“That you’re quiet?”

“Yeah,” he says. “That when I’m feeling some type of way, I disconnect. Sometimes I wish I could yell. Have that external release. Get out whatever’s going on in my head.”

“What’s in it?” I ask, reaching up to tug gently on his ear. “Your head.”

“A lot,” he says. “A lot of shit.”

“Will you tell me?” I ask.

“What’s in my head?”

“Mm.”

“This is what you do,” he says, grinning. “You want me to put all my cards out on the table and you get to remain a mystery. You know how I feel about you.”

“We’re not thirteen anymore,” I say, sitting up.

“I know that.”

“You said I was the same. The morning after bowling. But what if that’s not true? What if I’m not who you think I am? What if you don’t really know me?”

“I don’t assume that I do,” he says. “What I meant the other day wasn’t that you’re exactly how you were in high school. You’re as funny and smart and witty and cool as I remember. But I know you’ve lived a lot of life since then. So have I.”

“Yeah,” I say, pulling the blanket over my head so I look like a Jedi.

“I don’t just like you because I had a crush on you in high school,” he says.

“I also don’t like you because I had a crush on you in high school.”

“Cute.”

“Because I didn’t have a crush on you in high school.”

“Gathered that, thanks.”

“Sorry.” I pull the blanket down over my face.

“I’m not playing relationship chicken,” he says. “I want to be with you. I want to see where this goes.”

“You say that now.”

“What are you alluding to?”

“Nothing,” I say from inside my safety blanket. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Come out of there,” he says.

I peek a single eyeball out through the folds of the blanket.

“I’ve got hot dogs out here.”

“Stop trying to tempt me out of my blanket cave.”

“That’s my blanket,” he says. “Technically it’s my blanket cave.”

“Doesn’t sound right to me.”

He scoops me up inside the blanket and carries me upstairs to bed. He unwraps me carefully, like an anticipated gift.

I wait for him to ask me about my bandages, but he doesn’t. His eyes don’t stray from mine.

I want him to promise me that he’ll keep looking at me the way he does, the way he always has. I want him to promise me that his feelings won’t change no matter what.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says as he kisses along my clavicle, one hand loose around my neck and the other moving up my thigh. “You’re so beautiful.”

But I need him to love me ugly.

IX

Morning,” he whispers. “I have a lesson.”

I squint into vibrant sunlight. He stands over me, already dressed.

“You can stay in bed if you want,” he says. “I’ll be downstairs with a student.”