Eleanor had agreed. “Super cute. You, like, balance us out!” The two had slung their arms around each other’s shoulders, their usual competitiveness evaporating in the face of a common noncreative. “I can’t wait to tell my friends my little brother is a gay accountant,” Miriam had said and ruffled Truman’s hair.

Did he like it?

“I enjoy the order of it. I like organizing things. But it doesn’t, like, make my heart sing, I guess,” Truman said, an extreme understatement.

“What does?”

“Hmm.”

Truman turned around to find Ash’s broad chest closer than he’d expected. He straightened up and swallowed the lump in his throat.

Ash’s eyes were as deep and vast as the ocean. He handed Truman the bouquet he’d just finished, and Truman held it for a moment before his brain caught up with him and he realized it was for photographing.

“Um. Do you really want to know?”

Ash nodded, as if it would never occur to him to ask a question to which he wasn’t interested in hearing the answer.

“Bullet journaling.”

Ash paused. “Sorry, I don’t know what that is.”

Truman was used to this. He pulled out his phone and opened Instagram.

“So, it’s a whole system of organization, but it’s thoroughly customizable to each user. You begin with a blank notebook—I like a dot-grid paper—and an index where you write down where each thing is. Then you lay it out however you like.” He scrolled through examples of people he followed.

“So it’s a calendar, planner, to-do list mash-up?”

“Yeah, exactly. Some people really turn them into amazing works of art.”

Truman opened one of his favorite accounts. She used watercolor in a different palette each month, and for December, she had used black paper that she speckled with silver ink stars, then painted the aurora borealis as the backdrop for her weekly spreads.

“This is gorgeous,” Ash said. “God, it must take forever to do this for every week.”

It did take a great deal of time, but Truman was rarely happier than when he was sitting at his drafting table, listening to ShadowCast, his favorite podcast, a New Orleans–based true crime show, and dreaming up his monthly themes and weekly spreads as Horse snuffled sleepily beside him.

“I love it. Mine aren’t nearly as elaborate as this, though.”

“Do you have an account on here where I can see yours?” Ash asked, peering more closely at his phone.

“Not yet.”

It was a dream of Truman’s that he was trying to work himself up to. But he knew his stark black-and-white spreads could never compete with the gorgeous, colorful, creative art that people posted.

“But, um, I do have my journal here, if you want…?”

Ash nodded emphatically.