“Why?” I ask Cyrus as we stroll along the lakeside. It’s the first time we’ve been alone since the kiss in the alley, and during that time, I’ve created a questionnaire to help determine if his feelings are real. It’d be preferable if I could inspect his thoughts with a microscope, but until technology catches up, this will have to do.

He looks over at me, the waters glittering behind him. “Hm?”

“Why do you even like me?” I ask him, striving to keep my voice light, cool, nonchalant. It’s just a question. Just something that’s been eating away at me for the past, oh, I don’t know, six and a half hours. No big deal.

Cyrus’s voice is serious and deep as gravity when he slides his long fingers through mine, intertwining them like a vow, and says, “Why not? It’s very easy to fall in love with you, Leah. The easiest thing in the world.”

I feel the throb of my heart, the movement reverberating throughout my whole body. How desperately I want to believe him. To accept the words without hesitation.

“I’m not really sure when, exactly, it clicked,” he continues, his thumb grazing over the underside of my wrist, gently leading me around a crack in the pavement. “I don’t think I even realized I liked you until later. I just knew that I noticed you a lot from the beginning. Like how you would wear a different scrunchie every day of the week, or how you’d always pick out the tomatoes from your sandwiches, or how you were far from a teacher’s pet, but you still made sure to thank the teachers at the end of the lesson. I found it fascinating, because you had this very intimidating face, but then you would laugh,” he says softly, “and it was like you were glowing.”

I bite my tongue, overwhelmed by a riot of sensation, inside me and all around me: the breeze riffling my hair, the distant laughter eddying around the banks, the firs bathed in green lights, the bright smattering of stars in the sky above. Every word he’s saying.

“You really mean that?” I ask him, searching his face carefully for lies, warning signs, any damning evidence that might suggest otherwise.

“Yes,” he says, with infinite patience. “Of course.”

“You actually like me?” I confirm again, just in case. I’m aware that I’m being annoying now, but I can’t help myself. “As a person.”

“I do. Why is that so hard to believe?”

“I mean, it wouldn’t be, if you said you were attracted to me. I’d totally get it. But you’re saying you had this huge crush on me,” I emphasize, raising my brows with incredulity. “Since seven years ago.”