“My mother started looking into constellations, and once she saw Orion, there was no changing her mind. Not even when my father brought up how my name means ‘mountain dweller.’ She didn’t give a shit. Everything didn’t have to have meaning. Sometimes something that was beautiful was just beautiful.”

“I wish your mom could’ve told my mom that.”

“Again, I hate the origin, but love your name.”

“You don’t think Valentino Prince is too charming?”

I bust out laughing. “Oh shit, I forgot about your last name! Yeah, no, that’s too much.”

“I’d stop being a Prince if I could.”

The woman who offered her condolences is still eavesdropping on our conversation apparently because she seems confused. Same for her daughter, who asks her mother why Valentino doesn’t have a crown if he’s a prince.

I lower my voice so we can have as much privacy as possible on public transit. “Have you given more thought to calling them?”

“Here and there,” he says. This isn’t one of those things where he’s guaranteed to have the chance to do it later if he’s leaning toward it. “There’s a part of me that wants to so that I can see them feel bad about how they’ve treated me. But what if they don’t? The fact that I don’t know if my own mother and father will grieve me shows how twisted this relationship is. I wish I had parents like yours.”

“Me too.”

It’s not lost on me how lucky I got with my mom and dad. I didn’t get the chance to come out to them, but knowing they would’ve been down with my happiness helps me sleep at night. They would’ve never chased me out of the city like Valentino’s parents did with him.

“Do they have a memorial somewhere?” he asks.

My chest tightens. “Yeah, they technically have headstones in a cemetery, but I know they’re not there. We obviously don’t have any of their . . .” I can’t bring myself to say that we had nothing to bury. “We don’t have any of them.”

“Do you ever visit the site? Where it all happened?”

“I haven’t. I always think it might be healing, but I’m also scared I won’t survive it.”

“Death-Cast thinks you will,” Valentino says, and then he grabs my hand. “I do too.”