My name is Archibald Mills.

Ever since I can remember, I have been in love with art. My earliest masterpiece was a crude drawing of the family dog done in charcoal on the kitchen wall. Since then, whenever I had a moment to spare, I was drawing. It was a childhood dream of mine to one day create something that could be exhibited in an art gallery for everyone to see. It would serve as evidence of my existence, an “I was here” in the form of a picture. I would be immortalized through my work.

I never managed to fulfill this dream, for I was a Mills. My family had obtained immense wealth and respect in Strona as merchants, establishing a store that imported and sold goods from all around the country and beyond. The big Mills’ department store, situated at a plum spot right near Serenity Square, has been running for over a century, employing several generations. It was only natural that I, as my father’s only son, would one day inherit part of the family business. Spending my time on something as useless as art was out of the question – I simply had to be a lawyer, or an economist, or a manager. Therefore, I was dissuaded from going to art school when I was fifteen, though I did not have much say in the matter. Instead, I ended up where all good boys whose fathers want them to make something of themselves end up: Gresham Barlow Academy, essentially a school for the privileged. It was not a particularly good fit for me as you can imagine. My interest in arts and my proclivity towards openly voicing my opinions certainly didn’t put me in favor of my stodgy greying teachers, nor the majority of my pampered peers.

On the other hand, one good thing did come out of my Academy years: it was there that I met Ezra Rowse.

I first noticed Ezra at the library, which I frequented because it had several books with reproductions of famous paintings that I turned to whenever I wanted to escape the mundanity around me. He was always there, sticking out thanks to his lanky frame and unruly curly hair, his serious face permanently planted in books. There was a studious, calm air about him that instantly set him apart from most of the other students, who spent their time in class shamelessly flattering the teachers but turned into obnoxious loudmouths whenever they thought nobody was watching. With Ezra, you got the feeling that he wanted to be there, that he really wanted to learn and be a respectable person. In other words, he seemed genuine, and that’s what drew me to him.

Once we bonded over spending so much time at the library, we became fast friends. It helped that we had somewhat intersecting interests, as both of us were more the artsy type: I had my drawings and he had poetry, which he read and memorized at an astounding rate. He also wrote poems of his own, and a ritual that we quickly established was showing each other our work during our breaks. One time I finally gathered the courage to do a portrait of Ezra – I never really did portraits – and show it to him. I remember it to this day, his astonished expression after I nervously handed him the paper. He looked as if he had just laid eyes on the greatest piece of art ever created.

“Archie…” he started, and I was expecting him to thank me. “What are you doing here?”

“You mean what’s a good-for-nothing hopeless case like me doing in a fancy place like this?” I responded.

“You know I didn’t mean it that way!” Ezra said.

“I do, Ezra,” I replied, grinning. “I was just making a bad joke.”

“As usual,” he added dryly. “It’s just that your work is so passionate, so full of detail. I can tell you enjoyed drawing each and every line. Why isn’t someone like you, who is so obviously meant to be a great artist, in a school that would nurture that talent?”

“Well I told you already, more or less,” I said and then sighed. “You just can’t have the fruit of Spencer Mills’ loins scribble drawings for pocket change like some filthy commoner. Just the thought is laughable. He has to be a lawyer or some other big mucky-muck.”

“I’m sorry it’s like that,” Ezra replied with genuine concern in his voice. “If it helps, I think my father loves his guns more than me.”

“That’s very concerning,” I said. “But yes, it helps.”

Neither of us liked to talk much about our situation at home. My father didn’t seem to care about anything I thought or said and his was a reserved, stern military veteran who was involved in politics and spent most of his time tending to his weapon collection. If anything, our problematic relationships with the men who raised us provided more common ground to build our friendship on.

It wasn’t long, though, before I recognized that a friendship wasn’t exactly what I was interested in building with Ezra. As the months passed and I got to know him better, I suddenly found myself overcome with a strange emotion. It was as if I had some sort of wound in my chest, constantly throbbing with a sweet pain that was sometimes enough to bring me to tears. Every moment spent with Ezra, every word he said and every smile on his face seemed to agitate this wound, making me feel both intensely vulnerable and deeply content at the same time.

Once I fully wrapped my head around this emotion, I realized that I was in love.

It felt liberating in a way. Everything about my upbringing and environment told me that I should direct all my romantic impulses towards girls my age. I went along with it not knowing better and spent the biggest part of my childhood confused. When was this going to start feeling the way people told me it would? Or maybe that was all there was to it and it’s just vastly overrated? What were these strange thoughts that would surface ever so often, dragging me in the opposite direction of everything I was taught? Falling in love with Ezra answered all those questions in one fell swoop. Once I managed to sort out my feelings, it dawned on me that I had never been in love before – because nothing before ever quite felt like what I was feeling then.

Of course, with this realization came an insatiable urge to spend every waking moment with Ezra. I just wanted to touch him, hug him, kiss him – anything to physically express what I was feeling. Us being students at an uptight school in a somewhat conservative town, this posed as a problem. But regardless of what anyone might say or think, I found myself being more touchy-feely with him, perhaps subconsciously. I would often hug him when meeting outside for lunch, let my head fall on his shoulder when we were laughing, things like that. He never recoiled or said anything about it, and during the all too brief glances he would sometimes send my way I could sometimes detect a sort of bespoke understanding between us. As if he was feeling the same way I was.

On an otherwise unremarkable spring day, I decided to gather my courage and go all in.

After finishing school, I found Ezra standing by the gate, waiting for me so we could walk home together as we always did. There he was, hair gently swaying in the breeze, jacket stubbornly buttoned up despite the warm weather. He insisted that it made him look regal and who was I to argue with that.

“I have something for you,” he said as I walked up. He handed me a photograph of his class, him towering over most of his classmates in the back with a gentle smile.

“Thank you!” I exclaimed a bit too excitedly. Just the fact that Ezra gave me something of his own as a gift was making me giddier than it probably should’ve.

“It’s just a little memento for you,” he said. “To remind you of the ‘good old times’ someday.”

“Well, you know what would be an even better memento? A photo with just the two of us somewhere,” I replied.

“There’s time for that too,” Ezra said, and I could notice he was blushing. I suddenly snapped back into the moment and remembered what I was planning to ask him, and my hands started trembling.

“Ezra,” I began shakily. “If you have time, would you like to come to my house?”

“Oh,” he said, surprised but visibly excited by the proposal. “I suppose I could, but I have to be back home before lunch.” He glanced at the clock face on the school tower. “If we take a tram, I can stay at your place for a bit and then make it home in time.”

“That’s perfect,” I smiled, and soon enough we were on the B line, making our way to my part of town. Mercifully, we were able to be seated during the ride, and I could fold my jacket over my hands to conceal the fact that they were covered with sweat.

I’d never really invited anyone to my house because I never really had any true friends. For the greater part of my life, I was only exposed to the offspring of my father’s business acquaintances. Most of them weren’t my cup of tea, and the ones that were tended to not be my father’s cup of tea. More often than not, I was feeling lonely. Thank goodness for my drawings.

The tram ride seemingly ended in the blink of an eye, and we were now standing in front of my parents’ house. Even I would have to admit it was a beautiful three-story building, old but well-kept and gorgeously decorated on the outside. Ezra was visibly impressed.

I opened the heavy wooden door and immediately led Ezra up the stairs to the attic, which essentially served as my room. As he walked in, he let out a sigh of awe. There wasn’t that much to my room, but it was a spacious loft with huge roof windows that let in a lot of natural light, leaving the white walls, sheets and curtains looking like they were gleaming, a pristine sight tarnished by my clothes littered all over the place. Ezra’s attention was immediately drawn to an ornate gramophone resting on a bedside table, a tower of records stacked next to it.

“Archie!” he exclaimed, barely containing his wonder. “This is amazing! All these records!”

“My dad bought all of them,” I said flatly. “The gramophone too. I don’t even listen to music though. Not that he asked me before spending the money.”

At that point I picked up a record, but I held it in such a way that it immediately slipped out of its sleeve. I fumbled to pick it up, but both the record and the sleeve ended up on the floor, leaving me exasperated.

“That wasn’t clumsy at all,” Ezra said with a chuckle.

“Oh, quiet you,” I snapped back as I picked up the record.

“You are a bit clumsy, aren’t you?” he continued. “I’ve seen the same thing happen to you with books at the library.”

“It’s just that I always try to catch the damn thing!” I defended myself. “There are so many times when it would just be better to let it fall down and then pick it up, but I bend over backwards to prevent that from happening and it just makes it worse.”

A smile beamed across Ezra’s face, and took the record from my hands.

“Actually,” he said “this is quite a good record.” He put it on, and out of the horn burst out a flurry of noises that sounded like they were made on factory machines, all set to a rhythm paced like a chugging locomotive. My brilliant mind thought it made sense to do a little dance to it. I can’t fathom how awkwardly it looked, but Ezra was just staring at me with the widest grin I’d ever seen.

“You’re so…” he began, only to make a slight pause. He never finished the sentence because the door of my room opened, and my father walked in.

“Ah, there you boys are,” he said cheerfully. “Mother told me you had a visitor.” Ezra immediately introduced himself in his typical polite manner.

“Ezra, a pleasure. Archie hardly ever has friends over. Well, never actually. Must be something wrong with him, eh?”

I immediately scowled, but Ezra just stood there, slightly bemused.

“There’s… nothing wrong with him, sir,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Ah, alright then,” father replied in a hurry, clearly caught off guard. “You boys have fun.”

He left and I let out a deep sigh, partially in response to what my father had said, partially to compose myself for what I wanted to do next.

“Now,” I turned to Ezra and smiled. “Let me show you my room.”

With a puzzled expression, he slowly looked around, only to offer a mildly concerned “Aren’t we in it?”

I led him to a nook barricaded by wooden boards that I gathered from old furniture. We crawled inside into a small but cozy space with pillows to sit on. It was my own personal corner. Sketch paper and pencils were lying around everywhere, books were stacked on make-shift shelves, and drawings I was most proud of were nailed to the walls. The whole place was bathed in a warm glow thanks to a petroleum lamp. We sat across one another, and it felt to me like we were in our own tiny world, completely cut off from everything that was outside its borders.

“This is where I keep all the things that really matter to me,” I started, and then hesitated for a moment before finding the courage to continue. “And that includes you now.”

“That sounds like you’re going to keep me hostage in here,” Ezra said jokingly.

“I might,” I replied, and then we both started laughing. When the laughter subsided, suddenly I found myself gazing into his eyes silently. He was doing the same. I needed to seize the moment.

“May I kiss you?” I half-whispered.

Ezra just nodded, we both leaned in, and our lips met. My heart started beating like mad, and an intense heat spread from the core of my body all the way to my fingertips.

It was the happiest I’d felt in my entire life.