching in the doorway as David finishes messing with his hair in the mirror.

“You’ve been saying that every day for like two weeks,” says David.

Matteo shrugs. He’s wearing one of David’s hoodies, and he’s already put on his shoes. He is actually hungry: his appetite has been a lot better recently, and on Wednesdays the dining hall usually has a breakfast sandwich he really likes.

“Matteo,” says David, washing his hands in the sink. “I’ve told you for the millionth time. She isn’t mad at you.”

Matteo zips his hoodie over his face. David zips it back down and gives him a quick kiss.

“Come on,” says David, handing Matteo his backpack.

Matteo lets David drag him to the dining hall. Laura and Anna are waiting outside, sitting on one of the benches, laughing at something on Anna’s phone.

“Hey,” says David. Laura and Anna look up.

Laura’s eyes lock onto Matteo’s. She climbs off the bench and punches him lightly in the arm.

“Missed you,” she says. Matteo shakes his head a little, with a ghost of a grin. David is giving him a fond told-you-so look over Laura’s shoulder.

“Come on,” Anna calls out, already heading into the dining hall. “I’m fucking starving.”

After breakfast, David, Laura, and Anna all leave for class.

Ten minutes later, Matteo finds himself standing in front of a tall, imposing staircase.

The administration building.

He holds the straps of his backpack close and begins trudging up the steps and into the dark marble foyer, his footsteps echoing. He takes a deep breath and approaches the front desk. Tentatively, he asks if he can meet with a school administrator. The secretary tells him there’s an open slot in thirty minutes.

Matteo takes a paper cup and fills it with coffee from the machine in the waiting area, then slumps into one of the chairs. There’s only a few other students in here, most of them with their parents. Prospectives, most likely.

He takes a nervous sip. It’s lukewarm and watery, but at least it gives him something to do. He digs into his backpack for his headphones.

Right there, folded into a square on top of his notebook, is another piece of paper.

Matteo bites back a smile. He opens it.

It’s a boy sitting in the front row of a theater. The boy is looking down, his eyelashes fanning over his cheeks. A tiara sits lopsided on his head, nearly falling down. A hand adjusts the tiara upright.

The boy looks too beautiful to be him. Matteo’s breath shallows. Across the page are the words: “If thou remember’st not the slightest folly that ever love did make thee run into, thou hast not loved.”

He flips it over. “3. I have laughed more in my weeks with you than all the weeks that came before.”

“Matteo Florenzi?” A voice calls.

Matteo looks up, swiping his hand across the back of his cheek.

“Are you ready?”

“Yeah, yeah—” Matteo fumbles to his feet, folding the paper carefully and zipping it into his bag.

A familiar dread twists his stomach as the secretary leads him down the hallway: the same hallway he walked down almost two weeks ago, before he was told the news that made him sink deeper than he’d ever sunk.

His hands curl into fists as he faces the door. It opens, slowly.

This time, there is only one administrator sitting on the other side of the desk, instead of three.

The man smiles at him—he has very white, straight teeth—as Matteo takes the seat opposite him. Matteo is not sure if the smile makes him feel more afraid or less.

“I was wondering, um—” Matteo swallows, hard. His throat is so dry. He wishes he’d remembered to bring a water bottle with him—David is constantly badgering him about that, but Matteo always forgets. “I know, when I was here a few weeks ago, you told me—”

The administrator stares at Matteo, waiting. His bland, bureaucratic smile collapses, just a little.

“I was just wondering if there’s anything else I can do,” Matteo blurts out. “To stay. I want—I want to stay.”

“Matteo, your professors report that you didn’t show up to almost a single one of your courses this term. Except for your acting workshop.”

“I know,” says Matteo, running a hand through his hair. “I know—” He doesn’t know what else to say.

The administrators shuffles some papers on his desk, then puts them aside. He folds his hands in his lap and fixes Matteo with a look over the rim of his glasses.

“We have a few options,” he says. “If you’ve had a health crisis for example, including a mental health crisis, you can declare a leave of absence. You will need a doctor’s note and letters from each one of your professors this term.”

Matteo pulls the sleeves of David’s hoodie over his hands. “Does Dr. Klein count?” he asks quietly.

“Dr. Klein, in the student health center?” he asks. “Of course she does.”

Matteo nods.

“I would also consider you to speak with your advisor. Do you have one?”

“I think so,” says Matteo. “I was assigned one in the science department, but I’ve never visited him. I’m…not really into science.”

“But most of your registered courses have been in the science department.”

Matteo shrugs. “I didn’t really know what to sign up for.”

The administrator nods for a long time, as if mulling that over. “Okay, Matteo. I think I’m starting to see what’s going on. And I want you to know: your first year of university can be one of the most difficult years of your life. Some students come in already knowing what they want to do. Many more don’t, and that’s okay. It takes a long time, and we must be patient with ourselves. You understand?”

Matteo looks at his lap. “I think so.”

“I noticed your attendance was good in your acting workshop.”

Matteo chews on his thumbnail. He shrugs. “I liked that class.”

“Have you considered taking more theatre courses? The theatre department here is quite excellent, if I do say so myself—it has an amazing reputation. You could even declare a theatre major.”

Matteo thinks it over. He hasn’t considered it much, in all honesty. Not seriously. Not as something he could actually pursue professionally. He just thought it was a random skill he’d stumbled upon, like being decent at cooking, or video games. Acting makes sense to him, he knows that—sometimes it makes so much sense to him that it terrifies him. Sometimes, when he was playing Ophelia, it was like he had entered some strange amnesiac realm, and when the scene was over, it was like being ripped back into this dimension. He couldn’t remember what he’d said or what he did: all he knew was the awestruck look on David’s face.

“How about this: why don’t you meet with the acting instructor?”

“Helena?” Matteo asks. The administrator nods.

“I’m sure she can talk about your options. Recommend other courses you might take, next term.”

“So I can come back?” Matteo asks hopefully.

“Like I said, you’ll need to file all the proper paperwork for a leave of absence. I don’t want to promise you anything: the school is very strict about these things. But I believe there’s certainly a chance. It can take a few weeks to go through—first, you’ll need to keep seeing Dr. Klein. That paperwork will come through the health center. Plus, you’ll need to submit paperwork to all the professors you had this term. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes,” says Matteo, a little breathlessly. The administrator gets to his feet. Matteo follows his lead.

“Good,” he says, sticking out his hand to shake. Matteo takes it. “Then let’s get started.”

—

David is on his workout mat when Matteo gets home, leaning back on his elbows as he rolls out his calf muscles on a foam roller. The collar of his t-shirt is dark with sweat, and he’s got his headphones on. He pulls them down around his neck when he sees Matteo, and switches to roll out his other calf.

“Good run?” Matteo asks. He goes to the sink and fills two water glasses, one for David, one for himself.

David drinks it, gratefully. He sits up, his elbows on his knees.

“Yeah, it was good. I ran into Anna—she and Laura are gonna try out this free yoga class later. Wanna come?”

Matteo shrugs and sits on the floor next to him. He picks up the foam roller—he’s always thought this thing was weird—and sits on top of it. David shakes his head, amused.

“How was your day?” David asks him.

Matteo’s mouth twists, feeling suddenly shy. After a minute or so, he tells him about visiting the administration building.

David wrestles him to the ground. Matteo lets himself be pinned, unable to hold back his grin. David looks unspeakably beautiful like this—his dark eyes glittering, his smile so bright it makes Matteo’s chest ache.

“So you really think there’s a chance?” says David.

Matteo bites his lip and nods. David presses their foreheads together. Matteo’s chin lifts, just a little, begging for a kiss. David’s mouth meets his in a kiss so light it is almost unbearable.

He remembers the drawing. He kisses David again.

“How do you feel?” David whispers.

“Good,” says Matteo. “I feel good. I have to keep seeing Dr. Klein, but I think—I think maybe that’s good.”

David nods against his forehead. Matteo presses his face into David’s neck—it’s still a little damp from his run, but he smells good, like sweat and his cologne and shampoo. Matteo inhales.

“So are we gonna do this yoga thing?” David teases.

Matteo laughs. He changes into a pair of sweatpants—neither of them have any idea what you’re supposed to wear to yoga—and they meet Laura and Anna outside the rec center.

David and Matteo give it a solid ten minutes, but they can’t stop laughing through every pose. Both of them keep falling over, and after a while the instructor—her serene voice cracking, just slightly—asks them politely to leave.

They’re both still wiping tears from their cheeks as they stumble from the gym. Matteo feels weak from laughter.

“Okay, I don’t know how the fuck Laura and Anna do that. I thought I was strong. That shit is hard,” says David.

Matteo hides his face in his hands, remembering falling over backwards into David. They eat a quick dinner in the dining hall and shower when they get home. Matteo climbs into David’s lap afterwards, still warm and damp from his shower. David’s fingers crawl up at the back of his t-shirt, then begin to slip down the back of Matteo’s boxers.

Matteo inhales, sharply. David removes his fingers. He squeezes Matteo’s hands, crushed between their chests.

“Good?” says David.

Slowly, Matteo meets David’s eyes.

“Good,” he whispers. “But maybe—maybe not yet.”

David runs his thumbs along Matteo’s wrists.

“Is that okay?” Matteo says nervously.

“Of course it’s okay,” says David. “There’s no rush to get back to that.”

Matteo rolls off David, and they both lie down. David brings out his laptop and pulls up a movie. Matteo tries to shove down the guilty feeling writhing in his stomach until eventually, he manages to fall asleep.

—

“Can you try to describe to me what it feels like when you’re acting? It would be good to try to identify what it is about performing that clicks with you. I’d like to follow that impulse, if we can.”

Matteo stares at Dr. Klein’s pen, poised on her clipboard. There is a new fish in the aquarium today, a bright lemon-yellow fish swimming near the top of the tank.

He watches the fish dart from corner to corner, remembering something Hanna had said to him once, when they were younger, maybe only fifteen or so. They were laying on the couch on Jonas’s house, their heads bent together sleepily, watching Jonas play video games. Matteo was telling her some story, he couldn’t remember what exactly, something stupid their history teacher had done that day, when he looked over and noticed she was falling asleep.

“Am I boring you that much?” Matteo teased, sitting up on the couch.

“No,” Hanna laughed, pulling him back, “your voice makes me sleepy. In a good way. It’s nice.”

“What are you saying?”

“I don’t know, I’m tired,” said Hanna. “It’s just…I don’t know. Soft. It’s nice.”

Matteo hadn’t really known what to make of that. He’d always thought it was a bad thing—he never did like raising his voice if he could avoid it. He always spoke as quietly as he could. He thinks it probably came from his mom: he loved climbing into bed with her when he was a kid and making her tell him a story. He loved falling asleep to the sound of her voice. When he was older, and his mom’s episodes worsened, he used the same gentle, hushed voice on her to try to coax her out of bed. Sometimes he was so quiet he thought his voice might just fade away. If he went without out speaking for too long, he might lose the ability entirely.

That’s why he would never forget the first time he took the stage. Until that moment, he had never heard his voice carry.

—

David isn’t there when Matteo wakes up the next morning. Matteo resists the urge to feel upset, though he doesn’t quite succeed: David hadn’t made it home until late the night before either, and though Matteo is glad that David isn’t feeling that same need to constantly hover around Matteo, he can’t shake the feeling that David’s absence is somehow his fault.

He forces himself to shower and change: he picks David’s grey sweater, which is hanging off the back of a hair. It hangs off Matteo a little more loosely than it normally does. He really does need to get back to his regular eating habits. He walks past the benches outside the dining hall on the way to campus and hangs with Jonas, Carlos, and Abdi for a bit—Jonas gives him a banana to eat, and the rest of his coffee, and makes Matteo stay with them until he finishes it.

“How’re you feeling, Mr. Florenzi?” Jonas asks, quiet enough so that only Matteo can hear him. Carlos and Abdi are arguing animatedly about a bet Carlos insists Abdi lost. Matteo hadn’t been able to follow exactly, but it seems like it involved a girl and a party and whether or not Abdi could actually get a girl to speak to him.

Matteo shrugs, tossing his banana peel in the trash. “Okay, I guess.” He tells Jonas about the game plan the school administrator laid out for him to return to school next term, and how he’s been seeing Kiki’s therapist.

Jonas puts Matteo in an affectionate headlock, and Matteo nearly spills coffee all over both of them, batting away Jonas’s hugs.

After Jonas and the others leave, Matteo walks over to the PAC. He ignores the uncomfortable jolt of déjà vu—he doesn’t ever want to revisit the rock-bottom misery that brought him to the theatre building the last time he was here.

He walks to the lowest floor, underground, until he reaches the office he’s looking for.

Matteo knocks. A few seconds later, Helena’s dark head appears in the door frame. She looks at him for a second, confused, before her expression slides quickly from surprise to delight. She gives him a wide, red-lipped smile and ushers him inside with a hand on his shoulder.

“Hi,” says Matteo, feeling much shyer now that he’s actually in her office. He’d rehearsed this moment many times last night and this morning, as soon as he decided he wanted to officially meet with her. But he can’t quite move on from the anxiety that she might hate him after he disappeared on the night of the premiere.

They make awkward small talk for a few minutes, and Matteo manages to stammer through a few answers before finally blurting, “I’m sorry.”

Helena falls silent and looks down at her tea cup.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry,” finishes Matteo, his hands twisting awkwardly in his lap. “I wanted to tell you sooner. I just—” He shifts in his chair, running his thumb along the scratchy cushion material. “I didn’t know what to say,” he whispers.

“Matteo, you don’t need to apologize,” says Helena, gently. “David—he didn’t go into detail, but I know you wanted to be there. I know you did.”

Matteo can’t bring himself to look at her. He still feels so guilty. No matter how many times he hears someone tell him he shouldn’t—he still can’t help but wish he could go back in time and do everything differently. Be someone different.

But he can’t. Dr. Klein has been telling him he needs to stop dwelling in the past. He wishes it were that easy. Sometimes it seems like an impossible habit to shake.

“I did miss you, though,” says Helena, smiling softly. “Matteo, I’m not lying when I tell you’re one of the most naturally gifted students I’ve ever had.”

Matteo huffs a disbelieving laugh through his nose. He can’t help it.

“I mean it,” she says, “you really are. You have such an instinct for performing. The way you internalized Ophelia on such a cellular level, your talent for play—I like to think of myself as a good teacher, but Matteo, I mean it when I say that so much of that was you. Your hard work. You seemed to truly understand the character. But more than that, I feel like you could inhabit just about anyone—one of the things so few people realize is that so much of acting is not about speaking. It’s about listening. Listening to your character, listening to the other actors on stage. Listening is a gift—and a very difficult one to learn. But you have that gift.”

Matteo doesn’t say anything. She takes a deep breath, watching him steadily.

“Alright, fine,” she says, leaning back in her chair, “I can see you don’t believe me. And that’s a shame. But please, Matteo, don’t give it up. Keep sticking with it—keep trying.”

“I want to,” he says, finally, his voice a little raspy. “I do want to. I was hoping, um—I actually wanted to ask you if you would be my advisor. If they let me back.”

He can feel how fast his heart is beating. He didn’t expect to feel this nervous. But now, being in this room, sitting opposite this woman who believes in him—he wants her to be right about him. He wants to believe in himself the way that she does.

“Of course,” she says, simply, almost dismissively, as if she can’t believe he’s even asking her something so obvious, “I’m surprised it took you so long to ask.”

Matteo runs a hand through his hair, then lets it fall to his lap. She winks at him across the desk and gets to her feet, giving him a final pat on the shoulder.

“Hang on, I’ll be right back,” she calls out, “let me go get some pamphlets for you. I want us to go over next term’s course catalog.”

Matteo digs for his phone in his bag—he doesn’t want to wait a second longer to tell David.

He fishes through his books. His fingers close around a folded piece of paper.

Matteo’s breath hitches. He unfolds it.

He recognizes the scene immediately: it’s him, his knees curled to his chest, headphones slung around his neck, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the storage closet in the theatre department. He remembers that afternoon so well. How sure he had been David had cast him as Ophelia just to fuck with him. How sure he’d been that David hated him—hated everything about him.

Written across the background of the page are the words: “A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind. A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound.”

Matteo flips the paper over, reading the lines written in David’s beautiful, looping handwriting: “4. Because you always let me in. Your trust in me helps me learn to trust myself.”

He hears the door creak again and folds the paper back into his bag.

“You alright?” Helena asks, studying his face. She takes her seat. “You look—”

Matteo is sure his cheeks are bright red. “I’m fine,” he stammers.

Helena pushes a catalogue across the desk. They spent the next forty-five minutes flipping through it, talking about all the options available, what she’d like to see him take, what plays he might be interested in auditioning for.

At the end of it, Matteo feels lighter than he’s felt in weeks. He gets to his feet, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

She walks him to the door.

“You know, one day, maybe in a few years, we’ll reprise Hamlet. People always want to do Hamlet, you know. There will be another production, maybe not soon, but some day. I promise you that,” Helena says.

Matteo squeezes the straps of his backpack, nodding. He can still feel Ophelia with him, drifting through his mind sometimes, like a ghost wandering through an abandoned house. He wonders if she’ll ever truly leave.

“Do you still remember her lines?” Helena asks, curiously.

Matteo steps into the hallway and turns around, meeting her eyes. The corner of his mouth lifts, but it’s too faint, too wistful, too painful to be a smile. “Every word.”

—

Jonas invites Matteo to pizza and beers with the boys that night. Matteo invites David over to hang with them, but he doesn’t text back. After a few minutes without a response, Matteo pockets his phone. He’s determined to maintain his good mood after his meeting with Helena, and he manages to actually have a decent night, even it does end with Carlos ordering them the most disgusting pizza he’s ever seen in his life and Abdi almost accidentally swallowing a bottle cap.

By the time Matteo gets back to David’s, it’s nearly midnight.

David still isn’t home. Matteo checks his phone again. David still hasn’t answered his last text. He calls David, but he doesn’t answer, so Matteo leaves a quick audio message: “Hey Mr. Schreibner. Still alive?”

Matteo strips down to his boxers and crawls into bed, playing games on his phone until he falls asleep.

He wakes up the next morning to David hurriedly pulling on his shoes, his toothbrush hanging out of his mouth.

Matteo sits up, sleepily. David rushes over and presses a toothpaste kiss to Matteo’s temple.

“Ew—” Matteo grumbles, trying to wipe the toothpaste onto David’s sweater, but David dodges him just in time, laughing.

“I didn’t hear you come home last night,” Matteo says to David’s back. David gargles his mouth wash, their eyes meeting in the mirror. He spits it out and turns around.

“I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to wake you up,” says David.

Matteo wraps his arms around his knees, tugging the blanket up to his chin. “I like when you wake me up,” he says.

David crosses the room again, sitting next to Matteo on the edge of the bed. He takes Matteo’s chin in his hand and kisses him. Matteo falls into his touch, wanting more, and David puts his arms around him, holding him close.

“Hey,” says David, gently.

Matteo knows that tone. He recognizes it immediately. It’s the voice David uses when Matteo is doing something worrisome.

“Did you see my drawing yesterday?” David asks.

Matteo nods. He presses his forehead into David’s shoulder, inhaling. He doesn’t want to let him go.

“Did you like it?”

Matteo nods again. David’s thumb strokes the back of his neck.

“Good,” David whispers. He lifts Matteo’s chin so he can kiss him again. “Are you gonna let me go to class now?”

Matteo shakes his head. He feels David laugh into his shoulder.

“Wanna walk with me?” David asks.

“I don’t want you to be late,” Matteo mumbles, still gripping the back of David’s sweater.

“Oh, yeah? You don’t want me to be late?” David teases. Matteo holds on even tighter, until David finally removes Matteo’s hands himself and pins them gently to the bed. He kisses him one last time. Matteo sulks, watching David cross the room to swing his bag onto his shoulder.

“What’s your plan today?”

Matteo shrugs. “Therapy.”

“Okay,” says David, looking down. He walks to the door. “I um. I might be home kind of late again.”

Matteo’s mouth twists, trying not to feel disappointed. “Okay,” he says.

“I’d pick you up after therapy but I’ve got class all day.”

“It’s okay,” says Matteo.

“Maybe, uh—I don’t know, what’s Jonas doing later?”

“David,” says Matteo, “It’s really okay.”

David is still standing at the door, looking like he wants to say something more.

“You’re gonna be late for class,” Matteo says.

“Yeah,” says David. He doesn’t move for another long moment. “Okay. I’ll wake you up this time. When I get home. Maybe if you’re still up we can watch a movie or something.”

“Yeah,” says Matteo, trying to smile. “Maybe.”

David finally leaves. Matteo falls back into the sheets and scrubs his hands over his face. He takes out his phone, wanting to text David again, even just something stupid, a meme, but he can’t think of what to do. He doesn’t even know why he suddenly feels so miserable. All he knows is his boyfriend is trying so hard, all the time, to make Matteo feel good. And Matteo can’t help but feel like all he’s doing is letting him down.

Another text message comes up as he stares at his phone, trying to think of what to write to David.

Mama: Just had a wonderful morning with my choir group and couldn’t help but think of my beautiful boy. We’re planning a lovely service for this Friday. Will you join me?

Matteo gnaws on his bottom lip for a full minute, staring at the message. It’s been almost four months since he’d seen her. They had gone to lunch and had a good afternoon, all things considered. She had some shopping to do afterwards, and she invited him to tag along. He should’ve known they were pushing their luck. They ended up fighting over something stupid—an expensive houseplant she wanted to buy that Matteo insisted she didn’t need. He doesn’t even know why he’d fought with her about it. She is so lonely as it is. But something ugly came over him every time their paths crossed—everything would be fine, he would be happy with her, nearly crying from how much he’d missed her, and yet by the end of every day they spent together he nearly always felt like screaming.

He tosses his phone to the foot of the bed and finally rolls onto his feet. He stands silently in David’s empty room, staring out of the window. He puts on one of David’s hoodies and clears up some of the dishes they’ve left lying around. He showers and eats some cereal David’s left for him on the counter.

At noon, he goes to see Dr. Klein. He tells her about meeting with Helena, and how he still feels guilty about not doing the play. He tells her his fears about David.

“Did anything else happen today?” she asks, nearly the end of their session.

“Well.” Matteo scratches the back of his neck, slumping a little in the chair. “My mom texted me.”

They have talked about his mom before. Dr. Klein knows about her history with depression. The conversation terrified him. It was like an arrow drawing nearer and nearer to a bullseye. A bullseye he’d been avoiding for as long as he can remember.

And yet when the moment came where she finally said the words out loud—words like “depression” and “you” and “let’s talk about it” all in one sentence together—Matteo felt surprisingly numb. They’d talked about various courses of action, and Matteo had panicked when she brought up the idea of medication. She told him he didn’t have to do anything, if he didn’t want to. All she wanted was that he keep seeing her, as long as he felt comfortable.

Truth be told, Matteo wasn’t sure how comfortable he felt. Dr. Klein was good at her job: she never pushed him into corners he didn’t want to linger in. She asked good questions— sometimes questions Matteo didn’t know how to answer—but she never pried if he wasn’t ready. Sometimes her advice made him nearly roll his eyes, but then he’d find himself in the shower, or on his walk home, days later, and sometimes advice he wasn’t ready to hear in the moment would return to him, suddenly lucid.

“Okay. Your mom texted you,” says Dr. Klein. “Do you feel like talking about that?”

Matteo tells Dr. Klein that his mother wants to see him on Friday. That he hasn’t seen her in four months. That he has so much to tell her, too much, and that every time he imagines the conversation he feels like he can hardly breathe.

“Do you often feel like that when you think about talking to your mom?”

“I guess,” he says. “Mostly it’s just…I don’t know how she’s going to be. Sometimes she’s good, you know. But then she’ll fall into another episode. I used to think, when I was a kid, that I could figure out what triggered them. Like I could plan them—like if I just acted a certain way, if I did all the right things, she’d be fine.”

“You thought they were your fault.”

Matteo shrugs.

“Can you think of one of those times? An episode of hers you remember?”

Matteo doesn’t say anything. He stares at the clock on the wall. The session is almost over.

“It’s okay if you don’t feel like it,” Dr. Klein reminds him, gently.

He doesn’t feel like it.

Matteo walks home after the session, headphones on, dodging clusters of students walking back to their dorms, or hauling backpacks to the library, or heading to the dining hall for dinner. He stops into the grocery store on his walk and picks up supplies to make a pasta he knows David likes. Though he knows David won’t be home when he gets there, he figures he can at least have the leftovers waiting for him in the fridge when he gets home.

Matteo plays an album that reminds him of David while he cooks, and he watches an episode of some silly comedy program in the chair by the window while he eats. Afterwards, he cleans up and leaves the leftovers in some tupperware with a note for David in the fridge.

He curls up on David’s side of the bed and pulls out his phone. He has one unread message.

It’s another text from his mom.

Mama: “I miss you. Please let me know when you get the chance if you’d like to come to service on Friday. We can go to dinner after, just you and me. Maybe I will even cook. Love, Mama.”

Matteo hugs David’s pillow to his chest, scrolling through old photos on his phone: baby pictures from an old photo album that he’d saved in his phone. Most of them are just him: his mother had obsessively chronicled every little thing Matteo did when he was a baby. When he got older, it used to annoy him—the farther he scrolls back, the more photos he finds with his hands in front of the camera, or over his face, hiding from her. She never listened. She said wanted to remember every moment.

—

He’s five and he’s standing in front of the oven watching the crust on a casserole turn brown. He runs to his mom’s room and jostles her shoulder. He tells her it’s burning.

She asks Matteo if he can take it out.

Matteo crawls onto the bed. She opens her eyes, staring at him, as if just now realizing who he is, and what he is (a child, a child of five, a child of five who shouldn’t touch the oven).

She climbs out of bed and runs to the kitchen. She takes out the casserole and sits with him at the dinner table for a long time, silent. Her eyes are bruised from lack of sleep. Matteo tries to sit on her lap, but she picks him up and puts him back down.

“I don’t feel like it right now, baby,” she says, in a dull monotone voice, a voice that terrified him. Matteo remembers crying—usually that made her pay attention to him. But this time she just looks at him: a strange, unseeing, almost cruel look, like Matteo is a bug she just noticed on the floor, or a decorative plant she couldn’t remember buying, or a puppy she bought on a whim and is now considering exchanging for another.

She goes back to her room. Matteo falls asleep on the floor outside her door.

—

The next morning, Matteo wakes up and David is already gone. He grabs his phone off the nightstand. No messages.

He climbs out of bed and walks to the fridge. The tupperware is gone. He looks around the kitchen and finds it, already cleaned, sitting in the dish rack. At least David had eaten it.

He still can’t help but wish David had woken him up. He takes a shower and decides to go visit David at the bookstore, knowing he has a shift until five. He picks up a coffee on the way to bring to him, and one of the pastries he knows David likes.

The door to the bookstore jingles when it opens. Sometimes David is at the cash register, though more and more frequently he’s been in the back, shelving books, since he’s the employee most suited to haul the heavy boxes. David always tells Matteo it surprises him how much he actually likes doing that kind of work: he says it’s the only part of his day where he’s allowed to turn off his brain and do something mindless.

Matteo goes up to the cash register and asks where David is. The employee is a girl with short red hair whose name Matteo always forgets. She says David called off work that day.

“What?” Matteo stares at her, still processing.

“He didn’t tell you?” says the girl. “I thought you two basically lived together.”

Matteo blinks.

“Sorry,” she says quickly, “I just realized that sounded really shitty. I’m just surprised. He called pretty early, maybe you could—”

“It’s okay,” says Matteo, feeling a little sick. He digs his phone out of his pocket.

Matteo calls David as he walks out of the bookstore, still holding the coffee and pastry he’d bought for him. David doesn’t answer.

Matteo feels even more nauseous. Why wouldn’t David tell him he felt sick? He pulls out his phone to text David, asking where he is, but David doesn’t respond. Matteo stands on the street corner, still staring at his phone, wondering what he should do, when he sees his phone light up.

His mom’s contact photo fills the screen. She’s calling him.

Matteo takes a deep breath and answers it. “Mama?”

“Oh,” she says, as if surprised he actually answered. “Hi! You picked up.”

“Yeah,” says Matteo. He puts the phone between his ear and his shoulder, switching the coffee cup and pastry to his other hand as he crosses the street to walk back to campus. “How—how are you, Mama?”

She tells him about her morning in great detail: the breakfast she made, a program she caught on the news as she was getting ready, an encounter she had with a neighbor she doesn’t like. She’s rambling about a new recipe she tried recently when Matteo finally interrupts her.

“Mama?”

“Yes, baby?” she says. Matteo is standing in front of a fountain on campus. He’s always liked this fountain: it’s nothing particularly special, and it’s chipped in places, but he likes sitting out here and listening to the running water. Coins glitter at the bottom of the pool. At least three of those coins are his, and he’s made wishes on all of them.

“I, um,” he swallows, hard. “I wanna come see you on Friday. But I want to bring my boyfriend.”

He listens to her breathing for a long time, his eyes screwed shut. The pastry, still in its wax paper, is almost completely crushed in his hands. He sits on the ledge of the fountain, unable to hold himself upright any longer.

“What’s his name?” she whispers finally.

Matteo exhales. “David,” he whispers back.

“David,” she repeats to herself. He lifts his eyes to the sky. He wonders what she’s doing, right now, at this very moment, as she whispers David’s name to herself. If she in their old apartment? Is she in the kitchen, in front of the stove, where he always used to wait at her feet, watching her cook? Is she in her bedroom, where they used to watch movies?

“David,” she says again. “Of course he can come. I can’t wait to meet him.”

Matteo’s eyes flutter shut. He feels a tear snake down his cheek. She rambles on a little more: finishing one of the stories she was telling earlier, but Matteo doesn’t hear a word of it, and he doesn’t say anything either. He’s not sure he can speak.

“Matteo, sweetheart, are you still there?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Matteo whispers, wiping his cheek. “I’m here.”

“Okay. I’ll let you go. I can’t wait for Friday,” she says. “I miss you so much.”

“I miss you too,” he manages.

“Good bye, sweetheart,” she says. Matteo hangs up, a lump still bobbing his throat. He looks around: this part of campus is usually empty, so no one is nearby to see him like this.

He looks at his phone. David still hasn’t texted him back. It’s possible he just needs a break from everything. He works so hard. And Matteo knows it hasn’t been easy having to take care of him, too, on top of everything.

Matteo throws away the coffee and the crushed pastry and walks back to David’s apartment. It’s past noon, now, and he doesn’t have anything else to do. He thinks about going grocery shopping again, so he can make David another dinner, but he feels exhausted now.

He spends the rest of the day playing video games and watching television. In the evening, he pulls out the catalogue of theatre courses Helena gave him and flips through it again, looking over all the little notes she left him in the margins.

It’s late, nearly eleven PM, when Matteo finally hears the door unlock. He’s sitting in the middle of their bed, pen in his mouth, catalogue in his lap, when David walks inside.

“Hey,” says David, putting his bags by the door.

Matteo swallows, hard. He doesn’t know why he suddenly feels so nervous.

“Hey,” Matteo replies, a little too late. David has his back to him as he goes through the fridge. Suddenly Matteo wishes he had made the effort to go to the store and make David dinner. All they have is bread and some cheese, a little bit of deli meat. He watches as David starts to make himself a sandwich.

“You want one?” David asks, looking at Matteo over his shoulder. He doesn’t look sick. He looks good. He always looks good. It seems like no matter how stressed David is, no matter how hard he works, he somehow always manages to look perfect.

Matteo shakes his head.

“Are you okay?” says David. He takes his plate and sits at the foot of the bed. Matteo can’t help but notice David didn’t come over and kiss him, or hug him, or even pet his hair. The distance between them—two feet, at most—feels suddenly interminable.

“I um,” Matteo forces himself to meet David’s eyes. “I stopped by the coffeeshop earlier—”

David’s face pales.

“—sorry, I would’ve texted you, I just—I wanted to surprise you, I brought you a coffee, and one of those pastries you like, the one with the chocolate, but your co-worker said—”

“I called off sick this morning,” David cuts him off, in a strange voice that Matteo can’t read.

Matteo looks down at the bed. In his lap is the course catalogue, marked with Helena’s notes. He puts it aside. Neither of them say anything, for a long time.

“I’m sorry,” says David, “I’m not sick. I’ve just been working a lot and I needed a little break. I just didn’t want you worry.”

Matteo nods. He plays with the pen in his hands.

“David, if you—” he takes a deep breath, unsure of what to say next. “If you need, like, I don’t know—space, or something, I—I get it. I wouldn’t blame you. I just don’t want you to ever feel like—”

David gets to his feet, cutting Matteo off before he can say anything more. He’s still holding the plate with the sandwich. He brings it back to the counter and stands there for a long moment, with his back to Matteo. Matteo watches him, his heart racing, needing desperately to know what David is thinking.

“Get dressed,” David says.

“What?” Matteo’s brow knits. All he’s wearing are his boxers and one of David’s big sweatshirts.

“Here,” says David, tossing a pair of sweatpants in Matteo’s direction. “Put these on.”

“Why?”

“Do you trust me?” says David, looking at Matteo so intensely he feels there’s only one answer he can give.

“Yes,” says Matteo, honestly. He does trust David. He trusts him in everything.

“I’m going to take you somewhere,” says David. “And I don’t want you to ask any questions.”

“Okay,” says Matteo. He does as David says. David pockets his keys and his phone, and Matteo follows him to the door.

Without warning, David takes Matteo by the hip and kisses him. 

Matteo feels a thrill shiver through his entire body.

“Let’s go,” says David.

Matteo lets David thread their fingers together as they walk through the dark streets, down grimy alleyways, through fenced gardens and abandoned parking lots until they reach a cluster of tall apartment buildings. They have to hop a fence, to Matteo’s great irritation, but David doesn’t tease Matteo about how long it takes him to climb over it—or at least, not too much. They take an elevator to the top floor, which brings them out to a roof.

David helps Matteo over a ledge—they have to jump to make it to the part of the rooftop David wants to reach.

But as soon as they make it to the other side, Matteo can see why David wanted to bring him here. The city glitters below them, a faraway grid of racing headlights and ant-sized figures dancing in windows, like something out of a toy music-box. It is almost entirely silent up here. In the distance is the river, a dark, serpentine thread, gleaming with moonlight.

Matteo follows David to the ledge. He stares at David’s profile, admiring the way the starlight glimmers along his piercing. David’s dark eyes meet his, sidelong, and Matteo can’t help but feel the same gut-punch loss of breath he felt the very first time their eyes met, in the registrar, all those weeks ago. He wonders if the sight of David will ever stop affecting him like this. He doesn’t think it will. He doesn’t think it’s possible to ever get used to a face like David’s. Looking at him is like a jolt to Matteo’s entire body, every time. It reorients all of his senses.

“My parents used to bring me up here,” David says quietly, his eyes still fixed on Matteo’s. “It was this romantic thing for them. They met in university and used to have dates up here. When they had me, I became a part of that ritual. Then, when I was older, I started coming up here on my own. When I needed to get away. It became such a huge part of my life that when I left home, I told them this spot was off-limits to them. I told them it was mine. They could take everything else from me. But not this.”

A muscle leaps in David’s jaw. Matteo puts a hand on David’s hip, gently, waiting.

“I used to come here every day because I missed them so much. I missed them so fucking much.” There is heat to David’s voice now. His eyes shimmer, fiercely, but no tears fall. “That’s what I hated most. I hated that I missed them. I should’ve hated them. And I did, most of the time. I did. But sometimes I just wanted to go back. They were like this fucking wound I couldn’t stop picking at.”

Matteo puts his head on David’s shoulder. He feels David exhale, shakily. They hold each other, tightly, staring down at the city below.

“I never thought I’d bring anybody up here,” David whispers, after a long silence. “But then, you see….this boy came along. And at first I thought he was just some pretty face, you know?”

David looks down at Matteo, his eyes glittering. Matteo hides his face in his shoulder, shaking his head with a grin.

“But then I got to know him better. And the more I got to know him the more he scared me, because I didn’t think I could ever feel that way about anyone. I got used to the idea that I was going to be alone. I spent years just trying to convince myself I could live like that—for the rest of my life, if I had to. But one look at this boy fucked up any hope that plan ever had. Just like that.”

David shifts Matteo off his shoulder and takes him by the hips. Matteo sways a little, like he might fall if David lets him go. David presses their forehead together.

“You think I’m pretty?” Matteo whispers, grinning against David’s mouth.

David pinches Matteo’s hip. Matteo tries to push him away, but David captures him in his arms, tugging Matteo close. It feels like there isn’t a single inch of them that isn’t touching.

“I think you’re a menace,” says David.

“You love me,” Matteo teases, leaning in to kiss David again.

David goes stock-still. Matteo freezes. He only just realizes what he said. David stares at him, wide-eyed, his throat bobbing.

“I—” Matteo stammers. He doesn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry. It was just a joke. I—”

David’s breath shallows. A strange, vulnerable look moves across his eyes, and suddenly Matteo can’t breathe.

“I do,” says David, his voice barely louder than a whisper. As if surprising even himself. “I do love you.” The corner of his mouth twitches, as if he’s thinking out loud. A smile ghosts his lips. “I love you.”

Matteo reaches out to pull David closer at the same moment David reaches for him. The kiss is more a collision—neither of them can stop grinning long enough to actually kiss, and Matteo feels so light-headed and dizzy with elation that he’s afraid he might actually fall this time if David’s grip on him weren’t so strong.

“I love you,” David says again. The laughter slips from his voice. This time he says it like a confession. He cradles Matteo’s face in his hands, his thumbs dragging against Matteo’s cheeks.

Matteo’s chest heaves. His heart is like a battering-ram against his ribcage. “I love you, too,” he whispers, barely able to catch his breath again before David captures his lips in another kiss.

“Come on,” says David. “Let’s go home.”

—

They barely make it through the door. Matteo’s shirt is on the floor just seconds after David presses him against it. David’s fingers slip down the front of Matteo’s sweatpants, undressing the rest of him with skillful ease, until Matteo is completely bare in front of him.

Then David’s mouth is against his, urgent and hard, unmoving. He pushes Matteo into the door, his hands on Matteo’s shoulders, his chest, his hipbones. His fingers twist in Matteo’s hair. Matteo’s hands crawl up the back of David’s t-shirt. He wraps his arms around David’s waist and squeezes, as if holding on for dear life. His head falls backwards, baring his throat. David’s lips draft dazedly up to his forehead, his temple, his nose. He murmurs something, but Matteo can’t hear him over his own panting breath, his raging heartbeat, the roar of blood in his ears. Have me, he thinks, scratching his nails into David’s shoulder blades, feeling the muscle moving dangerously under his skin.

Suddenly David pulls Matteo’s hands away. He pins Matteo’s wrists to the wall, over his head. He bears down on him a little, just to look at him. Matteo looks back. David’s face is fierce and hungry. Matteo shivers. All the blood in his body rushes southward. He’s still the only one naked. David has both his wrists in one hand—with the other, his fingers skate down Matteo’s throat, his ribcage, down his stomach, ghosting over the curve of his hipbone. But no further.

Matteo’s eyes flutter shut. He’s so turned on he can barely think. He thinks his body might puddle to the floor at any moment.

“Fuck, Matteo,” David pants against his mouth, “I wish you could see how fucking good you look right now. You have no idea, do you?”

Matteo shakes his head, swallowing, roughly. He doesn’t even know what David is saying. He can barely process words at all.

David lets go of his wrists. For a moment, Matteo keeps them there above his head, against the door. David’s eyes keep him pinned, molten-dark, and then David pulls Matteo in by the waist so tight he almost lifts him off the floor. Matteo clings to David’s shoulders.

They make their way to the bed. David finally tears off his own t-shirt and his pants, and Matteo reaches for him, greedily, making room for David between his spread knees. David buries his mouth in the juncture between Matteo’s neck and shoulder. He feels the warmth of Matteo under his cheek, brushing his quick, thumping pulse with his mouth. Matteo feels himself giving a little more beneath him, his limbs liquid-loose under David’s touch.

It almost terrifies Matteo, how much he wants him. How far he’d let David go. He feels so wrecked already, and David’s barely even touched him.

Some of this must show on Matteo’s face, because David leans over him and cups his jaw to kiss him, deep and slow and luxurious. His mouth moves down Matteo’s neck, sucking slow wet kisses everywhere he can reach. Matteo’s cheeks flush. He feels like a peeled fruit, raw and exposed and heady with David’s kisses, the intensity of his touch, the heaviness of his heart.

David’s mouth moves up his jaw to his ear. “You’re everything,” he whispers.

Matteo shakes his head, closing his eyes. He doesn’t even mean to, but he feels too raw. Dizzy with feeling, aching with it and overwhelmed.

David’s lips are at his ears again, his fingers soft on Matteo’s face. Matteo presses his cheek into David’s palm. David’s thumb drags along Matteo’s bottom lip, and Matteo takes it into his mouth.

“Look at me,” says David.

Matteo’s body seizes with something so sharp and electrifying he can hardly breathe. He couldn’t disobey even if he wanted to.

He opens his eyes. David’s thumb slips from his mouth. His eyes never leave Matteo’s. He puts his mouth to Matteo’s ribcage, his hipbone, his sternum. The crook of his elbow, the inside of his wrist.

Matteo isn’t sure how long this goes on. He feels like a ribbon of film reel, disappearing into space, a hazy mosaic of mouths and hands and tangled limbs: David moves Matteo’s body how he pleases, turns him over, his mouth kissing down the length of Matteo’s spine, until Matteo’s fists clench in the sheets. A blur of soft, sweaty hair and clever fingers and flushed skin. Just as Matteo reaches the cusp of his release, David turns him over again. Matteo tries to cover his face with his hands, but David pulls them away, whispering that he loves the way Matteo looks when he comes apart.

When it’s over and Matteo has finished David off the way he likes best—kissing, reverently, drinking in every exquisite sound—they lie, sweaty and tangled together, Matteo’s head on David’s shoulder.

David strokes his hair gently, helping Matteo come down. It always takes him a while. He didn’t know sex could be like this. That it could render him almost totally nonverbal, dizzy and glassy-eyed and almost unbearably vulnerable. He feels David’s lips brush along his forehead.

“I love you,” Matteo whispers, lifting his chin so he can look David in the eye. David whispers it back, cupping Matteo’s jaw to kiss him.

Matteo closes his eyes. He feels David’s fingers trace along Matteo’s face, as if committing it to memory. A thumb drags across his cheeks.

“You have an eyelash,” David whispers. “Make a wish.”

Matteo grasps at a cloudy, drunken memory of a balcony. Another party, another long night, another lonely ending. A boy with the longest eyelashes he’d ever seen, his face inches from Matteo’s, holding up his eyelash. A boy who hated Matteo—he was sure of it. Matteo had been so sure of it.

“I don’t need to,” Matteo says.

David raises an eyebrow.

“What do you get the boy who has everything?” Matteo whispers.

David rolls his eyes. Matteo grins cheekily, overly pleased with himself.

“That was corny even for you.”

“I’m not corny,” says Matteo.

“There must be something else you want. C’mon. Here’s your chance.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in wishes,” Matteo says.

“I thought I didn’t believe in a lot of things,” David whispers.

Matteo bites back a smile. “Now who’s being corny?”

“Shut up and make your wish.”

“Okay, okay.” Matteo closes his eyes. He blows on the eyelash. He feels David’s fingers return to his hair.

“What’d do you wish for?”

“Silly David,” Matteo clucks his tongue. “I can’t tell you. Otherwise it won’t come true.”

The corner of David’s mouth lifts. He looks impossibly fond. So fond that Matteo feels his cheeks darken again.

“I didn’t wish for anything,” Matteo confesses, lifting his chin for a kiss. David cradles his face in his hands, obliging. “I don’t need wishes anymore.”

—

Matteo wakes up to music. A guitar. Soft singing. He scrubs a hand over his face and looks around, blinking himself awake.

Jonas is sitting on the chair in the corner of David’s apartment, tuning his guitar.

“Um….” says Matteo, sitting up. The sheets pool around his hips. He is still very naked. “Hi?”

“You’re up,” says Jonas, his face brightening. He throws a sweatshirt at him. It hits Matteo in the face. “Get dressed.”

“Why?” Matteo mumbles. It is way too early for this. “What’s going on?”

“David had some shit he needed to do this morning. But the boys and I want to spent the day together, all of us, and David said you’d probably try to sleep in late, so he let me in.”

“I feel invaded,” says Matteo.

Jonas pats Matteo on the cheek. “Tick tock, Luigi. The boys are waiting downstairs.”

Matteo grumbles, loudly. He pulls on the clothes Jonas brings him and stumbles into the bathroom, still barely awake. “Did you at least bring me coffee?” he calls out through the closed door.

“Of course, who do you think I am?” Jonas replies, tapping his knuckles on the door. “I take care of my baby.”

Matteo rolls his eyes at the mirror. He brushes his teeth and runs a hand through his hair, picks up one of David’s hair products in the medicine cabinet but then gives up almost immediately. His hair remains as stubbornly messy as ever.

Matteo and Jonas meet Carlos and Abdi downstairs, and the four of them head to the park.

The lay in the grass, reclining back on their elbows. Jonas clinks his beer against Matteo’s, laughing as Carlos and Abdi race to the river’s edge, trying to catch their soccer ball before it falls into the river.

“Where are the girls?” Matteo asks.

“They’re all helping Amira with something, I dunno. They might be around later.”

“Cool,” says Matteo.

The rest of them are all about to begin preparing for final exams. Matteo is listening to Jonas complain about his classes when he sees his phone light up in his lap. His mother’s contact photo fills the screen.

“Mama?” Matteo asks.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she says, “We are still meeting, yes? I thought we might meet at the church first and then decide where we want to go for lunch.”

“Oh, shit,” says Matteo, turning wide-eyed to Jonas. He pushes his beer into Jonas’s hands. “Yeah. Give me fifteen minutes, is that okay?”

“Of course,” she says. Matteo hangs up.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Friday,” says Matteo, “I told my mom I’d meet up with her.”

“Really? Hasn’t it been a long time?” says Jonas.

“Yeah, I um…” says Matteo, “I don’t know. I just missed her, I guess.”

Jonas stands up with him. He pulls Matteo into a hug, still holding both of their beers, and pats him on the back. Matteo feels a little beer spill down the back of his shirt, and he shoves Jonas away.

“I’m proud of you, man,” says Jonas.

Matteo’s cheeks flush a little. He shrugs.

“Will I see you later?” says Jonas. “Meet back at our old dorm room after? The boys want to go out tonight. David says he’s gonna be working late, so might be nice to get out of the apartment for a bit.”

Matteo smiles at the idea of Jonas and David texting, trying to coordinate Matteo’s night for him.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Matteo says.

“You still remember where our old dorm room is, right?” says Jonas cheekily. Matteo rolls his eyes, shoving him again, and leaves, ignoring Jonas, Carlos, and Abdi’s teasing behind him.

—

His mother’s eyes are the same color as his. It scared him, when he got older, seeing the similarities between them: sometimes her laugh sounded just like his, or there were certain phrases she used that he found himself repeating, certain tics and quirks. She had the same habit of running a hand through her hair when was overwhelmed. Burying herself in the covers. Sometimes she threw things, too. Nothing serious. Pillows, remotes, a shoe, once. Never at him. But Matteo knows that feeling. That helplessness.

Today his mother is smiling. She has brushed her hair. She’s wearing lipstick. She’s wearing a blouse that matches the color of her eyes. Their eyes. Matteo buries his face in her shoulder, his eyes screwing shut, before he even says “hello.”

He inhales. He feels her fingers in his hair. She smells just like he remembered. Like the perfume she’s always worn, and honeysuckle from her garden, and a fresh pot of coffee.

“I missed you,” she whispers.

Matteo feels a tear roll down his cheek. He’s not ready to let her go.

She brings him inside the church and introduces him to the women in her choir. She gives him a tour, and he listens to the familiar lull of her voice. Afterwards, they walk the streets together, and Matteo lets her take his arm.

“Where’s David?” she asks.

“I’m sorry,” says Matteo. They’re standing in front of a bakery stall at a farmer’s market. She puts down a loaf of bread she was considering and looks at him. “He’s really busy right now. But soon. I um—” He looks down. She runs her fingers along his cheek. “I don’t want to go this long again without seeing you.”

She brings Matteo’s face close to hers and kisses his forehead. Matteo follows his mom around the farmer’s market, watching fondly as she gets excited over a candlemaker, and a fancy cheese monger, and a woman selling tiny hanging terrariums. He buys her a pair of earrings and takes her to a lunch spot he remembers her liking. They sit outside on the patio, and Matteo listens to her stories about her church choir, and her battles with the neighbor she hates, and the coworkers she’s started to become friends with.

“And you, sweetheart? I want to know everything.”

Matteo tells her. He tells her about accidentally signing up for an acting workshop, and getting cast as Ophelia. He tells her about the boy he fell in love with. He tells her about getting kicked out school, and meeting up with the administrators, and the leave of absence. He tells her he’s thinking of actually studying theatre, if they’ll let him. He tells her about therapy.

She takes her hands in his across the table. “I’m so proud of you, Matteo. For everything. You have no idea how proud of you I am.”

It’s late now. After lunch, she walks him back to campus. They sit outside the fountain, the same fountain where he first told her about David.

“I’m gonna call you more, Mama,” he says, “I promise.”

“I know you will,” she says. “Maybe next time you can come over for dinner. I’ll cook. You can bring David.”

She kisses his cheek. Matteo watches her leave. He lifts his face to the sky. The sun is just beginning to set, a golden wash of color, sweeping through the blue. He looks down at the coins glittering at the bottom of the fountain. All those wishes he made. Funnily enough, he is less certain than ever that all that’s happened to him—finally reaching a good place with his mother, finally figuring out what he might like to do with his life, finally finding the person he wants to spend it with—has anything at all to do with wishes. These were not the result of some bolt of good fortune, some magic he had no say in, some lucky star alignment. He isn’t a doll on a string, following the whims of some fateful puppeteer. He did those things. They have not been perfect, or easy—he has made more mistakes than he can count. But he is the one who got out of bed. He is the one who took the steps. For perhaps the first time ever in his life, he made those decisions for himself.

Matteo sits on the ledge of the fountain until the sky begins to flush into sunset colors, feeling more peaceful than he’s felt in weeks.

He walks to his old dorm room.

—

“Jonas?” Matteo calls out, dropping his keys on the desk. He runs a hand through his hair. Jonas’s bed is empty, and all the lights are off. The sky outside their window is a dusky lavender-pink.

He looks in the bathroom. It’s empty. He pulls out his phone and texts Jonas, asking where he is.

In the corner of the room is his old bed. Matteo sits down at the foot of it. On the night stand is his ash tray, filled with cigarette butts and roaches from old joints. A bobble-head doll he used to poke at when he was bored, and a tiny cactus Hanna bought him for once. He notices a folded piece of paper under an empty Coke can.

Matteo opens it. Two boys are standing on a balcony, their silhouettes visible against a starlit night sky, their charcoal outlines faded, weeks after David first drew it.

At the top of the page are the words: “In case you don’t remember.”

Matteo inhales, sharply. He still remembers the morning he found that note on his desk, underneath the water glass, knowing that David has been here, in his room. David was taking care of him before he and Matteo were even together. David was taking care of him when Matteo was still convinced David couldn’t stand the sight of him.

His phone vibrates in his pocket. He pulls it out.

David: Are you at Jonas’s yet?

Matteo: Yeah, just got here. You joining us later or still too busy?

David: I have to work…but see if you can find anything on your desk.

Matteo: Something like this?

He sends David a photo of the old drawing.

David: Something better.

Matteo folds the old drawing and sticks it in his back pocket. He rolls off the bed to look at his desk.

There, in the center, is a drawing. This one isn’t folded. This one was meant to be seen immediately.

Matteo picks it up, his heart already hammering wildly.

It’s him. He’s lying next to a river bed, his fingers idly reaching for the water. In the river are hundreds of floating flowers: peonies, roses, tulips, lilies. Behind his ear is a dandelion. He’s smiling. He looks beautiful. Matteo wonders, idly, if this is really how David sees him.

But this photo is different than the others. In this one, David’s drawn himself, too. He’s sitting in front of a canvas, a paintbrush in his hands. He’s painting Matteo.

Scrawled across the top of the page are the words: “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.”

Matteo turns it over. On the back of the page are the words: “5. The minute you crossed that stage, I knew you’d be the only Muse I’d ever have.”

Below that are coordinates and the directions: “Meet me here at 7.”

Matteo looks at his screen. It’s 6:30. He types the coordinates into the GPS in his phone. He can’t tell exactly what building is in on the map, but it says it’s a fifteen minute walk from his dorm.

The campus feels quiet tonight as he strides through the quad, past the registrar, the dining hall, the administration building, the library. He passes a group of students in costume, clearly heading towards some kind of pre-drinks, and a couple arguing loudly on the lawn. The street outside is quiet too: though it’s a Friday night, the bars seem empty. It is still pretty early. The coffeeshop looks slow at the moment, and the bookstore, too.

He checks his phone again. He’s nearing the destination, though all he sees at the end of the street is a dark, empty-looking building. Like a warehouse.

Matteo stares at the GPS. According to the coordinates, this is the spot.

He looks around. It looks like an old gallery from the outside. The front door is a little dilapidated, graffitied. Matteo stares at the art sprayed onto the wall. It tickles something in the back of his brain. Something familiar.

The door creaks open. It’s dark inside. Matteo takes a tentative step forward.

A thrill of fear shivers down his spine. He shines the flashlight of his phone at the ground, so he can at least see his feet. The floor looks like carpet, dark red.

“David?” he calls out, hesitantly.

His voice echoes.

He hears something. Like a squeaking shoe.

“Asshole, I can hear you,” Matteo groans, “this isn’t funny.”

He hears somebody hiss, like a shushing sound.

“Enough,” says Matteo.

Hands grab the back of his shoulders.

“Fuck,” Matteo stumbles backwards, his chest spasming with terror.

Someone catches him.

The lights come on. One by one, they flicker to life. Matteo blinks, adjusting, his heart still thrashing in his chest.

The first thing he sees is David’s face, floating above his, smiling bigger than Matteo’s ever seen.

“Trust fall,” he whispers, before tipping Matteo onto his feet.

Matteo clutches David’s shoulder, jostling him a little.

“You asshole, you scared the shit out of—”

The words die on his lips. He stares ahead of him, disbelieving.

He’s staring at a stage.

He sees Jonas, waving at him. Carlos and Abdi. Amira. Mia and Hanna. Leonie, Sara, Laura, Anna. Sam and Kiki. Helena. Behind them is the rest of the Hamlet cast and crew.

And behind them is the set. The set Matteo has spent so many hours standing in front of him, running his fingers over the dried paint. The skyline beyond. The long, blonde hair spilling into the river, threaded with flowers.

Ophelia.

“David,” Matteo whispers.

He feels David’s arms wrap around his waist. His chin on Matteo’s shoulder. A sound spills from Matteo’s throat, a helpless sound that isn’t quite a laugh. It’s something else. A lump in his throat rises and falls, rises and falls, like a little boat at sea.

“Most productions wait years for a revival,” David says, “but we didn’t feel like waiting that long.”

Matteo turns around in David’s arms. David’s hands cup his face, bringing their mouths together.

“What do you think?”

Matteo presses his face into David’s shoulder. He doesn’t think he can speak. He raises his head, looking around.

David nods. “If you don’t feel like performing, it’s ok, Mia’s happy to do it. But I wanted to give you the chance.”

“You did all this?”

David’s thumbs sweep under Matteo’s eyes. He can hear everyone on stage behind them, backstage, busying themselves. Someone starts playing music as they get ready. He hears Carlos’s laugh. A crash, like something’s fallen. One of the girl’s voice raising, admonishing. Another laugh.

He still can’t believe they’re all here. All of them. For him.

Matteo can taste salt. David’s lips press to his wet cheek.

“Is this what you’ve been working on, these past weeks? Is this why you’ve been coming home so late?”

David just smiles, his eyes softening.

“It was my idea,” he admits, “but everyone wanted to help. We started working on it before the original run even ended. Helena got us this space off-campus. Amira’s stage-managing. Hanna and Kiki have been working on ticket sales. The whole cast did another rehearsal. They all wanted to do this for you, Matteo.”

David looks at something over Matteo’s shoulder. He turns around. Amira is walking down the aisle of chairs. Matteo shakes his head at her, grinning.

“I hope you remember your lines,” she says, tugging him into a hug.

Matteo lets himself fall into her arms. “Thanks to you.”

“Don’t get sappy on me now,” she says.

“Too late for that,” Matteo mumbles, punching her gently in the arm.

David and Amira lead him to the stage. Matteo accepts everyone’s cheek-kisses and one-armed hugs and pats on the back, rolling his eyes at Carlos, Abdi and Jonas’s over-the-top applause. Leonie and Sara insist on helping Matteo get into costume. David gives Matteo one last kiss before he and Amira disappear to get everything ready.

Sara is sticking a dandelion behind Matteo’s ear when he sees a figure approaching behind in the vanity mirror. He spins his chair around.

It’s Helena. Matteo swallows, suddenly shy. He still can’t believe she was a part of this, too. That she would care so much to put all this together, for him.

“Are you nervous?” she asks.

Matteo shrugs. “A little.”

“That’s good. Nerves are good. Lean into it.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her. “Thank you,” he says quietly. “I just—thank you. For all of this. I don’t know how I can repay you.”

“You’re repaying me right now. I told you all I ask if that you keep trying. That you don’t give up,” says Helena. “And here you are.”

—

By 7:45, the theater is filled. Matteo waits with David in the wings, watching behind the curtain as the actors take position in the first scene. Amira scrambles around with Mia, barking orders at everyone.

Matteo turns to David. He’s gazing out at the audience, a proud yet somehow vulnerable look.

He takes David by the chin. “I love you,” he whispers.

David grins against his mouth. “But can you say it in Shakespeare?”

Matteo raises an eyebrow. He mulls it over. David cocks his head, expectant, still grinning cheekily.

“Doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar,” Matteo whispers. David’s eyes fall to his mouth, his cockiness slipping into something more unguarded. Matteo’s mouth is an inch away. “But never doubt I love.”

Matteo kisses him. He feels David’s breath hitch.

“How was that?” Matteo whispers.

“That was corny as fuck,” David whispers back.

Matteo laughs. David slaps a hand over his mouth.

“Shhh,” he hisses, “they’re on.”

A hush falls over the stage. Amira’s fingers snap.

The curtain lifts.

Matteo watches, enraptured, as the actors perform the first scene. He rests his head on David’s shoulder. He feels David press a kiss into his air.

He can hear the actors on stage transiting into the next scene. Matteo’s eyes comb through the audience, which, to his surprise, actually looks full. He spots Jonas, Carlos, and Abdi all sitting in the front row, looking adorably serious, their brows knitted with concentration.

David turns to him. “Do you believe me now?” he whispers.

“Believe what?”

“That I love you,” David says simply. “That all of us do.”

Matteo inhales. The truth is, he’s not sure if he’s going to believe David every day. Some days, as Dr. Klein has told him, will be bad, and Matteo will not like himself, and he will be quite sure that no one else likes him either. Other days will be better. At some point in the future, it might even be that most days are better. She told Matteo all he can do is be patient with himself. She told him to stop beating himself up—he doesn’t need the hits. She told him to store up love instead—to hoard it in the little hideaways inside himself. One day, she promised, it would spill over. It would consume him whole.

He tells David “yes.” And he means it. David loves him, and he is not the only one. Perhaps, for once, in this moment, Matteo might even count himself among them.

He hears Amira’s fingers snap again. It’s time. Matteo joins the actor who plays Laertes for his first scene. He meets David’s eyes.

David nods.

Matteo walks onto the stage.