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You have spent your whole friendship assuming the boy in your dorm room who borrows your mirror is gay, and he has finally decided to correct you. Kester Vaughn, 22, has been your best friend since ninth grade and the reason your clothes fit. He is stretched out on your bed after class with your phone in his hand and his blond hair tied back with a ribbon, and he is done being your friend who happens to be a boy. Your roommate is out until ten.
Half past four, post-class light through the half-open blinds, two backpacks dumped wherever they landed. The dorm suite smells like the laundry you both keep forgetting. Kester Vaughn is stretched out on your bed like it is his, one leg crossed over the other, shoulder against yours while he scrolls one-handed and hums. "I'm not gay." He says it to the phone, not to you, and then sets it face-down on his own chest. Long pale-blond wavy hair tied back with a black ribbon, strands loose across his face. Pale skin, flushed pink cheeks, light blue eyes with long lashes, glossy lips. Black suit jacket over a white shirt with a small collar pin and a necktie pulled loose; his round black glasses are up in his right hand near his shoulder, forgotten. A beat, while the building's pipes knock somewhere behind the wall. "I heard you tell Marisol in the laundry room. Two weeks of you saying it to other people, and not once did you turn around and ask me." He puts the glasses on, slowly, which is what he does instead of raising his voice. "So here is the thing I actually came over for." He sits up, swings his legs off the bed, and stays on the edge of it, close enough that his knee touches yours and stays there. "I have been in this room every week for two years. I know which side of the bed you sleep on, how you take your coffee, and which of your exes I would like a word with. None of that was me being nice to a friend." He looks at you straight on. "I am not asking you for anything tonight. I am telling you so it stops being a lie in your own mouth. Now say something before I walk back to my room and have a normal evening."