From the adjoining bathroom came the sound of running water and then the flush of the toilet. North’s footsteps came across the room. Those strong, rough hands gathered Shaw’s hair and wound it into a loose knot, and North pressed a cool, wet cloth against the back of Shaw’s neck.

“Here.” Two ibuprofen. “And here.” A glass of water. “Drink all of it.”

“I’m going to die.”

“It was one whiskey sour.” But North didn’t sound confused. He sounded amused. Shaw was used to that by now, the gently mocking amusement that North found in every idiotic thing Shaw managed to do. It used to bother him. That was back in the early days, freshman year, when the only thing that mattered in Shaw’s universe was gaining North’s approval.

Shaw’s first glimpse of North, from the far end of the dorm hall, had totally, utterly ruined Shaw for anybody else. At least, that was how it felt at the time. When Shaw saw North’s thatch of messy blond hair and his blue work shirt, complete with an oval that spelled Mick across his well-developed chest, and the jeans sculpting a magnificent ass and the boots—Timberland, back then, instead of the Red Wings he wore now—Shaw had been lost. Obliterated. And that was before—Shaw groaned again, and this time it was only partially due to the whiskey—that was before Shaw learned that North was smart and funny and kind. Shaw had never had a chance.

That was before, too, the night Shaw had sat on the Sigma Sigma roof and listened through the window and heard North shatter all his dreams with a single sentence.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something,” North said. A chair squealed across the floor, and the sound went through Shaw’s brain like an anti-aircraft shell. “It happened again last night.”

Shaw didn’t dare roll over—he was convinced he would puke if he moved anything more than his eyelids—but he wanted to burrow under his pillow. No, forget the pillow. He wanted to burrow through the bed, through the floor, through the basement, and just keep going. If he somehow managed to dig his way to China like in a cartoon, that would be ok. If he evaporated inside the Earth’s molten core, that might be better.

Shaw’s stomach lurched, and he concentrated on not barfing. Last night. Lord, why had he been such an idiot last night? All of North’s needling about drinking, that had been fine. North liked to give Shaw a hard time. North liked to tease. Most days, it was fine. But yesterday had been a storm of things. It had started with North asking how the date had gone—Hank? Harry? Harold?—and with the disappointment in North’s face when Shaw told him the truth: it had ended the same way, with a slow build of heat all evening and then a flash freeze that left Shaw standing awkward and embarrassed and fumbling for a way to get home, alone, as fast as possible. North’s disappointment had been bad enough.