I nearly forgot it was Cupid Days.

Unfortunately for me, it still is. I realize it the second I walk into the classroom and see that Sirina and Squawky Sadie aren't there. Edward, is, though—and so is Josiah.

Luckily, Carter Schulte isn't present yet, so I'm able to avoid sitting next to Edward, instead snagging the seat directly in front of him. I slide in next to Josiah, peering at his homework.

"AP Chem?" I ask, hoping I sound casual. I don't know why I'm so hung up on this—it's not like I think Josiah could possibly be Secret Guy. It doesn't matter that everything Secret Guy said would line up. Could seemingly only line up with it being Josiah.

"Uh, no," he says softly, "something else."

I squint. "Anything fun?"

He looks back up at me and smiles faintly. I try not to flinch back when I realize how close our faces are, but ... damn. "If you think dual credit calc is fun, then, yeah. Super fun."

"Oh, ew."

"I know, right? The one time I remember to do my chem homework, I forget to do my calc."

"You're just a guy. Just a scatterbrained lil' guy."

He chuckles quietly to himself, shakes his head, and goes right back to writing.

I don't want to distract him while he works, so I pull out my phone—I've got two minutes till the bell rings—and glance back at my texts from this morning.

     Secret Guy: Morning ;)

     Me: are you going to tell me what weird little surprise you have in store for me this morning or do you hate me

     Secret Guy: I don't hate you :((

     Secret Guy: But no, I'm not telling you anything

     Secret Guy: You'll just have to wait and see

     Me: you're getting off on a bad first foot here, my guy

     Secret Guy: C'mon, you love it

     Me: no, no i don't :/

     Secret Guy: YOU USED A LITTLE PUNCTUATION EMOTE THING

     Secret Guy: Oh, I'm growing on you

     Secret Guy: I'm growing on you HARD

     Me: please don't ever say "HARD" like that again

     Secret Guy: Idk if I can, might be too HARD

     Me: this is why you have to hide your identity when you flirt with boys from school.

I sent that last text right before I left home to drop Ben off at school. I glance back over at Josiah, still crouched over his calc homework, and can't help but wonder if I'm completely wrong. Could he be Secret Guy? I don't picture him texting like this. He doesn't seem the type. The caps? The "little punctuation emote" things? They don't scream Josiah.

But again, I could be totally wrong. What if I am? There's this niggling little thought in the back of my brain, screaming over and over on repeat: IT'S HIM IT'S HIM IT'S HIM.

Just ... no way.

I take out the book I'm currently rereading for a book report—Camp by LC Rosen, because if I'm going to get noticed by my peers for being gay, I might as well read gay books I enjoy in public (if Sadie can read Colleen Hoover, I should be allowed this much)—and lean over my desk, holding it out in front of me and opening back up to where I left off during reading time in AP Lit yesterday. I'm only, like, fifty pages in, but I'm already remembering just why I love this book so much.

I glance at Josiah. Is he kind of a Hudson Aaronson-Lim, I wonder? I've seen it in other books before—Bedazzled by Ryan La Sala; Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli; The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg—where you have this amazing romantic interest who's either super closeted, super straight-passing, or both. I don't want to try to assign Josiah some head-cannon sexuality, but ... what if this is one of those situations?

Is he actually interested in me? Actually interested in coming out?

My gaze flicks back over to Josiah's calc homework. He's leaning out towards the aisle between desks so that he doesn't elbow me when he writes. I forgot he's left-handed, somehow.

What else might I not be noticing about him, I wonder?

He bites his bottom lip slightly in concentration, staring at the sheet of paper in front of him, tapping his pencil lightly against the laminate wood of the desk. He's supporting his leaning with his right hand, propping it up with his elbow on the edge of the desk. He's not paying me any mind at all, and I gladly take the opportunity to simply stare at him.

He's so pretty.

I'm so focused on staring intently at him that when his gaze flicks up to meet my own, I jump.

He squints at me for just a moment, as if confused, but then the wrinkles in his forehead relax, and he pushes his paper toward me.

"I need help with antiderivatives," he whispers, leaning in conspiratorially towards me, his paper coming to a stop on the border between our desks. "You're smart, right?"

My heart thumps in my chest. "Uh, sometimes?" I whisper back.

"I'll take that as a yes," he says, so soft that it feels like a single, gentle breath. "Aren't you taking AP Calc anyways?"

We're so close. "I mean, yeah, but just because I'm taking it doesn't mean I'm passing it." What is it with him and trying to be so close to me all of a sudden? We've hung out, yeah, but never closely, and certainly never one-on-one. Any conversations we've had are as simplistic as they are fleeting. We've never shared this sort of proximity before.

What made him decide to change that?

"I don't believe you," Josiah says. "You're at least, like, the fourth smartest person I know."

"Only the fourth?" I smile at him, now choosing to lean in myself. "Who are the other three?"

"Oh, okay, you want rankings?" His smile is lopsided, his lips a not-terrible kind of thin, the slight dimple in his right cheek terrifyingly provocative. The things I want to do to him and that dimple, I realize. "Are you sure about that?"

"Josiah, I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life."

"Well," he says, leaning back and stretching his arms out. His left pinky brushes my upper arm; I tell myself it's accidental. "If you insist."

"I do. Let's hear it. Give it to me." Give it to me. Oh my god. Give it to me? I just said "give it to me" to Josiah. Josiah, who, as I really need to get through my fucking head, is not Secret Guy.

He leans back in, slightly further this time. "Well, first is Charlie."

"Well, obviously."

"Second is Christa."

"Okay, I guess Christa is pretty smart. That's fair." She's a year below us, but she takes all the same APs as our friend group, because she's pretty much a year ahead. She's stupid, but she's smart.

"And then, Nathan Nsenga ranks ever so slightly above you."

"Whaaaat? Why?"

Josiah shrugs. "You guys got the same ACT score, but he made it look so much more effortless."

I find myself rolling my eyes at him. "That's such a bullshit reason. Don't you remember I beat him at the spelling bee every year of middle school?"

"I recall no such thing. Also, he's going to Columbia."

"So, if I were going to Columbia, would you rank us the same?" I shift in closer.

He leans in closer as well. I have to fight the urge to glance around the classroom to see if anyone is witnessing this, because, holy shit.

I'm nearly nose to nose with Josiah.

"Hmmm ... maybe you'd tie," he murmurs, so quiet that his voice regains that same gravelly sound from yesterday. Which, just, holy shit, why is that so hot?

"Although," he continues, still as painfully quiet, "seeing as you won the spelling bee, maybe I'd rank you a smidge higher."

"Yeah, you'd better." I shift my hair away from my eyes and give him a look that I really, really hope conveys to Josiah what exactly I'm thinking about him right now. "Although, to be fair, I only got second place. Charlie won the whole thing."

"He's either going to cure cancer, or create the next atom bomb."

I'm about to quip back with something when the classroom door flies open, and in struts David and Asif once more. Josiah and I jolt apart without second thought.

Asif's outfit is pretty much the same as yesterday's, but David has exchanged yesterday's sparkling fit for a dark red dress. It's a spaghetti strap and has one of those little heart-shaped necklines that's showing off a truly disturbing amount of firm pectorals. It goes down to just past his knees, the showcasing of his sheer black tights aided by slit that runs all the way up to the top of his thigh.

There's something off about him though—dress aside—that takes me a moment to notice. When I do, I can hardly believe it.

David Marquez is wearing stilettos.

It takes the rest of the homeroom a moment to notice it too, but once they do, the whole room erupts in a fit of laughter. Ms. Enze looks like she's trying not to join in the laughing. She pulls her box braids back into a loose ponytail as she says, "Asif. David. Let's hand out those grams a bit quicker today, please."

"Anything for you, Ms. Enze," David says. "Do you like my dress?" He spins in a tight circle, inducing another fit of class-wide laughter.

Ms. Enze's smile remains wry. "It's not too bad."

"Oh, oh, wait, look—it has pockets." He stops spinning and shoves his hands in these apparent pockets, grinning up at Ms. Enze's desk.

"Well then," Ms. Enze says, already focused back on her laptop, "it's the best dang dress I've ever seen."

Asif is already chatting with Maggie, who is reading her second candy gram and smiling. He places a few other envelopes on the table while he chats with her, and I notice a couple of her friends picking them up and looking at the names, before leaning in to whisper to each other. They're barely able to contain their laughter—especially when one of them turns her head to look specifically at me. My blood runs a little cold.

Is there another candy gram over there for me?

There's a tap on my shoulder, and I flinch so hard that I bump Josiah's shoulder with mine. When I look up, there he is. David.

"Heyyy," he says, "how's everything going?"

"It's ... y'know." I swallow. "Going." I sit up straighter and try to make actual eye contact with him. My eyes are somehow drawn to his sparkly pink lipgloss.

"Any new developments?" he asks, leaning in. "Did you text him back?"

"Yes, I did." I've gone from leaning in and whispering with Josiah to leaning in towards David. At least our faces aren't inches apart. "He says he's got something else for me."

David squints in confusion. "Okay, well, I didn't see any grams for you? But maybe Asif has one?"

We both glance over to where Asif sits on the desk next to Maggie, adjusting his pink crop top. Behind him lies the stack of candy grams—which Maggie's friends quickly toss back onto the table the second they sense us looking. They stare back at us, almost like they know that they've been caught red-handed. Which is hilarious, considering that it's really not that serious.

David waves at them. "Hey! Is there an envelope there for Nick?"

One of them snorts. The other gives a tight smile and coos, "Heeere, catch!" and throws a blue envelope over.

Her aim is absolute shit, and it flies toward Josiah. He barely even glances up from his calc homework—he just catches it one-handed, between his thumb and index finger. He holds it out to me, and, as he gives me a soft smile and I take the gram from him, our fingers brush once more. Electricity shoots up my spine. I try to act some kind of normal.

There it is again. My name. NICK BUCKINGHAM, ROOM 504. Today, the candy of choice is an Almond Joy. I trace the blue wrapper with a tentative finger. Is this it? His little surprise? That's not ... so bad, is it? So long as this is the only surprise he has in store for me today, then I suppose I can handle it.

Even if a few of my classmates are side-eyeing me and chuckling slightly under their breath.

No big deal.

"Go on, open it," David says. "I'm so fucking invested, oh my god."

I find myself turning away from him, searching for Josiah's gaze. "What do you think?"

He shrugs politely. "Can't hurt, can it?"

Probably can't hurt. Hopefully.

I open the envelope.

A/N - hi guys okay bye guys <3