He enjoyed this, getting to learn about Daniel bit by bit with each conversation. Rather than reading him like an open book, he was granted the opportunity to fill in the blanks. It was as though taking a pen to a blank journal for the first time when he had met Daniel, and he’d been gathering all of the new information to add every time he was around the boy, taking down the words, the sentences, piecing them together into sections, stringing them together into chapters of the book that was Daniel, the book that was blank only for him.

Daniel played the drums, was one thing Liam had learned. He’d been playing since he could sign up for band in the fourth grade, though he claimed he had been banging away on anything and everything since he was old enough to hold something in his hands. Drums were something he lived for, in a way, though he had blushed when he admitted that aloud. He played percussion for the school’s concert band and symphony orchestra, he played the quads in the school’s drum line with the marching band, he played in the district’s percussion ensemble, and he played for himself, at home, tucked away in a corner of the garage that held enough junk that no one else could really hear him. It was a dream he had when he was younger to be part of a band, but it was a childhood dream, he claimed. “Life happens, things change, dreams adjust,” he had said with a shrug, letting the subject slide from their conversation. Liam let it.

He was a senior, eighteen, and his favorite subject in school was history, though he really liked math, too. And as much as he was itching to get away from the suburban life, to get out and spread his wings like every other kid his age, he confessed that he loved his family and knew he was needed more at home than at some university that would send his future into immediate debt. Liam liked that.

Liam liked a lot about Daniel, actually.

He liked his crazy dreadlocks. He liked his old, worn out Kansas t-shirt. He liked the blush that clung to his cheeks whenever he admitted something, all bashful and hesitant. He liked how effortlessly he let a smile slide across to claim his lips. He liked the way everything was easy with him. Simple. Comfortable. Like he was talking with a childhood friend, joking around, making snide comments and remarks that only a close friend would understand. But Daniel laughed along with him, genuinely, as though he understood completely.