‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘I don’t know. I just want to experiment at my own pace. Not be rushed into it. I feel like the second you come out as gay, you have to choose your team. What if I don’t want to do that? What if I don’t know where I fit in yet? I feel like everyone looks at me, sees the nails and the heels, and just thinks bottom. They don’t give me a chance to figure it out for myself.’

‘Well, I never thought that,’ I say. ‘And, for what it’s worth, it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for me. Top. Bottom. Side. I don’t care. I’d be fine with doing whatever.’

‘You say that now …’

‘I mean it,’ I say. ‘You don’t need some meathead pressuring you into doing something you don’t wanna do.’

Kellen bristles. ‘Don’t call him a meathead.’

‘Sorry,’ I say. Dial it back, Zach. ‘All I’m saying is that sex is supposed to be fun. Don’t let him or anyone else ruin it.’

‘I know you’re right,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I honestly don’t even know if I wanna be with him anyway.’

‘You don’t?’

‘It’s like there’s two versions of him. When it’s just me and him, he’s kind and funny, and he makes me feel as if the only thing that matters to him is keeping me safe. But then there’s this other side of him. The one that never texts me back, or notices when I’m sad. The one that gets angry when the smallest thing doesn’t immediately go his way. It’s like I mean the whole world to him, until I don’t.’

‘If you feel that way, why on earth did you propose to him?’ I really can’t get my head round that.

‘Because I could feel him slipping away from me … and I wasn’t ready for that. I thought if I could just keep him, for a little while longer, that we could work things out.’

‘But you deserve better than that,’ I say. ‘You deserve someone who treats you like you’re the most important person in the room, not just some of the time but all of the time. If Rhys really loves you, that’s how he should make you feel …’

‘You know he’s never said it?’ Kellen admits. ‘That he loves me?’

What?!

‘Really?’

‘Never,’ he says with a sigh.

A screeching sound startles us then as a firework shoots up into the sky. The night has flown by and prom is almost over.

‘I don’t wanna do this again, Zach.’

‘Then we’ll fix it, we’ll find a way … I promise.’

‘OK,’ he says hopefully. ‘And what if this is it? What if we wake up tomorrow and it’s actually tomorrow tomorrow?’ Kellen looks down at his watch. ‘One minute.’