Chapter 5

The call did not last long.

Ethan made sure of it.

"I have to go," he said into his earbuds, watching Lucas from across the room. "My roommate is giving me a weird look."

On the line, Northstar went quiet.

Lucas's mouth parted slightly. He had heard every word.

"Your roommate?" Northstar asked at last.

"Yeah." Ethan kept his gaze on Lucas. "He gets territorial about the room."

Lucas's brows pulled together.

"I do not," he said aloud.

Ethan's smile was impossible to stop. "See?"

The voice in his ear said, much more carefully, "Who is he?"

Ethan nearly choked.

Lucas stared at him, frozen and unsuspecting, with his phone still open in one hand. The two versions of him had finally collided in the same room, and neither seemed able to look away.

"Just Lucas," Ethan said.

The answer landed like a stone.

Northstar did not speak for a moment. Then he said, "I thought you said you lived alone."

Ethan had not said that. Not exactly. He had said he kept to himself. He had said roommates were easier to describe than to know.

"I said I was lonely," Ethan replied.

Lucas's expression changed before he could hide it.

It was small—a tightening around the eyes, a flicker of something wounded and annoyed—but Ethan saw it. Northstar had heard it too, judging by the sudden silence in his ear.

Ethan should have felt guilty.

Instead, a sharp, reckless satisfaction moved through him.

For months, he had believed he was the only one taking risks. He had shared fears with a stranger who knew the shape of his voice but not the shape of his face. He had fallen for a boy who had somehow been sitting across from him every night, treating him like background noise.

If Lucas wanted to understand what loneliness felt like, Ethan could let him try.

"Good night, Northstar," he said softly.

"Good night, Marigold."

Lucas's shoulders went rigid at the name.

Ethan ended the call.

The room became unbearably quiet.

Lucas set his phone down on his desk with deliberate care. "Northstar?"

"A friend."

"You call your friends sweetheart?"

Ethan shrugged. "Sometimes."

"That was not what I asked."

He looked so serious that Ethan almost laughed. The ridiculous thing was that Lucas had every right to ask. Online, he had listened to Ethan talk about bad professors and overdue rent and the small worries that followed him like rain. Online, he had been the person Ethan called first when something hurt.

Offline, Lucas had no claim at all.

Ethan leaned back against the desk. "Why does it matter?"

Lucas's gaze dropped to the floor. "It doesn't."

"Then don't ask."

"Fine."

The word was clipped.

Lucas grabbed his jacket and keys. "I'm going to the studio."

"It's almost ten."

"I have work."

Ethan knew Lucas had work. Architecture students always had work. But Lucas's rendering project had been due yesterday, and the studio did not need him at ten o'clock on a Thursday night.

Ethan watched him leave anyway.

The door shut hard enough to make the posters over Ethan's desk shiver.

He sat down slowly, opened Discord, and stared at Northstar's name.

He could see the typing indicator appear and disappear. Appear. Disappear.

Finally, a message arrived.

Northstar: Is Lucas someone you like?

Ethan read it twice.

He imagined Lucas walking down the hall toward the architecture building, jaw set, phone held too tightly in his pocket. He imagined him opening Discord while pretending he did not care about an answer.

Ethan had spent too long being careful with Lucas.

He typed:

Marigold: Why? Are you jealous?

Three dots appeared.

Then vanished.

Then appeared again.

Northstar: No.

Ethan smiled at the screen.

Marigold: You are a terrible liar.

Northstar did not reply.

For the next hour, Ethan tried to finish a design assignment and failed. His eyes slid from the color palette on his laptop to the empty half of the room. Lucas had left his sketchbook open on the desk, a charcoal line drawing of Cedar Hall's old stone arch half-finished on the page.

Ethan had seen Lucas draw before. He had never been invited to look.

The sketch was beautiful in the way Lucas's work often was—precise without feeling cold. The bricks were shaded softly, the shadows under the arch deep enough to hide a person.

At the bottom corner of the page, Lucas had written two words in pencil.

Find the light.

Ethan's chest tightened.

Northstar had said those exact words to him during a call in February, when Ethan had confessed he was considering dropping a class to work more shifts.

He had thought it was a random kindness.

Now it felt like Lucas had been leaving pieces of himself everywhere, and Ethan had only just learned how to recognize them.

His phone buzzed.

Northstar: I am not jealous. I just don't want someone hurting you.

Ethan stared at the sentence.

It was so Lucas. The concern buried beneath a denial. The tenderness offered only after the speaker had built enough distance to pretend it meant nothing.

He answered with deliberate cruelty.

Marigold: You don't have to worry. I have a boyfriend.

The response was instant.

Northstar: You do?

Ethan inhaled, then typed:

Marigold: Maybe.

This time, nothing came back.

The silence spread through the room. It followed Ethan while he showered, while he checked the balance in his bank account, while he reheated leftover noodles and ate them at his desk with the overhead light off.

By midnight, Lucas still had not returned.

Ethan told himself he did not care.

At twelve-thirty, the door opened.

Lucas came in quietly, but Ethan was awake. He had his headphones on, though no music was playing. The blue light from his monitor painted Lucas's face pale and exhausted.

He paused when he saw Ethan.

"You waited up?" Lucas asked.

"I live here."

"That isn't an answer."

Ethan turned in his chair. "Neither is avoiding a question by going to the studio until midnight."

Lucas's eyes narrowed. "What question?"

"The one you asked Northstar."

For the first time, real alarm crossed Lucas's face.

Ethan watched it happen and understood he had pushed too hard.

"You read my messages?" Lucas said.

"No." Ethan held up both hands. "Relax. He mentioned it."

Lucas did not look relaxed.

His gaze flicked to Ethan's phone, then back to his face. "You tell him everything?"

The question came out low.

"Not everything."

"But you told him about me."

Ethan considered denying it. Then he remembered Lucas's voice saying,

I just don't want someone hurting you.

"I said I had a roommate named Lucas," Ethan answered. "That's not exactly classified information."

Lucas exhaled through his nose and walked to his desk. He did not sit down. He stood with his back to Ethan, hands flat against the wood.

"And the boyfriend?"

There it was.

Ethan could have told the truth. He could have said,

You are the boyfriend. You have been the boyfriend for eight months. You called me sweetheart three hours ago and looked at me like I was a stranger.

Instead, he leaned into the lie.

"Why are you so interested?"

Lucas turned.

"I'm not."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's true."

"Then stop asking."

Lucas's jaw worked. In the low light, he looked less like the unreachable boy everyone on their floor noticed and more like someone trying very hard not to reveal a bruise.

"Fine," he said again.

Ethan expected him to retreat. That was what Lucas did whenever a conversation came close to something real.

But Lucas took one step toward him.

Then another.

Ethan's chair hit the desk behind him. Suddenly Lucas was close enough that Ethan could smell soap and cold night air on him. His hair was still damp at the ends from the shower earlier. There was a faint red mark near his wrist where his watch had been.

"Is he good to you?" Lucas asked.

Ethan forgot how to breathe.

The question was quiet. Not possessive. Not demanding.

Worse.

Honest.

"He tries," Ethan said.

Lucas's eyes stayed on his. "That isn't what I asked."

Ethan's throat tightened. "Yes."

Lucas looked away first.

"Good," he said.

But he did not sound good.

He moved past Ethan toward his bed, and the spell broke. Ethan looked at the open laptop on Lucas's desk, at the Discord icon glowing beside a fresh message notification.

Northstar was online.

Ethan opened his own chat window under the desk.

Marigold: Are you okay?

Lucas sat on the edge of his mattress. His phone buzzed once. He looked at it but did not open the message.

After a long minute, Northstar replied.

Northstar: I don't know how to be what you need if someone else already is.

Ethan read the words until they blurred.

The cruelty of his game suddenly had weight.

Lucas did not know that he was competing with himself.

Ethan lifted his eyes. Lucas was staring at the floor, elbows on his knees, his careful expression stripped away by exhaustion.

Ethan wanted to cross the room. He wanted to tell him everything. He wanted to press the truth into Lucas's hands and make him stop looking so lost.

Instead, he did the only thing he could manage.

He sent Northstar a selfie.

Nothing dramatic. Just Ethan in the dim blue light, chin resting on one bent knee, a crooked half-smile aimed at the camera.

Marigold: You don't have to be anything tonight. Just stay.

Northstar did not answer.

Lucas's phone vibrated.

He glanced at it, then at Ethan.

Ethan pretended not to notice.

"I'm getting water," he said, rising too quickly.

The hallway outside was cold and empty. He walked to the vending machines on the first floor, bought a bottle he did not want, and stood there long enough to steady himself.

When he returned, the bedroom door was half open.

Lucas was sitting on Ethan's bed.

Ethan stopped in the doorway.

Lucas held Ethan's phone in both hands.

The screen was unlocked. The selfie still filled it.

Lucas looked up, his face flushed with something Ethan could not name.

"You left this," he said.

Ethan did not move.

Lucas's thumb hovered near the message preview beneath the photo.

Northstar had finally replied.

Northstar: I want to stay. I just don't know how to share you.

Lucas had not opened the chat.

Not yet.

But his eyes had found the name at the top of the screen.

And this time, the question on his face looked dangerously close to becoming an answer.