Carrie's idea was brilliant, but so simple. I wished I had thought of it. Just around the corner from my house, there was a house up for sale. It had been on the market for a couple of weeks now. That's where Carrie dropped me off earlier, going off to sit at Starbucks until I called. She hated Starbucks, claiming their coffee always tasted burnt, but she didn't have time to go all the way downtown and back before I had to get home. She also loved the Fuel 'N' Go. We discovered the little gas-station-turned-coffeehouse two years ago by total accident. They'd kept the name of the gas station and the neon sign out front, so I never really looked twice at the building until one day the clouds parted and the sun shone down on the glorious Mecca of caffeine goodness. No. That's a lie. Actually, Carrie had to pee and went inside, discovering the building's secret identity. She ran out and pulled me inside. We marveled at the blackboard menus, the cases of baked goods, and the heavenly aroma of that godly life-giving nectar.

As I sat on the steps of the back patio, watching a bee do its bee-thing with a purple hydrangea, I wondered if it was a crime to break into someone's backyard. And even if it were, was it still a crime if said yard belonged to an unoccupied residence? They had a privacy fence. Even if the lock on it was so shitty, all I had to do was lift the gate and shove to get it open.

As soon as Clay rounded the corner of the house, I jumped to my feet. I suddenly didn't care if it was illegal. Because my smokeshow of a boyfriend was rushing toward me. He dropped his backpack on the pavement to wrap his arms around me, kissing me. When I accidentally pressed on his ribs, he jerked back, sucking air between his teeth. I apologized profusely.

Clay shook his head. "I don't care. Just keep kissing me."

That I could do.

We moved over to the shade of the patio and he pressed me against the wall, his hands holding my face as I gripped his hips, pulling him closer with my good hand. We were never close enough.

I wanted to ask him to take off his shirt. Sadly, we only had maybe twenty minutes before I had to get home to call my mother. We were seeing each other later at his house for our supervised visitation, which was basically the length of one movie. We always chose something long. I thought of suggesting Titanic to get an extra hour in, but I suspected the parents might catch on.

Clay moved his lips to my neck, his lips glossing over my Adam's apple, moving along my jawline. He was very good at that.

I sighed. And not just because Clay hit a sweet spot that gave me chills. "I can't believe we have to live like this for three weeks."

"Speak for yourself," he said between kisses. "I only have a week of this."

At the risk of losing time, I thought he needed some perspective, so I nudged his shoulder to make him look at me. "Do you really think my mother is going to allow us to hang out at your house without making sure we're under Big Brother's watchful eye?"

He looked confused. "What does Big Brother have to do with this?"

I shook my head. I wasn't about to waste time explaining 1984 to him. Although, I'm pretty sure when he said Big Brother, he meant the TV show.

"You're pretty."

Clay scoffed, annoyed. "It was a book thing, right? You always give me this look, like I'm some dumb airhead, when I don't get your smarty-pants references."

"It doesn't matter," I snapped. Because we were wasting make-out time on this. "I just wanted you to understand that this surveillance state we're in will continue until I'm free too."

"Well, at least we have this." He waved his hand around the backyard, which was actually quite nice. A huge, immaculately kept flowerbed wrapped around all three sides of the yard and there was even a tiny river rock fountain in one corner.

I briefly wondered how their lawn was so lush and green, then Clay started kissing me again. And who the fuck cares about grass?

A few sublime minutes later, Clay stopped kissing me, to my complete dismay. "How did you know you were ready to come out? Like not just Carrie and your mom. Everyone."

My annoyance immediately faded. This was important. I would make time for this. "Is that something you think you want to do?"

"Well, maybe. Kinda. I told Jackson, even though obviously he knew. I filled in the details for him. I just feel like I don't want this—" he reached down to intertwine his fingers with my good hand "—to be a secret."

"I don't think my answer will help you."

"Why?"

"I didn't really have a choice on the everyone knowing part. It kind of happened to me."

Clay narrowed his eyes, a line forming between his dark brows. "What do you mean?"

"It's a long, terrible story." I said. He watched me, waiting. I scrunched up my face. "You really want to know? Because it was bad. And it's totally going to kill the mood."

"I want to know." he said.

He quickly added, "If you feel like telling me."

"Okay."

We went over to sit on the patio steps. He winced as he lowered himself to sit with one leg tucked under the other, facing me.

"Remember that girl Whitley from the party last weekend?"

"The bitch in the red dress... at the party where you hooked up with your ex-boyfriend, the thought of which made me violently ill for a week?"

"Um, yeah. Her." I chose not to comment on the rest. "Well, when she and I were freshmen, she was kind of part of my friend group."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah." I said. "Well, I had already been out to Carrie and my family for about a year, and I felt like I was comfortable enough with my other friends to let them know, so one night when we were hanging out in the parking lot at the grocery store—"

He interrupted me, blurting, "The really dark one on Maple?"

"Yes!" I shouldn't be surprised that he knew it. Whenever we went, there were always Huntington High kids hanging out there. But we never mingled.

Except for once, which was how Carrie met Jackson. She broke the heel of her brand new shoe in a drainage grate and screamed bloody murder. Jackson came running up to offer help, assuming someone had gotten maimed. With the amount of crying Carrie was doing, he immediately identified her as the injured party. She was clutching her shoe like it was a beloved pet who'd just gotten hit by a car. As soon as he saw that she wasn't in pain, he bent down, scooped her up, and carried her, An Officer and a Gentleman style, setting her down on someone's open tailgate in the Huntington group. He offered her a beer and told her he'd carry her around all night if she needed him to. And true love blossomed as private school kids mingled with public school kids in a Winn Dixie parking lot.

"I thought only us public school miscreants did that." Clay teased.

"Nope. The bougie kids did it too. At least the underclassmen. Er... the ones I hung out with anyway."

"So you told them?"

"I did. And they all seemed cool with it. Even Whitley."

"Was she faking it?"

"I honestly don't know. I never got to ask. We weren't friends for very long afterwards. But she isn't the reason I got outed. Just sort of the inciting incident."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, she told her brother about it. His name is Patrick. He was a senior then, and so gorgeous with this thick dark hair and the same crystal blue eyes as Whitley. He looked like an angel."

That line from "Blank Space" used to always reminded me of him: "'Cause, darling, I'm a nightmare, dressed like a daydream." It took months before I could hear it without thinking of him.

"I have a feeling he wasn't." Clay said.

"No. He wasn't." I said unequivocally. Unless we were counting Lucifer. "But I didn't know that."

I took a deep breath. "I can still remember everything about the day he approached me. I was in the library, and he followed me into the upstairs stacks. He cornered me in a dead end aisle, walking up until he had me pressed against the back wall between Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf. He said Whitley told him about me, and he thought he was also gay, but he was too afraid to tell anyone. He said, 'You're so much braver than me.' And he tucked my hair behind my ear, back when it was long enough to do that. That was the first time I had ever had contact with a guy in that context.

"I nearly fainted when Patrick leaned in close. I thought he would kiss me, but he swerved to put his lips close to my ear. He told me he wanted to meet somewhere outside school to talk. I gave him my number, and he texted later to meet him at the golf course at midnight. Their house backs up to the ninth hole."

"I assume you went." Clay said.

"I did. It was pitch black out there. The only lights came from the houses in the distance. I could barely even see my hand in front of my face. Then I heard Patrick whisper my name. When I turned around, I could see his silhouette walking toward me." I gripped Clay's hand tighter as I felt the threat of tears fast approaching. My whole body shivered, like it did that night. "My heart was beating so fast. I was excited and a little bit scared. The only person I had ever kissed was Carrie, and you know how that ended." I forced a laugh that I didn't feel, and he offered a kind smile.

"It took me too long to notice that he wasn't alone. There was someone following him. More than one. Patrick brought five of his friends. That's six seniors, all of them much bigger and stronger than skinny, little, fourteen-year-old, freshman me."

Clay wiped his thumb under my eye. It came away wet. "You don't have to keep going. I can guess what happened."

I shook my head. I needed to say it. I needed to speak the words out of my mind so they didn't get lodged there and replay on a loop. "After the first punch, I was on the ground, crying. They kicked me in the stomach and the back. Someone hit me in the face with something solid. A stick or a club, I still have no idea what it was. Patrick had a pretty tight-knit group of friends, so I pretty much knew who all five of the guys beating me were."

"That's awful."

"It gets worse." I said, blinking back tears. "Patrick, ever the charmer, knelt down by my head and gently rolled me onto my back. He tucked my hair behind my ear like he did before and stroked his finger across my lips. I was crying and struggling to breathe. One of my eyes was swelling to the point I could barely keep it open. And he leaned in really close and said, 'Next time you'll think twice about being so proud that you're a freak.' Then he tapped his hand against my cheek and backed off. I thought he was leaving. I prayed they would all go. But then, just for good measure, Patrick, the star of the soccer team—" my voice sounded so bitter, even after all this time "—kicked me so hard in my side that it cracked one of my ribs. The other boys all started laughing when I screamed."

I clenched my jaw and spoke through gritted teeth. "The pain was so bad my stomach convulsed. I turned over and vomited everywhere, which only made it worse. That's when they ran off, still laughing like it was just a cute little prank."

"That's disgusting." Clay looked revolted, the muscles in his jaw tightening as he clenched his teeth. "How can anyone do something like that?"

"It could've been worse."

"How?"

"They could've outright murdered me. Or beat me so bad that I died from my injuries before I got found. It took me like ten minutes to think to call the cops. I was in so much pain, I couldn't even tell them where to find me."

Tears glistened in Clay's eyes as he enveloped me in a tight embrace, holding my head to his shoulder. "I'm sorry that happened to you."

"It is what it is."

Clay pulled back, his hands cradled my face. "What it is, is a big fucking deal. I hope all those bastards are in prison."

"Ha!" I wasn't laughing. I was just exasperated. "Yeah. Patrick got arrested because I actually had the text from him telling me where to meet him. But I didn't have proof about the others. It was just an assumption on my part, because there were five of them and he had five close friends."

"That seems pretty rock-solid to me."

"You're not a cop."

"At least Patrick is in jail."

"Are you kidding?" I actually laughed at that. "Patrick was a rich, straight, white athlete in Alabama. I could've had video of him doing it and he would've gotten off. He got a plea deal and got fucking community service, and he had to attend mandatory anger management and tolerance seminars for six months."

"I'd say I'm surprised, but I'm really not." Clay shook his head, looking as tired of the world's bullshit as I was.

"The only bright side is that he got expelled, because technically he was guilty, and my mother threatened to sue the school if they didn't kick him out. Whitley hated me after that. I ruined her brother's life."

"I knew I totally should have keyed her car at the party. We could totally go do it right now. I'd risk more punishment to give you vindication."

I rested my cast on his shoulder. "Anyway, the attack was in the news and they so brilliantly announced it as 'a homophobic hate crime against a local high school boy tonight at nine.' They even said my school's name in the story. And I show up two days later with a busted face. They all put two and two together. Hence, it wasn't my choice to come out. So I just didn't bother trying to hide it anymore. I got called names, but people called me gay before I came out, so it wasn't anything new."

"I get why you said you don't like the people at your school."

"No, they're mostly fine." I brushed the hair off his forehead, just taking in the sight of him. His brown eyes and his freckled cheeks, and those thick dark eyelashes. "All that died down at the end of the year when Patrick's friends graduated."

"I can't believe you ever wanted to try with a guy after that. Especially someone who's in the closet."

"I think you'll find many queer teenagers in the Bible Belt are in the closet if they have a choice. I applaud anyone who has the courage to deal with the hatred and bigotry head on."

"That's so sad." I could see the wheels turning in his head, wishing he could change it. The despair, knowing he couldn't.

"It took a long time for me to stop seeing every guy who flirted with me as a potential threat." I titled my head, squinting one eye, thinking back. "Let's see, that happened in November, and the next guy I tried anything with was the following summer." I counted on my fingers, whispering the names of the months until I got to June. "So like seven-ish, maybe eight months later."

"Was that Duke?"

"No. I met Alfie in January of tenth grade. This was a boy in Baltimore. I went to stay with my dad for a month and he lived in the same apartment building. He was like a year older, I think. I only even dared to try with him because he was like very audaciously out. Even my dad noticed, and he's so oblivious to that kind of thing."

"Like David Rose level out."

"Totally!" I playfully slapped his chest. "He was so a David. And a little bit Moira. He had a thing for wigs."

"That's amazing."

"We made out a lot while I was there and eventually did some other stuff."

"I thought Alfie was your first." It was so weird to hear Clay call him that.

"Alfie was my first time actually having sex. And my first boyfriend. Me and that other guy were very casual. We mostly got high and kissed a lot. He's the one who introduced me to the devil's lettuce." I mimed smoking a joint. I thought it was funny, but Clay barely lifted the corner of his mouth. "We also put on his wigs and danced around his room in our underwear a lot. That was fun."

Clay shook his head mystified. "That does not sound like you."

"I'm not as much myself around here. Even though people know, it's easier to just go with the flow and stay under the radar."

"Two weeks ago you wore a shirt with the Disney princes standing in front of a rainbow with the words 'Someday My Prince Will Come' printed on it."

"Carrie made me that." I smiled from ear to ear. "I can't believe you remember what I was wearing two weeks ago."

"Everything about you is kind of indelibly marked on my brain." He tapped the side of his head, grinning.

That got my cheeks burning. I laid my cast on top of his hand that held mine, which he never let go of, even though it was grossly sweaty. "Going back to your original question, I guess there are two answers, at least that I can come up with. You're either ready when you feel like you're confident in yourself and you don't care what other people think. Or you do it because the burden of the secret is too much to carry, and not doing it would cause you more harm."

"I've definitely felt the second one."

"You don't have to come out for me, if you're worried about that." I said. "I'd never push you to do that. This is your thing that only you can know when you ready for."

He leaned over to kiss me, softly, sweetly. "Thank you. I don't know that I'm ready, but I also don't want to not be able to hold your hand or hug you when we go places. We already did that for months. It wasn't fun."

"Yeah, but now we can make up for not doing that stuff in public by doing a ton of it in private. We'll be so sick of making out that you won't even want to look at me in public."

His grin crinkled the corners of his eyes, just like that photo of his dad he showed me. "I doubt I could ever get sick of making out with you. It kills me that we have to do it this way."

I lifted my cast and wrapped my fingers around his wrist as best I could, twisting it to see the face of his watch. "Well, if we don't get home soon, our parents are the ones who'll be doing the killing."

He looked down. "Shit! You're right."

Reluctantly, I pulled my good hand out of his and fished my phone from my pocket to text Carrie to pick me up.

With a lot of effort, a hand from me, and some grunting, Clay got to his feet. "You're still coming over later, right?"

"As long as I get home in like the next two minutes to call my mom."

"Then you better be getting those chicken legs running."

I scoffed, highly offended. "I do not have chicken legs!"

"Okay... but ya do." Clay wrapped his arm around me, pulling me in. "And I love your skinny legs, and you're knobby knees, and your bony ankles."

"Shut up." I pushed on him, but I put no force behind it, because I didn't actually want him to go anywhere. "I hate you."

Clay's lips split apart into a grin, showing his stupid perfect teeth. "Well, since apparently it's Opposite Day, I hate you too. I've never hated anyone more in my entire life. I bet I even hate you more than you hate me."

"Not possible."

"So very possible."

This time I kissed him, slipping my arms around his neck, really getting into it until Carrie texted that she'd arrived.