Ollie’s voice hits different when he’s not pretending. We’ve been running Brother Chambers’ stupid masculinity obstacle course for forty minutes, because apparently real men love tire flips in 102-degree heat, and managed to lap everyone else. We’ve got maybe five minutes before someone realizes we’ve ditched.
He’s gripping the chain-link fence like he’s already gone, knuckles white. I want to tell him to be careful because Chambers has eyes everywhere, but also I don’t want him to let go.
The desert spreads out forever in front of us. It’s beautiful in that brutal way that makes you feel small. All that red rock and gold sand going on and on until it hits the mountains on the horizon. Free in every way we’re not.
“I mean like…” He stops. Tries again. His usual masks are gone. No jokes, no smirks, no careful whatever-dude energy. Just Ollie, raw and real and breaking my heart. “Without all this shit. Where I don’t have to think about every single thing I do or say or… God, even how I’m standing right now.”
My stomach twists because I know exactly what he means. Every gesture rehearsed mentally, every look careful and timed, every word filtered twice. It’s like being an actor who never gets to leave the stage.
“What would that look like?” My voice comes out rougher than I meant it to.
----
Ollie shifts closer. Our shoulders touch through the thin fabric of our regulation shirts and it’s like getting struck by lightning every single time. Heat spreads from that point of contact down to my arm, making my fingers tingle. Sweat glistens at his temple, and I have to fight the urge to brush it away.
“Sometimes I think about, you know? Like…” He’s staring at nothing but his voice gets this soft quality that kills me. “What if I could wake up somewhere and just be myself. All day. Without checking if anyone’s watching. Without deleting my text history. Without practicing how to walk.”
My chest is so tight I might die. I want to hug him. I want to tell him we’ll find that place even though I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist.
“And maybe…” He looks at me quick, then back to the infinite desert beyond the fence. “Maybe hold someone’s hand. At the movies or whatever. And when people see us they just think ‘oh, they look happy’ instead of calling our parents or taking pictures or telling us we’re going to hell.”
The word ‘us’ hangs there between us like a confession.
My heart is going wild. I can hear it in my ears, drowning out everything else. “That’d be…”
“We could have our own place.” He’s on a roll now, painting this impossible picture. “Probably some shitty condo with a leaky faucet and neighbors who play music too loud at 3 a.m.. We’d paint the walls whatever color we want. Cook terrible dinners and end up ordering pad thai instead. Hang a pride flag in the window. Adopt a dog and argue about names.”
The ’we’ keeps coming back and each one hits like a promise. Like maybe I exist in his someday-dreams too.
“Maybe two dogs so we can each name one,” I say. If we’re dreaming, we might as well dream big.
He almost smiles. Almost.
I can see it so clearly it hurts. Sunday mornings. Shared playlists. Inside jokes. Photos that actually get posted. A life that’s ours.
He shifts even closer. “Stupid, right?”
“That’s not stupid.” The words barely make it out. “That’s…”
“Dangerous to even imagine,” he finishes. He turns to face me fully and God, this close I can see the gold flecks in his amber eyes, can smell his coconut oil mixed with sweat and something that’s just distinctly Ollie. My head spins. “But I can’t stop imagining it.”
Behind us, Brother Chambers’ voice booms across the yard, roll-calling the lost sheep. Getting closer. We should move. We should put ten feet between us and act like we were just catching our breath.
Neither of us moves.
“Do you think a place like that exists?” Ollie asks. His voice is so quiet, so vulnerable I’ve never heard him sound like this. “Do you?”
My throat closes completely. Because he’s not really asking about geography. He’s asking if there’s any universe where this thing between us—this impossible, dangerous, perfect, beautiful thing—gets to be more than stolen looks and what-ifs.
I think about every space that’s refused to hold us. Every room where we’ve had to be less than ourselves. Every lie we’ve told to stay safe.
Then I look at him. Beautiful, brave Ollie who still believes in happy endings even after everything. And for the first time since my parents dropped me at Canaan Peak’s gates, I let myself hope.
I reach for his hand. Slowly. Deliberately. Giving him time to pull away.
He doesn’t.
Our fingers slot together like they were designed for this exact purpose. His palm is warm and calloused and perfect against mine.
“Yeah,” I breathe. The word shakes with everything I can’t say yet. Everything I want to promise him. “Yeah, I do.”
For three seconds, we exist. Just two boys holding hands in the desert, believing in someday.
Then Chambers’ whistle cuts through the dream and we break apart like we’ve been burned.
But Ollie’s looking at me like I just gave him the world, and maybe I did.
Maybe we gave it to each other.