"I'm dying," I said to Quinn as I fell onto her bed one week into winter break.

She glanced up at me from her work laptop. It was comical, watching my sister perform scientific calculations from the same white desk she used to recite Apollo Four fanfic like it was scripture when she was a teenager. "Is there a cure for your sudden terminal illness?"

"Yes, but it's in North Carolina," I mumbled, pressing my palms against my eye sockets. Only a third of the way through break and I was already going crazy without seeing Banks every day. Sure, we were texting constantly but I needed to see him. To touch him.

After my show of convincing him just how attracted I was to him, we hardly spent a second without our bodies somehow touching. Even when we were just studying for finals, I had my legs over his lap or his hand rested on my thigh. We were so tangled up for those two weeks that I could rarely tell where my limbs ended and his began.

Now, with a sudden lack of Banks in my physical presence, I was going through a lethal amount of withdraw.

Quinn only laughed at my devastating predicament. "When's the last time you FaceTimed?"

I checked my phone. "An hour ago. Maybe I should call again?"

She laughed again. "My poor, sweet baby brother. You've got it bad, huh? Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?"

"No," I said quickly. "I mean, we're not like dating or anything. We're just..."

What were we doing, exactly? We'd never talked about it. Technically, we were just hooking up but it felt like more than that. It had to be more than that... didn't it?

"You don't have to finish that sentence. I don't want to know," she grimaced. "You're clearly really into him, you should probably figure that out."

"I mean, how could I even tell them, if there's no official label?" I asked her, sitting up and kicking my legs off the side of her twin sized mattress. "Hey Mom and Dad, just wanted to let you know that I'm screwing my roommate. Actually, no, we're not even screwing, we've just done the other stuff, so-"

"Liam," she stopped me from finishing that sentence. "I just said I don't want to hear it. Gross."

"Sorry," I muttered apologetically. "So you get why I can't tell them."

"But I don't get why you haven't locked this thing down when you're clearly so head over heels?" she asked me, her dark eyebrows raised in the way they do when she thinks I'm being a dumbass.

"I don't know if that's something he would want," I admitted. He seemed to enjoy my presence, but he never mentioned anything about having romantic feelings for me. He even expressly stated that he didn't have those feelings the night of the drag show. Sure, things have changed since then so maybe so have his feelings? But what if I brought it up and then it freaked him out that I was getting too attached and wanted to end things?

Quinn rolled her eyes. "He's been into you since the beginning of the semester. I could tell when I went shopping with you guys, it was so obvious."

"No, he told me that he wasn't into me a couple weeks after that."

She laughed. "He was lying, idiot."

My phone pinged with a text and I nearly snapped my wrist from grabbing it so quickly.

Banks: Christmas Eve tradition: parents arguing over which movie we should watch. Home Alone vs Elf

Liam: Always the same movies?

Banks: Always. Home Alone wins this year, it's on a three year winning streak

Liam: We always watch Polar Express. I always want to watch Grinch but Quinn is a tyrant.

"You can't tell me this is the face of a man who isn't in love," my sister scoffed, showing me a picture on her phone of me, just a second ago, reading Banks's text. Of course, I'm smiling like an absolute idiot.

"Yes, I like him," I admitted, and even saying it out loud made my throat bobble with anxiety. "But in love, Quinn? That's a bit much."

"Oh, is it? Weren't you just complaining about being near death after a week without him? And you don't think you're in love?"

I opened my mouth to protest, but my dad's voice from downstairs interrupted me. "Kids! Time for dinner!"

I tried to push Quinn's accusation out of my mind and left her room to go downstairs. The plan was to push all of those things to the side, not to worry about it until after dinner where I could call Ollie and ask for his advice. He knew me and Banks more than anybody else, so he'd be able to assess the situation with a more knowledgeable lens than my sister.

That plan quickly fell through the floor when I sat down at the table and got another text from Banks. A selfie of his smile and then in the background over his shoulder, an older couple clearly in the middle of a very heated argument. I laughed as I started typing out a response.

"I know that look," Mom cooed at me with a slow grin. "Is this about that 'weird thing going on' that we talked about at Thanksgiving?"

I would have been an idiot to even try to ignore it. I was already blushing and wishing that I wasn't such a terrible liar. "Um. Yeah."

"Well, come on. Give us more info," she looked at me expectantly as I spooned at my mashed potatoes.

"There's not much to tell," I said, and by that I meant 'there's not much that I'd want to relay to my parents over Christmas Eve dinner'.

She quirked her eyebrow at her in an identical way that Quinn did. She learned that information-pulling stare from the best, and the master was working her tricks on me now. "Well, you're clearly very into her. Can't you tell us a little bit about the girl?"

"A tattoo artist," I said, purposefully leaving off the pronoun. I tried to stick to concrete facts. "A marketing major, very creative. Likes to draw nature, like animals and plants and stuff. Not very good at beer pong or eating spicy foods, but oddly good at bowling?"

Quinn and my parents kept watching me, waiting for more information because all of that apparently wasn't enough.

I kept going. "Um, not really into sports, but still comes to my games. Probably the only reason I'm even playing soccer this season because their presence is sometimes the only thing that can calm me down when I get really panicky." Neither of them looked caught off guard by the pronoun choice of 'their' instead of 'her' so I bet they didn't catch it. "Friendly to everybody and optimistic about everything, even though they've been through some really terrible things and they haven't had it so easy. But still, always smiling and always the brightest spot in any room."

Oh god, that was too much. It was true, but it was too much.

"That all sounds very sweet," Dad remarked with a smile before he returned to chowing down on his green beans. "And a tattoo artist too, huh? How interesting. Does she have an apprenticeship lined up?"

"Waiting until after graduating to start applying, but has an eye on a couple of places," I answered and then, as if I'd opened a dam that I couldn't squeeze shut anymore, the compliments kept flowing out of me. "I... I feel like I'm the best version of myself around them, like I didn't even know who I really was until they came around and now I'm just... I'm so much better just for knowing them."

"Liam, sweetie, are you alright?" Mom asked me, not looking as enthusiastic as she was just a little bit ago. Everybody had stopped eating now and Quinn, who was sitting to my left, had reached over and was holding my hand. When did I start crying? My cheeks were wet, tears dripping onto my plate.

Would they look at me any differently if they knew? Would my dad think of me as less of a man? Or my mom start crying because I might not give her grandchildren? Would they be embarrassed to tell their friends? The rest of the family? I knew that they'd still love me as their son, but what if it changed how they thought of me?

Quinn squeezed my hand, encouraging me to go on.

I wiped my wet cheeks and then in one shaky breath, I blurted it out. "I'm... fuck... I'm in love with him."

I flinched when a fork clanged to a plate and then my mom gasped, letting out a shocked, "Oh, dear."

And then I cried harder and I wasn't sure if it was because I was afraid of my parents' reaction or if it was because I had realized that it was true. I was in love with Banks and the thought was devastatingly terrifying. What if this really was just a friends with benefits thing for him? Just a fun hookup, like what he did with Jordan, until he finds somebody who is confident in their sexuality, who he doesn't have to second guess around every corner?

The soft, recognizable palm of my mother brushed against my cheek to dry my tears. Like I was a little kid with a scraped knee. When I blinked my eyes open, she was crouching in front of me with a concerned look on her face. "This is nothing to cry about, sweetheart. Being in love is a beautiful thing, it doesn't matter what appendages they may or may not have."

I couldn't help but laugh through my tears. "Please Mom, don't talk about appendages."

She pulled me into a hug tighter than that of a python trying to strangle their pray. "I love you more than anything in this world, nothing could ever change that, Liam."

"She's right," Dad agreed, clearing his throat from across the table. "Of course, we love you. But I am shocked. I mean, not bad shocked... just surprised. Don't parents usually pick up on these sorts of things?"

I shook my head. "Up until a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't even picking up on it. I'm not... at least, I don't think I'm gay? Not completely. I don't know what I am. I haven't figured out the big picture yet."

Mom dried the rest of my tears and then kissed my forehead in true motherly fashion. It was all the tender affection I needed to comfort the anxieties that they might have disapproved. "The label doesn't matter, Liam. As long as you're happy."

"I mean, I think I'm happy?" I didn't sound so sure about that. "I don't know how he feels about me."

Quinn rolled her eyes. "He loves you back, you're just too much of an idiot to see what's right in front of you."

"We should drive up sometime after the New Year and meet him," Dad suggested.

Mom returned to her chair to finish dinner and said, "That is such a great idea! We'd love to meet him, Liam."

"No, Mom, I just told you that I don't know how he feels. I can't ask him to meet my parents when we've just been..." I trailed off, catching myself just before exposing them to their son's fellatio activities.

"Well, what's his name? What's he look like?"

"His name is Banks. Well, that's his last name. I actually don't know his first name," I admitted softly as I pulled up the selfie he sent me a little bit ago from his kitchen back home and slid it across the table.

"He's very attractive," Quinn informed them.

"Oh yes, he's quite the looker," Mom said with a wide grin. "Look at those big brown eyes, like a baby bear."

"A baby bear?" I couldn't help but laugh at that, hoping that I'd be able to tell Banks about it someday, when it wouldn't be embarrassing to admit that I showed my parents his picture.

"That sounds familiar. Doesn't it, Diane?" My dad wondered, scratching at his mustache. "Isn't Banks your roommate?"

"Oh! That's right!" Mom snapped in recognition. "Ollie's cousin, isn't it? Oh, now that I know that, I can definitely see the resemblance."

"Yes, he's Ollie's cousin," I confirmed. "Can we not talk about this anymore?"

"No, I think we need a plan of attack," Quinn objected. "For how you're going to confess your undying love when you get back to campus."

"Let's circle back on that after dessert," Mom suggested with a bright eagerness that I wasn't expecting, but warms my soul to an unbearable amount. I could cry again, just thinking about how lucky I am to have the family that I do. "I'll need to get my notebook from the office."

"Notebook?" I brought myself back to the conversation.

"To brainstorm," she said vaguely.

"You know that you still have to use condoms, right?" Dad said in a tone of voice that would suggest that he just asked a very normal dinner appropriate question, like 'how did your finals go' or 'how did you sleep last night?'

I choked on my piece of chicken. "Dad."

"What?" He gave me an innocent shrug. "It's important to know these things. The AIDs epidemic was a very real thing. And oil based lubricant is corrosive to latex, so you need to use water or silicone based lubes."

"Oh my god." I wasn't really religious, but I couldn't help but wonder if God really was homophobic and this was my punishment for loving a man.