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you pretend you don’t know me, and then when it turns out you do remember me you act like I’m a huge imposition and get snippy at me over cigarettes. Then when we get trapped on the rooftop together you’d rather beat your body black and blue than figure out how to stay warm until morning with me. Does that sound accurate?”
    ...Well, when you put it like that , yeah, it sounded like I hated him.
    “I don’t hate you,” I said. “I just hate myself.”
    He stared at me for a minute, then covered his eyes again. “Thanks for saying that. It makes my awkward confession that I’ve had a crush on you since high school much less awkward by comparison.”
    All the blood drained from my face and I swayed. The wind shifted and whipped through our little hiding place, taking the warmth with it, and I squeaked and scooted closer to him. But not too close. Close enough to see him in profile, to study his beautiful face. Close enough to touch, even though I never would...
    Or would I?
    Could I?
    He stayed right where he was, up against the wall, his wool-clad shoulders dark against the brick. I could see a day’s worth of stubble on his cheeks, his chin, his throat, and there, under a king’s ransom of silver studded into his ear, was his pulse, hammering rapidly.
    He was nervous.
    Oh my god.
    He’d really, actually said it.
    “I...” I trailed off. Should I be honest?
    ...Well, why not? Might die of exposure up here anyway. Get it all out. “Honestly,” I said, “I thought I’d hallucinated that part.”
    Now he took his hand away from his face, revealing eyebrows raised up to his hairline.
    “Excuse me?” he said, and his voice almost cracked. Almost.
    I hunched my shoulders and pulled my hood back up so I could cover my embarrassment. “I said , I thought I’d hallucinated that part.”
    “No,” he said slowly. “No, I heard you. I was just wondering why you jumped to assuming it was a hallucination instead of, you know, an actual thing that happened.”
    I blinked at him, not understanding, and he quirked his little half-grin at me. “What I mean,” he said, “is that most people would assume, if they’d heard something someone else had said, that the other person had actually said that thing, not that they were tripping balls.”
    I swallowed hard. “It’s just, you know, I’ve been kind of...” Oh god, here it was. The big one. The confession. Why couldn’t I get it out? He had. He’d done it quite well and quite easily, without any prompting at all. Why was this so hard?
    Probably because, in my heart of hearts, I didn’t believe that anything wonderful like this could happen to me. Nothing like it ever had before. And it didn’t seem real. It really, really didn’t seem real. Any second now and I really would wake up.
    I couldn’t stand the weight of his eyes on me, so I clenched my hands in my lap and leaned forward until my brow rested on his shoulder. “I mean...”
    “Yes...?”
    Spit it out, you coward!
    “I mean, I’ve been in love with you since freshman year!”
    I’d never been good at being cute or pretty or attractive, and my declaration of school-girl infatuation was no different. The words rolled out of my mouth in a messy jumble, which was a pretty accurate representation of my feelings, so it didn’t seem to matter. They were inelegant, and sounded stupid and childish, but they were my feelings, and I definitely had them, so why not let them go? Get it out. Get over it. Move on.
    Beneath my forehead, his body went still. Then it started to shake. For a second I thought he was having a seizure, but then a wheeze escaped from his throat and I realized what was actually happening.
    He was laughing.
    I jerked back, ready to be angry, but then the sound of his laughter escaped him and it was exactly as I had remembered it.
    There it is , I thought. There’s that laugh that I loved to hear.
    The sight of his smile, of his hand over his mouth trying to stifle his mirth, was