He clearly didn’t eat enough. If Jack had been at all sober he would have been puzzled—if not entirely put off—by his odd thoughts, but he stared at Theo’s ribs, visible under his fine white skin, and thought, somebody should feed him. But his chest was muscled from lacrosse, his hair such a blinding blond, eyes darkened with liner, and as he turned, Jack spotted—oh, God—a massive tattoo climbing his well-defined back.

Wings.

It must have taken hours and hours.

Jack wondered if he would be able to withstand the pain.

Theo practically glowed in the streetlights, in this odd moment, set aside in time, when they existed outside of school and rivalry and hatred and blows. His face was relaxed, and Jack realized that he had never seen him that way, like he was finished with hiding. Like he had been hiding his whole life and had just now discovered this other option—the end of lies.

Meg leaned her cheek on his chest. He kissed her thick auburn hair. She smelled like chocolate and marshmallow and sweat and grass.

And Theo’s gray eyes looked up, drawn to Jack’s like two atoms which had been violently split and longed to be reunited.

And he smiled. A sordid smile—a dirty smile.

He wrapped his hand back, around Phillippe’s neck, fingers winding through coiled hair—dropped his head onto his shoulder, eyes half-lidded but still staring at Jack. He ground his hips, a slow and sinuous circle, and his mouth opened, the inside of his lips a black cherry–red. Jack couldn’t hear anything over the thumping bass of electronic music, but he knew down to his toes that Theo was making obscene little noises, sounds that he was communicating to him across the divide of flesh.

Jack couldn’t look away. He couldn’t.

He was going to be sick.

The purple shots—and he was up to five now—roiled in his stomach. He started breathing heavy, his mouth watering, and his vision blurred, a kaleidoscope of Theo, his hair, his skin, his shocking sounds, splitting and swirling in him, and he pushed Meg away and ran into an alley and vomited up magenta gelatin and bile.

“Party foul!” a striking man in dangerously high heels shouted drunkenly.

Jack turned away from the mess he had made, wiped his mouth, slid to the ground with his back against brick.

He hadn’t felt—he hadn’t been missing something. Not for those horrible moments when he saw—

No, no—not this. Not now.

Not again.

His stomach was empty. He chewed a stick of mint gum. He went back for another shot, and Theo and Genni and Phillippe had gone. Meg frowned at him, worried, and he shrugged, grabbed her—but not too rough—and danced against her back.