Inside my chest, my lungs are wild animals, clawing at the cage."Oh, man," Autumn mumbles from beside me. "His smile makes me stupid."Her words are a dim echo of my own thoughts: His smile ruins me. The feeling makes me uneasy, a dramatic lurch that tells me I need to have him or I won't be okay.

The things that I love about you aren't going to go away when you go on your book tour, and they're not going to go away when you go on your mission. I'll still be here, and I'll still be thinking about all those things. I'll still be working on being a better person, a better friend, a better son. I'll still be wondering what it would be like to be a better boyfriend for you. And you will be on your mission, thinking about how much you wish your weren't gay.

My brain is such a traitorous beast.

Light bursts behind my closed eyes, so intensely I nearly hear the popping sound. It's my brain melting, or my world ending, or maybe we've just been hit by a meteor and this is the rapture and I'm given one last perfect moment before I'm sent to purgatory and he;s sent somewhere much, much better.It isn't his first kiss - I know that - but it's his first real one.

Everything feels yes.

High school is such an incestuous little pool.

I am a monster beneath him, with arching hips, an octopus with hands everywhere at once. I don't think anything in the history of time has felt this good.

His voice is both low and quiet, and it has this hypnotic rhythm to it. I wonder whether someday he'll give sermons with that voice, whether he'll throw down judgement with that voice.

We're only three class sessions in and I'm already behind? And to hear it from him? This buttoned-up Bible-thumper I can't get out of my head?