Diamond Ring (Unwritten Rules #3)

by K.D. Casey

He’s handsome for a straight guy and about as threatening as a glass of skim milk.

Alex revises his assessment of Fischer—Jake—to the kid who probably did everyone else’s work on the group project. Infinitely worse than just disliking him.

Jake wanted to be fifty thousand miles from the nearest person and also right next to him.

He’s awake enough to take his meds; he flips the plastic lid on the pill-of-the-day dispenser and dumps them into his hand. An antidepressant. A multivitamin.

move back to Rhode Island, and live out his life dream of being left alone.

“You get five,” he promises himself. Five cycles of this and no more. Down from ten a year ago, twenty a year before that. Slow, sure progress, even if it feels like he’s labored up a hill and is in constant danger of backsliding.

“I don’t think we’re good at being nothing to each other, do you?”

“This stuff is so annoying,” Jake says. “I don’t mind.” “No, it annoys me. Like, that’s what the meds help with. They take it from it being all I can think about to this background hum. But it’s time I could be using to do literally anything else.” Something that hadn’t occurred to Alex: how long each day Jake spent on this stuff, like inescapable chores.

“This is how it’s gonna be for the rest of my life. That’s the hardest part—that it might not get fixed.”

“Okay.” Jake’s lips curve slightly. “Okay?” Alex tries to think of what to say, though it’s hard to articulate. That Jake is how he is. That Alex has loved him for so long that he’s forgotten what not loving him is like. “If this is how things are, I don’t want you to be unhappy. But if it happens, we’ll deal.”

Alex loves me, and I love him. There it is, in plain letters, ones he can’t—won’t—erase, the simple fact of his adult life condensed to two phrases.

“What I’m trying to say is anyone would be lucky to have you. I am.”