WHO SAID I WAS STRAIGHT?

Mason spent the next week trying to understand himself without turning Adrian into an experiment.

He read. He walked. He went to a coffee shop and watched couples through the window, wondering why he had never questioned the shape of love when his own life had already taken it.

He thought about women he'd dated. Those feelings had been real. So was the way his chest tightened when Adrian laughed on the phone in the next room. One truth didn't erase the other.

He thought about the wedding kiss.

It hadn't been a performance. Not entirely. He'd wanted to protect Adrian, yes. But he had also wanted to kiss him. He had been afraid to admit that even to himself.

One night, Mason returned home to find two moving boxes outside Adrian's bedroom.

He stood staring at them until Adrian appeared.

"I signed a lease," Adrian said.

Mason felt the words like a physical blow.

"When?"

"Today. I can move next weekend."

"And Ethan?"

Adrian's brows drew together. "What about him?"

"Is he helping? Are you moving in with him?"

"No. I'm moving into my own apartment. Ethan offered to help carry boxes."

Mason could hear how unreasonable his next question was before he asked it.

"Do you love him?"

Adrian stared at him. "We've been on three dates."

"That isn't an answer."

"Neither is anything you've given me for two weeks."

Mason flinched. Adrian closed his eyes briefly.

"I'm sorry," he said. "That was cruel."

"No. It was true."

Mason took a breath. "I don't like the way Ethan looks at you."

"Then how should he look at me?"

"Like—" Mason stopped.

Like I do, he almost said.

Adrian waited. When Mason didn't finish, he shook his head.

"You don't want me, Mason. You just don't want anyone else to have me."

"That's not it."

"Then tell me what it is."

The words crowded inside Mason's throat. He wanted to say that Adrian was the person he looked for first in every room. That his favorite part of the day had always been the sound of Adrian coming home. That every ordinary memory now shone with a significance he'd been too blind to see.

But those truths were frightening, and Mason had spent too long protecting himself with jokes.

Adrian read his silence as another refusal.

"I can't keep doing this," he said.

"I know."

"I can't be your almost-boyfriend when you feel lonely and your roommate when you get scared."

"I know."

Adrian nodded, looking exhausted. "Then please. Let me move."

Mason stepped aside.

Adrian went into his room and closed the door.

For several minutes Mason stood in the hall. Then he went to his desk and opened the folder marked MARRIED LIFE.

He played every clip, all the way through. He didn't laugh as much this time.

In one video, filmed on an ordinary Sunday, Mason had pointed his camera at Adrian cooking breakfast.

"Tell the people what it's like living with me," video-Mason said.

Adrian rolled his eyes. "Like being married to a raccoon."

"A handsome raccoon."

"A very handsome raccoon," Adrian agreed, his voice unexpectedly gentle.

Then Adrian looked up from the pan. He hadn't known the camera was still recording.

His expression when he looked toward Mason was unguarded and full of something Mason could finally name.

Love.

And Mason heard himself laugh from behind the camera, happy without knowing why.

He lowered his face into his hands.

"Oh," he whispered to the empty room. "Oh, I'm an idiot."

The realization didn't solve everything. It didn't mean Adrian owed him another chance. It didn't change the hurt Mason had caused.

But it was his truth, and he was done hiding from it.