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He was always like that. The moment I saw him again after all those years, I understood it at once: he would remain unchanged the way Michelangelo’s David remains unchanged, or the Creation on the Sistine Chapel ceiling—eternal, untouched. People would come and go, admire him, leave, be replaced by others who admired him just as much, but he would always stand there the same way he had the first time I saw him: graceful, self-contained, utterly alone.
George Russell. That was his name. It had been more than ten years since I first heard it—how many exactly, I couldn’t say anymore. I only remembered that it had happened when I was at university.
Sometimes I feel sorry for Chicago, for having had to gather all of us in one city. It seems unfair, somehow. With the collective level of insanity we were operating at, New York—the unofficial fifth lead of Sex and the City—might have made more sense.
There’s a great deal about him I no longer remember. But I remember everything about the day I first met him.
I know when people tell stories like this, they usually say things like, I don’t remember what happened that day, only that I met him, as if that proves how important the person was.
But like I said, I remember everything.
The weather that day. The Star Wars poster on the wall of my room. The exact thought running through my head while I sat on the Number 2 bus: Who the hell signed me up for the padel club? Oh right. Me. Never mind.
It was all Lando’s fault.
My irritation needed somewhere to go, and poor Lando became my scapegoat. He was actually the son of a friend of my dad’s, and he’d helped me a lot during the college application process. When I first landed in Chicago, he was the one who picked me up from the airport. Between him and freshman orientation and all the chaos of moving, I somehow never got around to buying a car.
The night before, he’d taken me to a bar and smuggled me in with a fake ID. There were already people waiting for us in one of the booths—four of them, to be precise, with a battlefield of glasses spread out in front of them.
“You lot are unbelievable, you started without me!” Lando shouted. Then he pointed at me. “This is Oscar—the one I told you about. Oscar, this is everyone. In a few days, he’ll officially be one of us.”
I gave an awkward little wave.
The first to greet me was a dark-haired guy with unmistakably Asian features. “Alex,” he said. “Sit down. On your left is Max, on your right is Carlos, and this is Charles. We’ve heard quite a lot about you.”
Each person nodded when their name was called. The accents caught my attention immediately. Were they all British? Was this some sort of University of Chicago Commonwealth branch campus?
“Hopefully all good things,” I said politely.
Lando came back with his drink, plus a pitcher of Coke that was very obviously meant for me. “I just brought him over so you could all meet him. Don’t get any ideas about getting him drunk. He’s more or less my responsibility right now. Also, unrelated question—where’s little Georgie?”
“Fieldwork,” said the beautiful man named Charles, in an accent I wasn’t fully used to. French, maybe. “Something to do with his dissertation.”
“He told you that?” Max suddenly spoke up, though he’d barely said a word until then. He startled me badly enough that I nearly spilled my drink. Then he laughed, but there was something bitter in it. “Stupid question. Of course he told you.”
“Ay Dios mío,” Carlos muttered under his breath, sinking lower in his seat as though physically trying to shrink himself out of the blast radius.
I drank my Coke and found myself wondering about the three of them. What exactly was the configuration here? Who had cheated on whom? Who was whose side piece?
Alex finally stepped in before the whole thing could become more obvious. “For the love of God,” he said, “we are literally still welcoming the freshman. Don’t make Oscar witness your nonsense.”
And that, essentially, was my first impression of George Russell.
A man I had not yet met, and whom I already suspected might be someone’s affair.
On the way home, I asked Lando, “Who’s little Georgie?”
Lando waved a hand. “You’ll meet him sooner or later. No point spoiling the surprise. By the way—do you like tennis?”
I said it was fine. I liked it well enough.
“Perfect. Come play padel with us tomorrow. It’ll be fun. Once classes start you won’t have time for any of this.”
Chicago summer nights weren’t particularly hot. Down by the river, with the wind coming off the water, they could even feel cool. The evening breeze moved through my hair while a tipsy Lando talked loudly on the phone about whatever second nightclub he planned to hit that night.
To this day, I have no idea how he managed to drive away drunk and somehow not kill himself, the car, or any innocent pedestrians.
The courts they’d booked were somewhere near Navy Pier. By the time I found the place, people were already there. Someone was sitting on the floor with his back to the door, all I could see was his back and a head of tawny curls. Max was there too, smiling so brightly he outshone the disco ball from the night before. I don’t know what he said, but the two of them laughed—and then the person with his back to me leaned in and kissed him.
I happened to catch the exact moment.
Oh.
Oh.
So that was little Georgie.
I had the distinct feeling I wasn’t supposed to be seeing this.
Max noticed me and nodded in greeting. George turned around, and I stopped breathing.
He was an extraordinarily beautiful man. His eyes were blue in the way the sky is blue. His cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut skin. His lips were soft and full and red.
“Oh, good Lord,” he said, visibly embarrassed.
I blinked, then laughed before I could stop myself. Who in the twenty-first century still said good Lord like that?
“Georgie, this is Oscar—Lando’s… cousin, sort of? Close enough,” Max said. Then, with just a touch more emphasis than necessary, he added, “Oscar, this is George. My boyfriend.”
I assumed the extra weight on boyfriend was his way of reclaiming some dignity after whatever had happened the night before, but it still didn’t explain the tension I’d seen between him and Charles. What exactly was the relationship here?
I half-expected some kind of melodramatic showdown, but the only other person who showed up was Alex. He said the other three had decided to drive to Wisconsin for “authentic six-cheese pizza.” There was no formal division into teams. Alex simply started teaching me how to play. George and Max stood together, and my gaze drifted toward George’s legs.
“Try not to stare into space,” Alex said dryly, clearly noticing. He tapped the ground with his racket. “It’s your first serve. Focus.”
I pulled my eyes back immediately, guilty.
To be honest, Max was terrible at padel. He kept getting frustrated enough to kick at the ball, only to miss that too half the time. George, on the other hand, moved through the game like he’d been born for it. He clearly loved it—every time they scored, he’d grin and throw himself into Max’s arms. No wonder Max kept coming even if he was rubbish at it.
People would pass by the court pretending not to look, then slow down or stop outright. Most of them stared at George’s legs. Or his face.
The phrase all roads lead to Rome floated into my head, except it felt more like all eyes led to him. As though he were made to be looked at. Worshipped, even.
In the end, George and Max won.
Max lifted George clean off the ground, one arm around his waist, tipped his face up, and kissed him.
I twisted my towel into a knot.
Alex offered to drive me home. “Just us?” I asked.
“Oh, those two definitely aren’t coming,” he said, with an undertone of implication I chose not to examine too closely. “Come on, Oscar. We’ll get food first.”
He took me to a fried chicken place not far away. The heat exploded across my tongue, and I silently wiped away the tears that came from way too much chilli seasoning.
Then I asked, “So George and Max are actually together?”
“Mhm. High school sweethearts. We all know each other from the same international school in Singapore, except Carlos—we met him at university,” Alex said around a mouthful of fries. “But the two of them have been on and off for the last year or two. Hard to say what exactly they’re doing.”
“And… Charles?”
Alex took a sip of his drink before answering. “He’s… complicated. Not in our friend group, I mean. Complicated in their relationship. Like this third presence you can’t quite get rid of. You can see him, you know he’s there waiting for his chance, and there’s not really anything you can do about it.”
It was so abstract I almost laughed.
After that, I stopped asking questions and focused on eating. None of it had anything to do with me, I told myself.
That was easier.
⸻
By the time Independence Day rolled around, we finally had a day off. I hadn’t expected George of all people to text me.
Want to go rowing?
I thought about it for five full minutes, then went to ask Lando what he thought—only to discover he wasn’t home. Presumably he was with Carlos.
So I thought about it again.
Then I said yes.
Chicago on the Fourth of July looked as if someone had turned the saturation up by hand. The river was still green, though not nearly as green as Lando had shown me in photos from St. Patrick’s Day. Tour boats, kayaks, rented little rowboats drifted lazily through the water. Buildings reflected off the surface and broke apart into irregular, shifting shapes.
By the time I got to the dock, George was already there.
He was wearing an ordinary white T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, showing off the lines of his arms, and he was frowning down at a life jacket clasp like it was personally insulting him.
“Hi,” he said when he saw me, smiling.
“Hi,” I said back.
There was a brief pause between us—a beat in which we both seemed to realize at the same time that this was not a group outing. Neither of us said it out loud. I didn’t ask where the others were, and he didn’t volunteer an explanation.
The boat was one of those little ones that required two people working together. The staff member gave us a quick safety briefing, handed us the oars, smiled at George, and winked at me.
I pretended not to notice and climbed into the boat with all the grace of a startled deer.
George sat opposite me, shifted his weight, and the boat rocked lightly. I instinctively grabbed for the side, but he steadied us first.
“Don’t be nervous, Oscar,” he said. “The river won’t bite. It might drown you, though.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was joking about the river or something else.
We pushed off slowly from the dock.
At first, we were completely out of sync. I kept rowing half a beat too fast, splashing more water than necessary. George didn’t seem to mind. He adjusted his breathing, started quietly giving me a rhythm to follow, and gradually pulled me back into time with him.
After a while the boat started gliding cleanly over the water, oars dipping in and lifting out, our movements falling into a shared pattern as if we’d been doing it together for years.
The middle stretch of the river was calmer. We’d left the noise of the architecture boats behind us, and all that remained was the sound of water and the low hum of the city in the distance. George occasionally glanced at the shoreline, as though orienting himself, or maybe simply admiring it.
In the sunlight, his profile looked serene. His lashes cast shadows over his cheeks. His cheekbones seemed even sharper than usual. I realized suddenly that it was the closest I’d ever been to him.
“Do you like rowing?” I asked.
“It’s all right,” he said with a soft hum. “It’s peaceful. It lets me be alone with my thoughts. But I don’t really like that. Being with other people makes me happy. It makes me feel alive.”
I nodded.
So: he couldn’t stand being lonely.
Max. Charles. All those names that kept appearing and disappearing around him—they were like the bridges along the riverbank. We passed under them, but didn’t look up.
When we reached a wider stretch of water, the wind picked up. George paused and let the boat drift with the current for a while. He rested the oar across the side and tipped his head back to look at the sky. I stopped rowing too.
And that was when I realized that the silence between us wasn’t awkward at all. It felt oddly safe.
There was something intoxicating in the air, and I guessed it was the mixture of his deodorant and whatever cologne he wore.
“Oscar,” he said suddenly, “do you think I’m a lot of work?”
“What?” I said at once. “No.”
Thanks to Lando, I’d slipped easily into their circle. In the month I’d known George, my impression of him had changed over and over again. But high-maintenance? No. I’d never really thought that.
And yet I knew what he meant.
In that group, George was always the one people indulged. Which meant if someone else reached for the last double-chocolate doughnut at the same time he did—or took the last limited-edition vinyl off the shelf right before him—it stood out. It looked petty. It could be misread.
The truth was, I wasn’t sure why I did those things either.
But it wasn’t because I disliked him.
Absolutely not.
He smiled, as if he hadn’t meant the question seriously, and let it drop.
But it landed in me harder than I expected. Maybe I wanted to tell him that I didn’t think he was difficult at all. I had a habit of filing feelings away under none of my business—it was tidier that way, and left more room in my head for things that mattered. He, and the complicated architecture of his love life, had gone straight into that category.
But when I opened my mouth, what I said instead was, “It’s beautiful here.”
He followed my gaze.
The sunlight shattered across the river. The city’s reflection stretched, broke apart, and reassembled itself—much like my feelings about him.
We rowed on. Every now and then he leaned back too far, almost brushing into me, almost like we were in some backwards version of an embrace. I told myself it was just the weather, the river, the city’s strange distortions. Some altered form of the suspension bridge effect.
George belonged to his own world.
I had merely ended up in the same boat for one afternoon.
As we approached the dock again, George took up the oars and smiled over his shoulder at me.
“Not bad, partner.”
“You’re a good teacher,” I said.
When the boat finally touched land, I felt a sharp, irrational pang of disappointment—like something unnamed had ended before I’d had the chance to understand it.
I shoved the feeling down at once, stood, and jumped back onto the dock with brisk efficiency, as if moving fast enough could leave whatever had happened out there on the water behind.
The Chicago River kept flowing behind me, indifferent as ever, as though nothing had happened at all.
⸻
That night we all met up for dinner again, except this time only Charles showed up.
From the stiff displeasure in George’s expression, I gathered he and Max had fallen out again, which meant the person sitting pressed up against George tonight was Charles instead.
Charles was already absurdly handsome on his own. Looking at George with open adoration only made him more so. I found myself thinking that perhaps I understood why George couldn’t seem to let either of them go. Why settle for one lover when you could have two?
Charles had brought a bottle of red wine. He said Pierre had brought it back from France. They poured me some as well, but I couldn’t tell whether it was good or not. It just tasted sour.
They talked about things I couldn’t contribute to—European cities, some music festival I’d never been to, a stretch of French I couldn’t follow. George mocked Charles’s accent at one point and laughed, completely at ease. It wasn’t the same laugh he gave Max. It was softer. Sharper. Almost serpentine. Like the snake tempting Eve.
Charles reached over and tugged George’s slipping collar back into place with easy familiarity, as though that had always been his right. George didn’t pull away. He turned his head and murmured something low enough that I couldn’t hear it. His lips nearly brushed Charles’s ear.
In that instant, I felt my jaw tighten.
Why didn’t he stop him?
Something hot and ugly licked at my heart, made my stomach turn. He liked this, didn’t he? Being wanted. Being understood. Being needed. If one person wasn’t enough, he found two. If two weren’t enough, would he keep going? Or was he searching for one person who could somehow satisfy all of it?
Because if he liked it, then rejecting it would be unnecessary. Cruel, even. To everyone involved.
I picked up my wineglass and looked away under the cover of taking a sip.
Still sour. Still joyless.
The atmosphere at the table never turned cold despite there being so few of us. If anything, it was warm. Easy. There was some invisible membrane around the two of them, but they were both polite enough that I never felt excluded.
Still, I found myself suddenly missing Max.
At least he would have ruined the harmony.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Charles said eventually, his tone gentle, as though he genuinely cared.
“Maybe it’s the wine. I don’t like red,” I said.
“Then don’t drink it,” George said, smiling as he nudged Charles lightly. “It’s not even Pierre’s best bottle. Besides, we’ll probably need your help getting us back to the flat.”
In the end, I went to get the car myself. There was no way I was letting two half-drunk men drive.
When I pulled back up outside the restaurant, I saw them kissing against the wall by the entrance.
Not kissing, really. Devouring each other.
Charles had George pinned gently against the brick, kissing his mouth, then his throat when George laughed and turned away. George made a soft sound—something between a whine and a gasp. Charles’s hand slid slowly down over his waist. He tried again for George’s mouth, and this time George let him have it, cupping his face and kissing him back with real force.
People walking past stole embarrassed little glances and hurried on.
My stomach rolled harder.
I tapped the horn before they realized I’d arrived.
They both looked at me. Neither seemed remotely ashamed. Charles looped himself around George’s neck again, kissed him several more times, then got into a different car.
When George got into mine, I asked, “Why isn’t Charles coming with us?”
He buckled his seatbelt and said, as if it were nothing, “I told him I was going to see Max. We’d agreed.”
The sentence hung there, unresolved. In the air. In my head.
Was that love?
Or only the particular version of it that belonged to them?
The kind with no tomorrow. No future.
That night I slept on their sofa. Max wasn’t home. George went to bed holding the cat they kept together. I couldn’t sleep. Even their sofa smelled like George.
Just as dawn was beginning to grey the windows and I was finally close to drifting off, I heard the apartment door open.
Max came in carrying three breakfasts.
He didn’t look remotely surprised to find me there. He gave a curt nod in place of a greeting, then handed me one of the takeaway boxes and a small espresso.
“Didn’t know what you liked, so I got you the standard breakfast.”
Eggs. Bacon. Baked beans. Two sips of coffee later, my brain came fully online.
The breakfast was from one of the hottest breakfast spots in Chicago. I vaguely remembered George mentioning it before.
Oh.
Oh, I thought.
So that was how it worked.
The cat scratched at the bedroom door. A moment later George emerged, hair a mess, T-shirt clearly thrown on in haste and obviously too big for him. The Red Bull logo made it fairly easy to guess it belonged to Max.
He looked at the breakfasts on the table, then at me, then at Max.
“Morning, gentlemen.”
“Morning,” Max said. He held out the second breakfast, and though his expression remained composed, there was a trace of nerves in his voice. “Got your favourite.”
George smiled faintly. “How sweet.”
Max smiled too, and the mood in the room changed at once.
They sat together. I sat opposite them and watched.
Max started recounting some stupid story about crashing at a friend’s place the night before and beating Daniel at Mario Kart again. George listened, cutting in every so often. Max protested. George tapped the back of his hand lightly as though warning him not to get carried away.
At some point the cat jumped onto George’s lap, and he stroked it absently while listening. Max wrinkled his nose and complained about fur getting everywhere. George ignored him and pulled the cat in closer. Max rolled his eyes but still reached over to scratch under its chin.
Apparently he’d been the one who wanted the cat in the first place. I’d heard that story too.
The warm yellow light spilled across them both.
I looked away.
I finished the last of my coffee, picked up my bag, and only then did George ask, “You’re leaving, Oscar?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m the freshman here, after all. Duty calls.”
The moment the door shut behind me, I heard life resume on the other side of it—the clink of cups against the table, the soft thud of the cat jumping down, Max saying something too low to catch, George’s laugh cut off by the closing door.
After that, I couldn’t hear them anymore.
⸻
The four years of university passed like that.
I saw a great many things.
Just as Alex had said, George and Max were always breaking up and getting back together, while George and Charles remained like some impossible knot no one could ever fully untangle. Lando and Carlos, on the other hand, stayed sweet and steady the whole time. I always assumed they’d stay in Chicago together forever. It moved me, somehow, to see a relationship that healthy up close.
There were also things I shouldn’t have seen.
I once saw George corner Max when he thought no one was around, tugging him in by the shirt to steal a kiss. Another time I accidentally passed George’s office—well, “passed” is generous—and saw his long legs wrapped around Charles’s waist like a python slowly suffocating its prey.
But the one who couldn’t breathe was me.
The Thanksgiving before our last year ended, Max called us all together.
George wasn’t there.
On Max’s wrist was the new watch George had just given him—a TAG Heuer, the dial a ridiculous bright pink that was clearly George’s idea of a joke. When we’d all finally lost patience, Carlos spoke first.
“Max,” he said, “why exactly have you summoned us here? Do you realize this is my first year as an actual lawyer?”
Max finished the last of his beer, as though fortifying himself.
“I’m going to give George a ring.”
It was a strange way to say I’m going to propose.
The whole table erupted.
Lando practically bounced in his seat. Alex muttered a quiet finally, like he’d been expecting this for years. Carlos let out a dramatic yell and immediately declared that we should all draft a prenup for him, only to be shouted down by the rest of the table for being unromantic.
What surprised me was Charles.
He was completely calm.
He set down his wineglass, patted Max on the shoulder, and said, “Congratulations.”
I remember thinking that George had given Max a watch, and Max intended to answer with a ring. Was that a declaration of love, or some elaborate act of revenge? I smacked my lips against the taste of the wine and decided I still hated red.
They’d been together eight years by then, on and off or otherwise. Maybe it was time.
Max kept talking. “I’ve already spoken to George’s parents. They gave me their blessing. I’ve told my mum and my sister too. They both wished me luck, and I probably do need some.”
I said, “You two look right together. Good luck, Max.”
He smiled then—an idiot’s smile, all softness and light. He rubbed the watch on his wrist with the fingers of his other hand, his expression gentling even further. He looked like a man who believed he was finally stepping into the future he wanted.
But that was the problem.
It was his future.
Not George’s.
⸻
The second day of the holiday, we all arrived at the restaurant Max had booked.
He had rented out the whole place.
It was small and elegant, right by the river, with soft classical music playing in the background. George arrived a few minutes late, apologetic and slightly flustered as he came in—but the moment he realized the entire restaurant was empty except for us, his whole expression changed. He went tight with nerves, as though he suddenly didn’t know which version of himself he was meant to put on.
It was another grand gesture from Max.
And maybe our faces gave too much away, because everyone looked so tense, so careful not to meet George’s eyes, that the real purpose of the dinner practically hovered over the table in plain sight.
“Why does everyone look like they’re about to be executed?” George asked as he handed his coat and scarf to the waiter. “Did I miss something?”
“Nothing at all,” Max said, taking his hand and kissing the back of it.
Dinner itself went surprisingly well. Warm. Easy. For a while the tension even seemed to ease.
Then dessert arrived.
The table was cleared, and the tightness came rushing back all at once.
Alex and Lando looked at Max with open anticipation. Charles looked knowingly at George, wearing a smile I couldn’t quite parse. Carlos seemed deeply unwell; he was already on his fourth glass of white wine.
The blue velvet box sat quietly on the table.
No kneeling. No spectacle.
Max simply slid it across to George as if it were the most ordinary gift in the world.
We all stopped breathing.
I saw George swallow.
“Max…” he said, but the rest of the sentence never came.
“I’ve thought about this for a long time,” Max said. His voice, naturally rough to begin with, had gone even lower, scraped raw with nerves. “I don’t want to wait for a better moment, or a better version of us. We’ve spent too much time waiting already. We’ve missed too many chances.”
He nudged the box forward.
“We were barely eighteen when we got together. And I’ve loved you ever since.”
George finally looked up.
His eyes were beautiful blue, ringed with gold at the center like a nebula. But tonight that nebula was clouded over with tears.
He didn’t look surprised, exactly.
He looked stricken.
Like someone had just handed him a draft notice before he’d even had the chance to decide whether he wanted to go to war.
“You only have to answer one question,” Max said.
Then, very softly:
“Will you make me the happiest man on earth, and let me go on loving you the way I did when we were eighteen?”
He opened the box.
Inside was a ring. No enormous diamond. No unnecessary flourish. Clean lines. Beautiful. The kind of ring that was meant to be worn for the rest of a life.
George laughed once, breathlessly, tears gathering in his eyes.
“You know,” he said, “when you’re like this, it’s very hard to say no.”
Max’s face lit up.
“But that’s exactly the problem,” George continued. “I can’t say yes just because you look sincere right now.”
The air froze around us.
“It’s not that I don’t love you. I do love you, Max. I really do.” George spoke slowly, as though he were trying to defend himself even now. “But I don’t know how to be the George you want in that future. I don’t know if I’ll regret it. I don’t even know if you’ll regret it.”
Max’s fingers curled inward until his knuckles whitened.
“So what are you saying?” he asked.
“I’m saying I can’t trade you a promise for temporary peace of mind,” George said quietly. “That would be cruel. Especially to you.”
Then at last he said the thing that mattered most.
“This isn’t what I want.”
He looked at the rest of us, wiped at his eyes, and said, “I’m sorry. I—I have to go. I’m sorry. I just…”
Then he left.
By then Thanksgiving had already brought heavy snow to Chicago. When he opened the door, freezing air rushed in and made all of us shiver. The wind chime above the entrance rang once, then fell still again.
The ring box remained open on the table. The blue velvet looked indecently soft in the warm golden light.
Max stared at it for several seconds, then closed the lid.
“All right,” he said at last, pressing his lips together in something that resembled a smile if you were feeling charitable. “At least let’s not waste the champagne, yeah? It’s Thanksgiving. Maybe we can go around the table and say what we’re grateful for this year.”
And so a table full of people who did not actually celebrate Thanksgiving went around saying what they were thankful for.
At the end of it, Max looked at all of us and said, “Sorry. I wasted your evening.”
No one thought it had been a waste.
But none of us knew how to answer.
Alex sighed softly. Lando rubbed at his face. Charles said nothing at all. His eyes rested on the door for a moment before dropping back to the table, as though he were obeying some private code of neutrality. He was probably the only one besides Max who had known how this would end.
I was the last to leave the restaurant.
Standing out on the pavement, I had the distinct feeling that if I stayed still for more than five minutes I’d simply freeze into a human-shaped snowdrift. The river was half lost beneath the falling snow. Streetlamps broke into splintered reflections over the dark water.
I hesitated at the door and looked back.
Max was still at the bar, speaking calmly to the manager.
“Come on, Oscar, we’re going,” Lando called from the car.
On the drive back to the flat, I said, “I’m going back to Australia. America doesn’t suit me.”
“Oh,” Lando said, lifting one brow. Then he settled again. “All right. Before you go, is there anything you want to ask?”
I didn’t answer immediately.
“I can tell there is,” he said. “Probably has been for four years. So if you’re going, maybe you should ask it before you do.”
Outside the window, Chicago flickered past in strips of light, like the night sky played backwards. There was no music in the car. Every now and then we could hear the train passing somewhere overhead, louder than my own heartbeat.
Then, without waiting for me, Lando said, “Max knew how tonight was going to end.”
I turned to look at him.
“He knew George was going to say no. But he asked anyway. Because if he hadn’t, he would’ve spent the rest of his life wondering whether saying it might have changed something. Some things matter more for being done than for succeeding.”
“And the rest of you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Alex and I weren’t surprised. I think Charles wasn’t either. So the only people genuinely hoping for a different outcome were you and Carlos.”
Then he went quiet for a second before continuing.
“The sad truth is, Charles has never expected a future. He only wants George in the present. That’s probably why the two of them work the way they do. But Max wants everything—past, future, present. He wants to exist in George’s life like one of the Fates.”
He looked out at the road.
“I don’t blame him. George has that effect. He’s like the sea. And we’re all just raindrops. He takes us in, and eventually we lose our shape inside him.”
Then he looked at me.
“You too, Oscar.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to say I didn’t like George. Didn’t love him. That I wasn’t the one with a broken heart.
But I couldn’t get a single word out.
After a while, I asked, “Was it obvious?”
“Not exactly subtle,” Lando said. He reached over and ruffled my hair in the hopelessly older-brother way he always used when he didn’t quite know what else to do. “To be fair, I used to like him too. Hell, even Carlos flirted with him once. They were both student government presidents. Anyway. Ancient history.”
He let out a breath.
“But for people like us, friendship is possible. For Max and Charles, though?” He shook his head. “That’s the one thing they can never be.”
It felt like he wanted to say more.
Then the light turned green.
It was the last green light before we got back to the apartment, and somehow that made it feel like the natural end of the conversation.
In the lift, Lando got a call.
“Hey—oh. You’re with him? Right. I just got back. Fine, send me the address. I’m coming.”
He immediately pressed the nearest floor button.
“Go upstairs and get some sleep, Oscar. Lock the door. And don’t open it for strangers.”
⸻
The last two summer terms went by fast.
By the time it felt real, I was standing in the shabby old bones of O’Hare airport saying goodbye to all of them with hugs that felt suspiciously like farewells for life.
When George hugged me, all I felt was heartbreak.
He looked close to tears. He never knew how to hold them back.
“Don’t be a stranger, all right?”
I nodded.
It was a lie, and we both knew it.
Who could have guessed we wouldn’t see each other again until ten years later?
It was an alumni reunion.
There had been an invitation in between—for Lando and Carlos’s wedding. I didn’t go. I sent a gift, my congratulations, and a handwritten card. I thought that ought to be enough, even if Lando later FaceTimed me to tell me how everyone had missed me and how sorry they were I hadn’t been there. I’ve also heard that Max had been married and had a beautiful baby and Charles also got engaged with a French man.
I made my excuses and let it go.
The night of the reunion, I skipped the after-party bar.
Instead, after dinner, I went to a coffee shop we used to haunt in university and sat in our old corner booth. I think I wanted to mourn something—my past, maybe. The laughter we’d shared. The meaningless touches under tables that had somehow meant everything anyway.
I closed my eyes and put my head down on the table, trying to rest like some drifter hoping to sleep indoors for the night.
Then George’s voice sounded near me.
…Except it wasn’t in my head.
I sat bolt upright.
He was standing at the counter.
Still tall, still elegant, curls exactly as I remembered them. At that moment, no beauty in the world seemed to compare to him. Everything I had ever felt about love—from believing in it, to hating it, to finally understanding that it almost didn’t matter whom I loved—came rushing back at once, just because he was standing there.
He was wearing a sharp suit.
The girl behind the counter smiled at him. “Hey, George. Nice suit. Special occasion?”
“They invited me back to give a talk,” he said, sounding lightly amused and a little pleased with himself. “Figured I ought to look decent, considering they’re giving me an honorary doctorate.”
Still the same.
Graceful. Self-contained. Alone.
No Max. No Charles.
There was, however, a wide-eyed boy standing behind him with a backpack on, looking at George like a little owl.
I knew that look.
I used to look at him that way too.
I stood up to leave, but too quickly—my knee caught the table and made a loud, awful noise. I muttered apologies to everyone nearby, reached for the door handle—
And then George Russell said my name.
“Oscar.”
And just like that, I was twenty years old again.
Hands up.
Already surrounded.