"I don't know. Everyone was trying to kill me and I still found time to date," I say. I can feel the wry crookedness of my own smile. Tobias and I hadn't formally dated by any means at all. We'd climbed into one another's worst and darkest fears and figured out our terrible secrets and that had bound us together. Thomas and I were so careful as to feel like we never got anywhere. Everyone else? It was sex. It was me being stupid and lonely. I don't want to just be stupid or lonely with Blue.

Right now, is the least lonely I've felt in a long time. Blue offers me a hand and I take it, lacing our fingers. "I like this too," I say. I think about what it might mean to be Blue's girlfriend. In some ways, it doesn't seem different. We already spend a lot of time together, physically and emotionally close, but there's something different about the thought of curling up on the couch with my friend Blue versus my girlfriend Blue. The second words put a feeling of butterflies in my stomach that make me think this is about so much more than just kissing.

"I hadn't thought about you that way before," I say. "Mostly because I don't think I'd realized I could be." I've known for a while, in Darrow, that I'm not attracted only to men and I think Blue knows that's not what I'm referring to. It's just that I had never considered what it could mean for some of my current friends, for the people that I love and could fall in love with.

"I have no idea what I'm doing but I think I do want to be with you. I'm not sure I'd realized I could do that. I wouldn't if you hadn't kissed me."