Page 70 of Best Friends, Tennessee

“Maybe I wanted you to like me for who I was, notfixwho I was.”

“Ori,” Finn said, his voice catching as he shook his head. “I’ve alwayslovedwho you are.”

The wall inside me crumbled to dust. I didn’t know whether I wanted to scream or cry or flee the goddamn state again, but I sure as hell didn’t know how to react to Finn saying that.

“Why were you always telling people in school that I didn’t mean it, when I told them to fuck off?” I asked. “That I wasn’t really different from them? That I was just another Tennessee boy, like anyone else?”

“Because they needed to fucking treat you better.”

“I know. I know,” I said. “But I didn’t need to be swept under a rug. I didn’t want to change. I needed toletmyself be different.”

“Fuck.”

“And that’s why I ran away, Finn. You know it.”

He was shaking his head as he walked across the lawn, looking up at the night sky.

“I never gave a fuck about any of those people in school like I did about you,” he said in a low voice. “Not one of them.”

“I know you were friendly with everyone. I’m not upset about that—”

“Friendly, sure,” he said. “But I mean it when I say Ilovedyou, Ori.”

God fucking damn it.

Every part of my body was pulled to him like a magnet. I started moving before my brain could catch up. I felt further away from him now than I ever had in LA, even though I was just ten paces away. Tears welled up in my eyes as I crossed the lawn, and I threw my arms around him from behind, practically tackling him as I squeezed around him in a hug.

“Shut up.”

“You know it’s true.”

But in reality Ididn’tknow it was true.

I’d felt like a burden to him, growing up. Like if I just fit in and acted like the other guys, he wouldn’t have to deal with me.

Deal with explaining me to his friends. Deal with how different I was. Or the fact that I was gay and other people made jokes about us like it was their full-time job.

I was a nuisance he had to manage.

“Motherfucker,” I muttered, hearing my own drawl come out when I least wanted it.

He spun around in my arms, hugging me, his hands gripping against the back of my head.

“Could say the same thing to you,” he mumbled against me.

We were clutched together.

He gripped his arms around me, hugging me so tight as ifthiswas the first time we’d been reunited in years.

Like all the awkward moments in high school never happened. Like the Christmases where I visited hadn’t existed. Like I hadn’t been back here for weeks now.

This felt like the real reunion.

Like I had my friend again.

12

FINN

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