Apparently, he thought I was bribing him.

Not long afterward, he transferred to another suite.

I caught his arm as he was leaving.

“You don't have to move out. Did you get the wrong idea about something?”

Theo patted my hand.

“I get it.”

He looked cautiously left, then right.

“You two should just...”

He lowered his voice.

“Keep it down at night. These walls are thin.”

I stared at him.

“No, you've seriously misunder—”

He didn't even let me finish.

He wheeled his suitcase away.

After Theo left, Julian and I mostly kept the kissing, hugging, and everything else to our room.

But some days, my schedule was packed from morning until evening.

Julian would get impatient and come find me.

After lunch or dinner, he'd pull me somewhere private and steal a few minutes of kissing.

That day was no different.

He led me along our familiar route to the quietest part of the campus lake.

There was a whole line of trees screening us.

Someone still found us.

I heard footsteps and immediately pushed Julian away.

Then I looked toward the sound.

It was the girl who'd asked him out that night.

The one thing I'd been afraid of had finally happened.

Her expression twisted with disgust.

“So you two really are gay. I thought you were just making up an excuse to turn me down.”

She took a step back, her whole face tightening.

“That's disgusting.”

My chest constricted.

I couldn't speak.

Julian's expression went cold. His eyes narrowed.

“What did you say?”

She backed away several more steps, startled by his tone.

Then she gave us one last loaded look and left.

22

I couldn't shake the uneasy feeling.

Two days later, I found a blurry photograph of Julian and me kissing on the university's anonymous campus confessions page.

She'd taken it that day.

The post read:

“Submitting this gay couple from campus because honestly, it's disgusting. It's bad enough having to put up with gay men at all. The rest of us are already being tolerant by not saying anything, so why do they have to shove it in our faces? Making out in public like this? Typical. Posting so people know.”

My hand went cold around my phone.

Then it began to shake.

The post had been up for eighteen hours.

More than five thousand likes. Over six hundred comments.

It was the page's most popular post in weeks.

My finger hovered over the comments.

I couldn't make myself open them.

The room was so quiet I could hear my heart pounding.

Suddenly, the door opened.

Theo came in, looking at his phone and laughing.

“I'm going to die. Julian is absolutely destroying people.”

My first thought was that half those six hundred comments must be Julian fighting everyone else.

Then I opened the thread.

The top comment stopped me cold.

“HOLY SHIT. WHAT DID I SAY? I KNEW THEY WERE TOGETHER. GRANDMA, WAKE UP. THE SHIP IS CANON.”

The next one read:

“Can someone explain the problem with the two prettiest people on campus dating each other? Apparently hot people are only allowed to date someone you're not jealous of.”

And another:

“Wait, other people ship them too? I've been saying for ages that the way Julian looks at Finn is NOT platonic. Man's practically writing love letters with his eyes.”

I scrolled.

Almost every comment was like that.

I put down my phone and sagged back in my chair, breathing out as though I'd narrowly escaped something terrible.

Their kindness warmed me.

The tightness in my chest took longer to fade.

After a while, I noticed Theo was still engrossed in the comments.

Remembering what he'd said when he came in, I picked up my phone and kept scrolling.

Eventually, I found the uglier replies.

“The fangirls in these comments are exactly what you'd expect. Two guys act gross in public and somehow you're all attacking the girl who submitted it. The lengths you'll go to defend men.”

Julian had replied.

“How do you know a girl submitted it?”

Then:

“Was it you? Great. Let's have a conversation about taking and posting photos of people without their permission.”

That account hadn't answered again.

Farther down, there were more.

“So Finn really is gay. I always thought he had a thing for me. Kept looking at me. Such a creep. Stay safe out there, everyone. Here's a photo of me, for context. Don't be weird about it.”

Julian's reply:

“He wouldn't even give ME a chance, and you think he was pining for a five-foot-three, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound rectangle? Lie to the internet if you want, man. Don't start believing it yourself.”

And so it went.

Almost every nasty comment about me had an immediate reply from Julian.

A handful of people had taken shots at him too.

Those, he hadn't bothered answering.

I read every reply, one after another, so absorbed I didn't even notice when Theo left.

Then I called Julian.

He spoke quickly.

“Little busy right now. I'll call you back.”

Before he could hang up, I rushed to ask, “Where are you?”

“Lecture hall.”

Then the call ended.

Thirty seconds later, a fresh reply from him appeared under another comment about me.

“Finn is pretty. What the fuck does that have to do with being 'girly'? What's the problem, man? Missing your mom so much you see her everywhere?”

A laugh escaped me.

My eyes burned.

23

The lecture had ended ages ago.

In the enormous room, Julian sat alone, tapping relentlessly at his phone.

He was so absorbed he didn't notice me stop in front of him.

He finished another reply with an alarming little smile.

“Fucking idiot,” he said quietly.

Only when his eyes flicked up did he see me.

His expression changed the moment he noticed my red eyes.

“What happened? Why are you crying? Did you see something awful?”

He put his phone down immediately, his voice turning urgent.

“Hey. Don't be scared. Hardly anyone's saying anything bad about you. And the few assholes who did have already deleted half their comments.”

I couldn't hold it in anymore.

I stepped into his arms, buried my face against him, and wrapped my arms around his waist.

My voice came out muffled against his chest.

“I'm not scared anymore, Julian.”

I took a breath.

“Let's tell people.”

He drew back just enough to see my face.

“What did you say?”

I looked into his eyes.

“I said I love you.”

Then I told him the rest.

“And that makes me brave enough to face whatever comes.”

THE END