In true Ollie fashion, he was throwing a welcome back party on the Saturday before classes started up again. By the time Quinn dropped me off that night, music was blaring through the house and I could see people dancing through the windows of the living room.

"Looks like you're late to the party," my sister commented. "Good luck with Banks, I hope everything works out, Lee."

"Thanks," I sighed as I got out of the car and pulled my heavy and overflowing suitcase out of the trunk of her car.

After three weeks without seeing him and two weeks of sitting with the realization that I was in love with him, I was on edge. Dying to see Banks again. We talked every single day through texts, calls, and FaceTime but I needed him. His smell, his hugs, his kisses.

The wild party going on inside would make that difficult, but I needed it, almost more than I needed air. I hadn't told him about the 'in love' thing because I didn't have the courage and because I would want to do it in person, if I ever did get the courage.

Everybody cheered drunkenly at me when I crossed the threshold of the front door, carrying my suitcase with me. I gave everybody a little wave as I dropped the suitcase and tossed my winter coat on top of it.

Where was Banks?

Sam and Beth were standing in the living room with Walker, Chris, and Aaron among other people, most of whom I was hardly acquaintances with but were drunk enough to welcome me into my own house.

Jordan, Ollie, Kenji, and Morgan were playing beer pong in the dining room with so many people watching the game that I could hardly see through the mass.

And then there he was.

His dark curls stuck out in the crowd, leaning against the wall behind Kenji and Jordan where he had been watching the game, but was now watching me. He gave me a little finger wave, quirking his lips up in a gentle smile.

Just as beautiful and warm as he was when we said goodbye three weeks ago.

I hurried toward him, pushing as politely through the crowd as I could until I got to him and then suddenly, the rest of the room faded away. The music, the beer pong, the dense crowd of drunk people. None of it existed anymore. It was just me and Banks.

I grabbed his hips, pausing to give him a chance to tell me to stop and when he didn't, I pressed him harder into the wall and kissed him with everything inside of me. He responded with the same enthusiasm, wrapping his arms around my neck and pulling me close.

It was like breathing a first gulp of air after being underwater for far too long. I kissed him hard, like I was pulling my life supply of oxygen from his lungs. Like there wasn't an air of gasps and shocked chatter behind my back from everybody watching the graphic scene unfold.

"I fucking missed you," I sighed against his mouth.

He pulled me in for another heart stopping kiss, but stopped when Ollie brought us back to real life by asking, "Can you get a room or something?"

Everybody was looking at us, some more shocked than others. Kenji's eyes were so wide they were about to pop out of his head. Banks was looking at me with a similar emotion, his eyes wide and shiny and dazed. I couldn't tell in this light, if that was a good or bad thing.

I didn't want to deal with any of their questions or comments, so I turned back to him and asked, "Can we?"

"Obviously," he stuttered out, letting me take his hand and guide him across the room. The crowd split for us like the Red Sea and then I was pulling him up the stairs to my room. I usually preferred his bedroom because it was so much bigger, but mine was farther away from the party with an extra floor between us.

Banks was quiet when we got into my room, seemingly still stunned from my desperate performance downstairs. Unable to stand another second without touching him, I wrapped myself around his back, pressing him to my chest as my hands roamed hungrily over the familiar terrain of his firm chest. "I know I said I needed time to figure things out before we told everybody but I would have probably died if I had to wait another second."

"Please," he said, his voice rough and quiet. "Don't say things like that."

Dropping my arms, I stepped around so that I was standing in front of him. "Like what?"

"Liam, I missed you too, but we aren't..." he struggled for his words, but I waited as patiently as I could for him to find the right ones as a terrible feeling sunk deep in my chest. "We're friends and we mess around but you shouldn't talk like it's more than that."

I'd never been stabbed before, but I imagined it probably felt something like this. Each word, a dagger to my stupid little heart.

I was coming on too strong. He clearly hadn't felt the same desperate ache for me as I had for him and all of this, the way I stormed into the house and claimed his mouth in front of everybody, it was too much. I'd ruined it. I said all the wrong things... again. Why was I so bad at talking? Why did I have to mess everything up.

"I'm sorry," I said, hating how tight my voice sounded. Of course we were only friends who messed around. How could I have thought anything else? "You're right... I think I just got too caught up in the moment."

He stumbled backward until he hit my bed and sat down on the edge, breathing hard as he hid his face in his hands. Probably mustering up the courage to end things because I got too attached. The same way I had to end things with Sam.

When he looked back up at me, his eyes were wet. "I can't do this, Liam."

My throat was tight and all I could think was that for once in my entire life, Quinn was wrong. Banks wasn't into me in any real way. He thought I was hot, thought I was fuckable for a while and he liked me as a friend and that was it. We were fuck buddies and now I'd gone and ruined it by getting feelings involved before we ever even actually fucked.

The last time I had my heart broken by a girl was in tenth grade and I still remembered that slow burning that started out in my chest and eventually would turn into a very full and excruciating sensation of being gutted and hollowed out like a fish.

When did Banks get that power over me? How had I let myself get my hopes up so high over break to think that loving him could be easy and good and not at all humiliating.

"You don't have to..." my words got caught in my throat before I cleared it and restarted. "I won't say things like that again if they bother you."

"I think all of this was probably a mistake from the beginning," he said looking down at the hardwood floor rather than at me as I fell into the chair at my desk. I should have asked him to leave instead of letting him ramble on about why exactly he didn't want to kiss me anymore but for some masochistic reason, I stayed quiet and let him continue.

"I never should have crossed this line with you in the first place," he rambled on. "Because the truth is that I've been in love with you since that party after your first soccer game. That was what I wanted to tell you by the tree that night. I never thought in a million years that you'd... but then you did and I thought that even if I couldn't have you in the way I wanted, I'd take what I could get. But this is starting to feel too much like the real thing and it's fucking me up."

I could hardly hear anything he said after 'I've been in love with you'. Those words rang in my head louder than anything, echoing on a loop between my ears.

"Why can't it be the real thing?" I asked between shaky breaths.

Finally, he glanced up at me with a flat look, like I'd just asked the dumbest question on earth. "Because I know what this is for you."

"No, I don't think you do."

"You like kissing me. I'm a good kisser, who could blame you?" It sounded like a joke, but he didn't pause to laugh or even force a smile. "And maybe it's a thrill for you to kiss a guy because college is the best place to try something like that and then go back to looking for a long term, female, partner."

I was bewildered and angry that he was brushing me off like he already knew where my head was at when clearly, he had no idea. No idea that I was pathetically pining over him for all three weeks of break. No idea that my body ached for him the second I stepped back into my childhood home. He had no idea, and yet his mind was already made up somehow. "You don't get to decide how I feel without even consulting me first."

He shook his head. "I've been-"

"You haven't been through it," I snapped at him because I knew that was what he was going to say. "Not with me. You've been waiting for the shoe to drop this entire time, you have absolutely no faith in me when all I've done is bend over backwards to try to prove myself to you. I've been confused about identity and what all of this means, I'll give you that, but I have never been confused about how I feel about you. Not since that first kiss."

He pinched his lips together. "These things never end well, Liam."

"Well, if you don't want to try, that's your decision." I closed my eyes and tried not to look devastated. "But you can't say that it's because I don't love you. That's fucking horse shit."

Banks blinked at me, his body going rigid and still. "Do you?"

"You seem to already have your mind made up, so does it even matter?" I hissed out rather harshly. Probably too harshly. "Would you even believe me if I said I did?"

His hesitation to answer the question felt like an answer in itself. What was the point of loving him if he would never really let me? Still, I did, because is falling in love really ever a choice? I couldn't simply switch it off and decide I didn't want it anymore.

I couldn't take the silence in the room anymore and I did a very childish thing. I escaped.

Through the party, I stopped in the kitchen to take two shots from the nearest bottle of hard liquor and then went through the living room. There were people there trying to stop me to ask questions about when I started kissing boys, but I ignored them.

Until Sam approached as I was fiddling with the handle of my suitcase to drag it up the two flights of stairs. Hopefully Banks wouldn't be there when I got back... or maybe I hoped he would be. Who knows.

"So that's why you broke up with me," she said, her eyes narrow and accusatory.

I stood up to face her, not feeling very in the mood to deal with whatever she might have to say. "We didn't break up. We were never dating."

This was obviously the wrong thing to say, despite being factually correct. Her eyes went even narrower, her grip clutched so tightly at her plastic cup that it was starting to dent. Even though Beth showed up, putting a hand on her friend's arm in an attempt to pull her away, Sam dug her heels in to glare at me.

"Yeah, because you're a fucking fairy," she spit the words at me be seconds before the contents of her drink were splashing against the front of my shirt. It wasn't much and mostly smelled of Sprite, but still startled me enough to jump back.

"Samantha!" Beth shrieked, her eyes flying wide in shock. Either at the homophobic insult or at the drink getting thrown at me, I wasn't sure.

"I wouldn't date you because you're arrogant, entitled, and full of yourself," I informed Sam in as even a voice as I could muster. Maybe I would have been more upset if my nerves weren't already shot from my conversation with Banks, but I didn't have the energy to afford Sam any decent reaction.

"Go fuck yourself, Liam," she said with a thick slur, glaring at me as Beth tried to pull her away. "I'm the best thing that ever happened to you."

As if on queue, the actual best thing that ever happened to me walked into the room. His eyes on me, and then the stain on my shirt, and then on Sam still glaring at me.

"You're not even close," I responded as I moved passed her and out the front door. Immediately, I regretted this decision. Why didn't I grab my coat on the way out the door? But now, everybody was definitely watching me through the windows and it was too late to go back inside to grab it.

The wet spot of Sprite on the front of my shirt was beginning to stab my chest with sharp freezing pain where it clung to my skin. I pushed through it, getting the car keys out of my pocket to unlock and get inside. I had nowhere to go and I'd been drinking, but I sat in the driver seat anyway and pretended like I could go anywhere. Somewhere that made sense, that was less confusing all of the time.

I blasted the heat and rested my forehead on the steering wheel and hid from view of everybody in the house. Hopefully, they'd get bored and forget about the altercation soon enough and I could go back inside. I could try to forget about the terrible conversation with Banks. I could stop cringing at the thought of talking about all of this with Quinn, who would undoubtedly give me her patented 'oh, Liam' sad sigh.

I didn't even lift my head from the wheel when the passenger side door opened. Banks was suddenly appearing in my peripherals, trying to hand me a coat that I refused to accept.

"It's freezing, Liam."

I was freezing. The wet spot was painfully cold, my arms were shivering as my car struggled to warm up in this chilly night air.

"Are you okay?" he asked, setting the coat down on the console between us when I didn't move to accept the offering. I didn't know what he meant, asking if I was okay because he was apparently too skeptical of me to ever let either one of us have what we wanted, or if he was sorry about what happened with Sam. There were so many reasons for me to not be okay in that moment and even if I was willing, I didn't know how to answer his question.

"Fuck you," I said instead, when the heat finally booted up and I could think passed the frost. It certainly wasn't what I expected to leave my throat and I probably should have said something else, but of course I never chose the right words to say at the right times.

Banks blinked at me, mulling this over in his head as he tried to form a response. I didn't let him. I lifted my head from the steering wheel, casting my gaze out the front window that overlooked the houses across the street. He stayed in my peripheral, but not in clear view.

"Fuck you for thinking that I'm not stupidly, pathetically in love with you. I can tell what kind of day you're having just by the music I hear through my floor boards and I know every playlist by heart. I mean, for fuck's sake, I made myself sick on fruit smoothies for months just to see you for an extra fifteen seconds a day. I-"

"You need to get back inside," he interrupted me, his eyes glancing down at the wet spot on my t-shirt. "Liam, you're going to freeze out here."

He was probably right, but I was too numb to realize how cold I really was anymore. The heat in the car was still cranking to life, but the process was slow. "I don't want to go back inside. Just let me say what I need to say."

With less patience than before, he forced the coat onto my lap. "I'm not listening to shit until you put this on."

With a few frustrated mumbles, I obliged, taking the coat and forcing my bulky arms through the sleeves. Sitting in the car, this was an awkward process, but I begrudgingly followed through until I was covered. "What I was saying was that you've torn me apart in this really amazing way and I am in love with you and fuck you for thinking that I'm not."

"I'm sorry." His voice was soft and weak and shivering, probably from the cold. I didn't know how he meant his apology and I didn't ask. I didn't want to know. He could have meant 'I'm sorry for not believing you' but it could also mean 'I'm sorry that I still don't believe you. I'm sorry that I can't make this work'.

I didn't say anything, focusing all of my energy on Not Crying because this evening had been humiliating enough as it was. I didn't need to add desperate and painful sobs to that list. It was too cold to cry, I tried to tell myself.

"Liam," Banks said my name, reaching toward me until his hand gripped hard on my knee. "Look at me."

I didn't. If I did, I would have broken my No Crying rule immediately.

"I didn't mean to make you feel like I don't have faith in you," he continued on after accepting that I wouldn't be averting my gaze from the Christmas lights in the bushes across the street. "But I have been assuming the worst, just because of how much you mean to me. Hope can be so dangerous, you know?"

"Yeah." He'd proved that point tonight.

"I really don't think I've felt like this for anybody before," he admitted, the shiver leaving his voice as the car finally started to heat up through the vents. "Will you please fucking look at me? I'm saying that I'm sorry and I know I ruined tonight. I fucked up."

Finally, I gave in and tilted my head further in his direction. His cheeks were rosy and his eyes were wet. It squeezed something inside of me to see him looking so vulnerable and I suddenly felt like I needed to protect him from whatever thing made him so soft.

He squeezed my knee and I acknowledged the touch by wrapping my fingers through his. He curled his grip around mine until we were holding hands, which seemed to make everything feel okay. Stupidly, the first thought in my head seemed to fall out of my mouth, which was, "This was not how my mom envisioned this going."

"Your... mother?" he was, understandably, very confused.

I shook my head. "Long story."

"Can you tell it to me inside? I'm freezing my balls off."

I glanced in the rear view mirror where the party was still raging behind us. I had no idea what kind of crowd we'd be walking in to when we got back inside and kind of dreaded the thought of it. Would Sam be seething at the door, waiting with another drink to throw in my face or another homophobic slur to shout at me?

As if reading my mind, Banks squeezed against my hand harder. "I'm sorry about what happened with Sam. You didn't deserve that. Beth took her home, she's gone now."

I still didn't want to go inside, but I was also freezing my balls off, despite the vents heating up the inside of the car. The Sprite stain on my shirt was still burning my chest and maybe it would be better to talk to Banks when our jaws weren't clattering louder than our words.

Banks stepped through the front door first, grabbed my hand in his, and dragged me through the living room. There were curious stares, some people trying to open their mouths to ask a question but Banks pulled me through the room so fast that nobody had the chance to say anything.

In the blink of an eye, we were both tumbling into my room and shutting the door behind us.

"So, you told your mom about me," he said with a cocky side smile as he pulled the winter coat off his arms and laid it in a heap by my desk. I did the same with my own before pulling my shirt off as well, desperate to get away from the sticky Sprite.

"She's perceptive. I can't keep anything from her."

I grabbed a clean shirt from the dresser as Banks found a seat at the edge of my bed. Once I pulled the shirt on, I kicked off my shoes and joined him, leaving a good six inches between us.

"What did you tell her?" he continued on asking questions with a curious quirk in his brow.

I shrugged. "That you're a tattoo artist and can't handle spicy food."

"I resent that."

A smile pulled at my cold lips. "I knew you would. Anyway, she thought they should drive up to meet you sometime this month and when I showed her a picture, she called you a baby bear. I still don't know what she meant by that."

"You showed them a picture. So they know that I'm..."

"Yes," I answered the question even though he didn't even finish asking if my parents knew that he was a guy. I leaned back, propping my weight up on the palms of my hands. "I had to sit through a lecture about the AIDs epidemic and the different types of lube but overall, they took it pretty well."

He reached for my leg the same way he did in the car, this time squeezing harder than before. "I never should have doubted you."

My heart was starting to pound in that familiar, burning way that only Banks could make it burn. Meeting his baby bear brown eyes with mine, I took one shallow breath before saying, "You can make it up to me."

A smile pulled at his lips as his hand moved further up my thigh. "I'm planning on it."

In the blink of an eye, he was on top of me, laying both of us horizontally on the mattress with his knee between my legs and his lips hungry on mine. It could have been all in my head, but this kiss felt different than all the ones before it. Maybe it was because his words were stuck in a loop in my head.

I've been in love with you since that party after your first soccer game.

He had been in love with me. He was currently in love with me. Being in love with somebody at the same time that they loved you back was a very beautiful thing and I felt like the luckiest person in the world to experience that with Banks.

He pulled at my lip with his teeth, his hands deftly moving to unbutton my jeans before he whispered, "Say it again, Liam."

I let out a breathless sigh, letting my head fall into the pillows as I uttered the words he craved. "I love you."