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“We’re the same age, you know,” Hollis said, staring up at the blue sky.

I know.

Do you? Have you thought about it?

What do you mean?

Hollis closed their eyes and took a deep breath, smelled the salt and sweat on their skin, the sweet brown leaves and metallic winter, and tried to make Walt understand.

If you stay, we could grow up together, he said.

You can have your years slowly like everyone else. We can turn eighteen in a few weeks and learn what that’s like, turn nineteen the next year. We can move into our own house, be at work, come home, cook dinner, do the dishes, till the soil, and sleep in our own bed until we grow old. We can get married if you want, have children if you want. You can be a father; you can kiss our wife and know we earned her by ourselves and she loves you for you and me for me.

Or you can just have me. We’ll never be alone. We can be in our house and be strange and be loud and lasso a hurricane whenever we feel like.

We can lie in the hollow all weekend, and go to Rose Town without being scared. Swim in the pond. Eat from the trees. Find your door so we can admire it and know that we can open it whenever we want to.

Hollis—

We can leave if you want. Walk straight out of here and never come back. We can go to the city and learn a new trade, figure out how to be a man and be reliable. Be quiet in an apartment—I won’t let you make a sound. Muffle your wailing so the neighbors won’t hear. And we’ll get older, and time will pass, and I’ll never have the wrinkles I would have had on my own.

You’ll make your stupid expressions for decades, and they’ll dig into my face until it’s our face. Really ours.

And no one will know.

No one will know that I ever had green eyes when I was a stupid kid back in our stupid hometown, before we ever met.

Walt moaned, dug their fingers into the ground.

Walt, we can live, really live.

We’ll be a monster , Walt whispered, scared again.

Hollis was calm, waited for their heart to slow, waited for Walt’s anxiety to crest.

We’ll just be something new.

I’m not afraid of being new. You were something new once, and you can do it again, if you’re brave enough.

It was terrible, I can’t—

I know, but you’re not by yourself, we’re together.

If you just stop running, you can walk with me.

Hollis pulled their fingers, smarting and half-frozen, out of the ground and blew on them. Took care of them.

I’m scared.

It’s okay to be scared. Do you want this?

I can’t.

I didn’t ask if you could, I asked if you did .

Hollis, I—

Do you want to wake up with me on Saturdays? Have our own pantry? Maybe have chickens so we can have fresh eggs?

We can eat what we like every day, go where we want.

It’s too selfish.

It’s not. Not to me. And even so, I’m being selfish too.

Be selfish with me.

Be selfish?

Let’s be together and be selfish and loud. I’m asking you out, Walt. I want to make us honest.

Walt curled up tight, hiding his face again, too weak for ecstasy as he always was.

And you’ll tell me if you’re not happy? God, please tell me, if years down the line you decide you don’t want me.

I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you, and if you want, I’ll even take you back home. I’ll walk you all the way there, from the hollow to Rose Town and I’ll walk you to your door and I’ll kiss you the way we kiss before you go. Even if we hate each other by then, I’ll still do it.

I can’t be happy if we leave that place the way it is right now, Hollis. I can’t be that selfish, if it was my fault.

Then we’ll find a way to fix it. Tomorrow, we’ll talk to Annie and Yulia and we’ll make a plan and we’ll figure it out. I’m not in the habit of breaking promises.

All right... all right.

Together?

Yes.

Come on, let’s go home.