Winter break sees the Vancouver crowd back home in B.C. Broadway arranges the meetup. This is not the first time the Vancouver band has met up, simply the first time Henry has taken part. An uneasiness settles in Henry's stomach. His followers parted ways on amicable terms with one another but Henry remembers the simmering anger in SickSteve's eyes and the hurt in Koh's.

"You gotta do what you gotta do" were some of the last words Rutherford said to him.

"Whatever makes you happy" were Ryang's.

Lee-Squared had smiled and wished Henry well with an air Henry now recognizes as bridled insincerity.


"You don't have to come," Broadway said a week ago. He was sitting at the table, checking ticket prices on his laptop.

"Do you want me to?" Henry asked.

"It'd be nice." Yes.

"Then I'll come."

Henry's regretting that decision.

"It'll be okay," Broadway says, squeezing his hand. "Time heals a lot of things."

Not betrayal, Henry thinks. Not choosing a new friend group two months into senior year and pretending you don't know why people are mad. Not calling your friends followers so you don't have to acknowledge you're taking more than you're giving.

"It's gonna be okay," Broadway assures him, squeezing his hand tighter. "You'll see.

It sounds an awful lot like Broadway's reassuring himself and not just Henry.

SickSteve, Broadway tells him, didn't show up at the last few meetups, either. Some people, they fall off the edge of the world when they leave you.

"He'll be there this time," Broadway says and he seems excited as dread pools in Henry's stomach. "Rutherford got into contact with him a little while ago." He smiles at Henry and jiggles his leg. "It'll be a real reunion this time."

Henry forces a smile. "Yes. It will."

Henry feels like an awkward asshole right up until Rutherford slaps him on the back and congratulates him on making Broadway a happy man.

Ryang and Koh talk over each other. They've been in town for a couple days, having decided a week ago the whole long distance fuckbuddy thing was not going to cut it. After months of Koh's persistent whining, Ryang's transferring to Cornell. His mom's pissed and Koh's on her shitlist. It got so heated Mrs. Woo had to call from her house phone in Henrietta to vouch for Koh's character before she'd even agree to it.

Rutherford seems stressed but he says his finals grades haven't all come in yet, don't worry about it, he's going to enjoy this week.

SickSteve's somehow managed to shoot up another two inches, making him well over six foot now. Henry is so used to seeing him sprawled across any available furniture that it's strange to see him so upright and tall. They exchange a painful hello.

Lee-Squared's the only one who went back home for school. Never all that skinny to begin with, he's gained the Freshman Fifteen and then some, and SickSteve. Can't. Stop. Staring.

For two days, they snipe at each other, argue and bitch, and get all up in each other's faces. Lee-Squared, usually the most mild-mannered of the group, is pissed SickSteve pulled a vanishing act. SickSteve, fairly laidback himself, all beef with Henry aside, has some issue he can't seem to work out. Henry hopes it's not Lee-Squared's weight because SickSteve has some real assholish tendencies and there's nothing L2 can do about it now. Whatever SickSteve's problem is, it's enough to have the two of them at each other's throats.

On the third day, when they've succeeded in making everyone miserable, SickSteve and Lee-Squared, they…hrmm. There's no real polite way to say this.

They-

They hook up in a Cactus Club restroom.


"What the fuck is your problem?" Lee-Squared snaps, locking the restroom door behind him and turning to face Stephen. He feels humiliated, every ounce he's gained weighing on him. Stephen has been staring all day. Lee-Squared hates that he knows why.

Once upon a time, Stephen had a crush on him. He wanted Lee-Squared and now? Now he's disgusted that that was ever a thing he wanted.

Fuck it all. Lee-Squared's gotten enough shit from his sisters about it, he doesn't need Stephen being a dick, too.

Not to mention he's mad for his own reasons.

Stephen left. He dropped off the face of the earth, wouldn't answer calls or texts, couldn't even be bothered to get on Facebook or Instagram. They talked the summer after graduation and then he was gone.

In high school, Lee-Squared would have loved to be with Stephen but he wasn't going to push Stephen into anything he was uncomfortable with. It's something Lee-Squared decided long ago, when he realized Southern Baptist wasn't compatible with who Stephen was as a person. He wouldn't push Stephen. He'd wait and he'd hope. If he ended up leaving Henrietta without ever getting to touch Stephen the way they both wanted, so be it.

Stephen needed time. Lee-Squared would give it to him, even if that meant he didn't get to be the person who opened Stephen up. It was fine. Everything was fine.

That is, until Stephen dropped off the face of the earth.

They were talking to each other before fall semester started, the occasional text or Facebook message. Then Stephen stopped using Facebook all of a sudden and wouldn't answer any of Lee-Squared's texts or calls.

Which would have been okay except Lee-Squared got worried. He got scared because Stephen wasn't the person his parents wanted him to be. He was just going to make himself and the woman he ended up with miserable if he kept going like he was and okay, wow, Lee-Squared didn't think emotions could be this strong but he missed his friend. Worse, he was realizing his passiveness meant he'd almost certainly lost the chance to be with someone he genuinely cared about.

Then Stephen showed up at the meetup and Henry was there, too.

Lee-Squared is horribly embarrassed he's gone and gotten fat, a feeling only made worse by Stephen's inability to tear his eyes away. A cruel part of Lee-Squared's mind is saying it's because he's shocked and disgusted, wondering how he could have ever wanted someone who looks like this.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, thinking like that but it hurts, too, knowing that things haven't changed for Stephen, that he's still in that mindset he was a year and a half ago.

Lee-Squared feels awful about himself and Stephen's situation. To top this shitsandwich off, something crawled up Stephen's ass and died. For two days, they've been bickering and snarling and now, on the third, Lee-Squared can't take it anymore. He confronts Stephen in the bathroom and flings his arms out. He opens his mouth to say, "Yeah, I know. I got fat. What of it?"

What comes out is, "What the fuck is your problem?"

Stephen's eyes widen. He ducks his head and glances at Lee-Squared, then the floor before taking a deep breath. Lee-Squared braces himself for the worst and then. And then Stephen says, "I think I'm in love with you."

Lee-Squared gapes at him because that was not what he was expecting.

Terror fills Stephen's face. "Shit, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that. The words just came out. I was going to ask if I could kiss you. I don't know what happ-"

"Oh, my God, yes," Lee-Squared says, interrupting him, desperation making him reach out. "Of course, you can, yes."

Then Stephen's lips are on his and they're kissing, Lee-Squared's hands framing Stephen's face. He's so tall now, Lee-Squared has to actually look up to see him. Stephen's hands are all over him, gripping his belly, his love handles, his ass.

"Look at you," Stephen murmurs, so reverential Lee-Squared's chest aches, "you're so beautiful, Donghyun. God, I missed you so much; haven't been able to stop thinking about you."

Lee-Squared gasps, trying to breathe, trying to think. He runs his hands over Stephen's lean chest, the muscles there. He can't believe this is happening, couldn't they have done this before he blew up like a blimp?

Stephen groans and palms his sides. "You look good like this, so good. Fuck, I've been imagining you naked for days."

Lee-Squared flushes. Stephen hoists him up to his waist so that Lee-Squared's legs are spread and his back is pressed against one of the stalls. He has one hand under Lee-Squared's shirt, touching and squeezing, stealing his every breath away with kiss after searing kiss.

Stephen rocks into him, short, shallow thrusts that make Lee-Squared gasp and scrabble for purchase on his shoulders. Stephen laughs, the sound breathless and beautiful.

Lee-Squared feels all of twelve when he comes in his pants. Stephen's doing no better, though, shuddering against him. That shouldn't be hot but it is and Lee-Squared may need to revise some assumptions about himself because bathroom rendezvous and needing a change of underwear are pretty low on the class scale and he just did both.

They sink to the floor, the metal of the stall wall cool against their backs.

Lee-Squared gets the story in halting breaths, sitting on the floor of that Cactus Club restroom. Stephen's parents didn't like the effect Aglionby had on him. It was a good school but they found out about Koh and Ryang and they told him they didn't want him talking to his friends anymore, not when they "didn't share his values". He tried to live like they wanted him to but he hated it, hated having to act like he thought the way they did, that he actually cared whether what Koh and Ryang were doing was wrong. They changed his phone number and deleted all his contacts and started monitoring his Facebook page.

"That's not an excuse," Stephen says, stroking Lee-Squared's jaw, which makes him embarrassed and liable to squirm with how soft and pudgy it feels under Stephen's hand. "I should have told you."

"I get it," Lee-Squared says, touching his wrist. "You don't have to explain anything to me."

Stephen does anyway.

His story, as it comes out, is heartbreaking.

The summer after high school, Stephen's parents sent him to camp. He can't remember what it was called, just what it was: a pray away the gay camp. It didn't work, obviously, but it did teach Stephen an important lesson, one he'd already been halfway to learning: lying was the only way his parents would ever be proud of him.

Lee-Squared squeezes Stephen's hand because he already knew, how could he not?

"There's nothing wrong with you," he tells Stephen.

"Not according to them."

So Stephen lied. He said it was a phase, he was confused, he only liked girls, after all. He even said he met a girl at camp. When he returned home, it was to tears, hugs, and a stern nod.

For months, he kept lying. He could have been out on campus but the fear of word getting back to his parents was overwhelming. And it wasn't like the LGBT club was all that welcoming to bisexuals, anyhow.

Stephen became someone he hated. College was supposed to be about finding yourself and all Stephen could think about was how much happier he had been at Aglionby.

"And I wasn't very happy then," he says, leaning his head back against the stall. "It was you and Koh and Cheng2 I missed, Rutherford and Ryang, too."

"We tried to contact you."

"I know. I figured if I could just stop talking to you guys, I could forget about Cheng. I could get over you." Stephen's gaze is sharp, open, and a touch desperate.

Lee-Squared has known about Stephen's crush for so long, he used to have to remind himself Stephen didn't know he knew. He had to think, Donghyun, he was raised in a conservative culture. You can't be sure he knows what he's feeling. If you make a move, there's no telling how he will react.

In the privacy of his mind, Lee-Squared allowed himself to imagine what might happen if he did make a move, even just acknowledge Stephen's burning desire. He imagined being hoisted onto the kitchen counter and kissed within an inch of his life. He imagined those big hands framing his face while Stephen pressed him up against a wall. He imagined being bent over the table in the living room where he did his homework every day and Mrs. Woo balanced her checkbook and being fucked until the only thing holding him up was Stephen's cock in his ass.

He had some very explicit fantasies involving Stephen is what he is saying.

And how could he not? Stephen was always there, helping around the house, wearing threadbare t-shirts more often than not, every line of his long, lean body on display. He'd be outside, mowing the lawn or doing yard work under the brutal Virginia sun, sweat pouring down his face and he had to know, he had to, when Lee-Squared brought him ice water and bit his lip because Stephen was using the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face, his abs on perfect display.

Stephen runs the back of his finger down the side of Lee-Squared's face.

"At least you came," Lee-Squared says, "this time."

"Yeah. I never told them about you so they didn't have any reason to say no."

And that's the saddest bit of all. Even here, miles from where they can touch him, Stephen's parents still have him under their control.

"You know, we should probably get out of here."

"Are you saying bathroom heart-to-hearts aren't your thing?" Stephen replies.

"I'm saying my backside's asleep and your phone's gone off three times since we've been in here."

"Has it really?" Stephen asks, getting up. He offers Lee-Squared a hand, who takes it. He wedges a thumb under the waistband of his too tight pants, trying to pull the offending material out from where it's digging into his skin. His face grows hot under Stephen's apparent interest.

Stephen glances at his phone quickly but he's grinning when he does.

"You coming?" Lee-Squared asks.

Stephen looks mellow and happy under the harsh restroom lights. Lee-Squared can't help thinking he's glad it happened here, in a place so different from any of his fantasies that he couldn't possibly mistake it for one.

Stephen touches his waist. When Lee-Squared looks up in question, Stephen kisses his forehead. Lee-Squared's breath hitches. Stephen squeezes his waist before pulling back.

"Lead the way."


The dramatic resolution of Lee-Squared's and SickSteve's apparent sexual tension leaves the group thunderstruck. They pick at their food as the minutes go by, awkward chatter turning into a fierce, quiet debate over who gets to inform their friends their butts are getting left if they don't hurry the hell up. Henry draws the short straw. He makes the executive decision to text SickSteve and bail.

As they're leaving, Rutherford puts his head in his hands and bemoans the act that he's the only straight one in the group. Henry pats his shoulder in mock consolation.

Forty minutes later, SickSteve finally replies: lil busy rn

Get it, Henry types furiously, pressing send before he remembers that isn't the type of relationship he and SickSteve have anymore.

If SickSteve thinks this exchange odd, he doesn't say so. Of course, he's too caught up in Lee-Squared to say much of anything.

For the rest of the meetup, SickSteve keeps a proprietary hand on Lee-Squared's pudgy hip. He massages Lee-Squared's chubby sides, splays his fingers across the soft swell of his stomach, tugs Lee-Squared into his lap to wrap arms around his plump middle and hook his chin over his shoulder. It's a non-stop orgy of touching, SickSteve letting the others know without a doubt that L2 is his, that this is a thing that's happening.

Lee-Squared flushes the first few times SickSteve touches him, tries to remove SickSteve from his person while whispering that it's not appropriate, there are people around, acquiescing the second SickSteve gives him a slightly hurt, slightly frantic look.

When this happens, Lee-Squared's so good about it. He doesn't balk or get weirded out by the intensity. He touches SickSteve's cheek and makes quiet reassurances.

It's not like that, he says, it's just, this is new, and I'm not used to it yet.

SickSteve listens to him, takes in the hand on his cheek and the compassion in Lee-Squared's eyes. He nods and gives Lee-Squared a little more space, not a lot more but a little, and things are at ease once again.

Henry's happy for them, really. He just feels a little side-swiped by the whole ordeal.

"It's been building for a while," Lee-Squared says when the others ask, making Henry feel better about not noticing. He glances up at SickSteve. "I think."

SickSteve nods curtly and tugs Lee-Squared closer to his side. Lee-Squared smiles and Henry's heart melts. The desire when they look at each other is palpable. The way they fit together, it's like it was meant to be. They know each other.

Things are moving very fast and yet the two of them, they're the easiest thing in the world to accept.


"It's," Koh murmurs in a voice that isn't quite quiet enough, "taking a lot out of SickSteve to be this open."

SickSteve and Lee-Squared have vanished again. They aren't lost, far from it. They'll turn up in a half hour or more, giddy with themselves and one another, SickSteve barely letting Lee-Squared out of his sight and Lee-Squared tilting his chin up to demand a kiss every chance he gets.

"If you'll recall," Rutherford chimes in, in a voice gentler and more cautious than Koh has ever been, "he was always very quiet about these sorts of things."

"No wonder," Broadway says, "when it was L2 he was after. His parents have been telling him for years he owes it to them to find a nice girl and give them grandchildren."

SickSteve's parents are devout Southern Baptists, Henry remembers. Ivy League, grandchildren, church, that was all that ever mattered to them. Lee-Squared was raised Buddhist. He's going to UBC. And, of course, he's male. SickSteve's parents won't be pleased.

Not, Henry thinks unkindly, that they ever were.

"Fuck," Ryang says, throwing his legs over Koh's, "them. Those assholes can suck my nonexistent dick."

"Real nice," Henry says.

Ryang bares his teeth in a mockery of a smile. "Thanks. Hey, how'd your parents take the news they were getting a son- and not a daughter-in-law?"

Henry doesn't get his former followers' insistence on speaking about Broadway and him as if they were engaged. They haven't been dating nearly long enough for it to even be a possibility.

"They don't care," he tells Ryang.

"Lucky."

Henry supposes he might be. Then again, he put in four good years of being Seondeok's pretext. Her main competition is dead or run off. Declan's in DC and Ronan's not selling. From his parent's perspective, Henry dating a friend from boarding school isn't noteworthy. It's not like his sexuality was ever a secret.


"It's not so easy," Lee-Squared says to Henry the one time they find themselves alone, Henry musing quietly that it's sad, isn't it, SickSteve having to wait so long, "for everyone to be upfront with what they want."

"His parents," Henry says, nodding. Internalized homophobia. Has to start somewhere.

"That's part of it. But poison like that sinks its hooks into you and doesn't like to let go."

If Henry's native language is thought, Lee-Squared's has always been words and the spaces in between.

"If he'd said something..."

"Why? Would it have changed anything? Henry, you had blinders on for three years. You put them there yourself."

"My mother-"

Lee-Squared drums his fingers against the round curve of his belly. Henry wants to ask how he's so comfortable in his own skin, if he really doesn't mind the excess weight.

It's not a thing people ask one another, though, so he doesn't.

"We can't blame everything on our parents. And you should have realized Stephen shared a room with Matthew Lynch senior year."

Henry frowns at the sudden turn of conversation. Lee-Squared gives him a bland smile.

"Did you know his social security number's fake? His birth certificate, too."

Lee-Squared once mentioned, in the offhand way of someone coping with the end stages of trauma, that he was caught on the midst of an immigration raid in Little Korea. He had only been visiting but the customs officials had detained him, too, with his Canadian passport and student visa, until the consulate could be contacted and someone came to release him.

He says that's why he wants to go into immigration reform. Borders are man-made. No person is illegal.

"He doesn't look all that much like his brothers, either."

"He looks like his mother," Henry offers.

Lee-Squared's bland smile intensifies, becomes weaponized in its non-partisanship. "From what I've heard, it's coincidence when adoptive children resemble their parents."

He knows.

Lee-Squared knows. Worse, he has known and he holds it against Henry that he had to know without confirmation. It's been festering, that anger, masked behind Lee-Squared's characteristic mildness and passivity. SickSteve knows, too, but the affection between him and Henry's been lost nearly as long as it existed.

Lee-Squared sighs.

"To be honest, I've never understood what Henry sees in you," he says. Lee-Squared runs a hand over his stomach, that prominent curve, and smiles wryly. "Though I guess you could say the same about me and Stephen."

"You're not-"

"What? Fat? I know what I look like. I also know how Stephen feels about me. I'm secure in myself and my relationships. But, then, I haven't hurt the people I care about."

Henry's throat bobs.

"Do you hate me?" he asks.

"I probably should," Lee-Squared replies. "Had you meant to do things the way you did, I almost certainly would." He sighs again. "The answer to your question is no. I don't hate you. I dislike what you did. I despise how you did it. I hate that I have to look back on high school and know that I was part of a group that existed solely for your convenience.

"But I don't hate you. When Henry called me and said you had walked back into his life, I was prepared to. I know you didn't mean to but you trampled all over that boy's heart. It was harder for him than it was for the rest of us because at least we knew what you wanted from us."

"And what was that?"

"The same thing you always wanted: a safeguard. We were your phalanx of model Asian students. No one was going to look too hard at you when you had somewhere you fit in."

"I didn't mean-"

"I know. But you still did it. You used us and then you chose a whole new group of white friends over us. You made Henry believe that being half meant he was never going to be good enough for you. It's not your fault he wanted more but you should have realized there were ramifications for those kinds of actions. Henry deserved to know the real reason you'd rather be with Gansey than him."

"I couldn't tell you guys the tr-"

"I know. I said I understood it wasn't intentional. That doesn't mean you haven't left a debt you might never repay. If a day comes where Henry wakes up and realizes he doesn't want to be with the man who made him hate himself for things he couldn't change, it won't be you we rally behind. Honestly, if it weren't for him and Koh, I wouldn't have come, simply because you would be here. Stephen didn't want to come and that, too, was partly because of what you did to Henry. You didn't mean to do what you did but you still did it."

Henry doesn't say anything. He thinks about how much of an asshole he was, how much he still is.

Lee-Squared places a hand on Henry's shoulder. "Look, don't let it get you down. Like I said, it's not your fault you didn't know how Henry felt. From my perspective, it was obvious. From yours, not so much." Lee-Squared's face softens. "You care about him, don't you?"

"I do."

"Then do right by him. That's all any of us really want from you. Do right by Henry and we'll come around. You'll see."


The night before Rutherford heads back to Summerville and Broadway to Pigeon Forge, the group goes out to dinner. They decide on Tuc Craft Kitchen for the atmosphere in addition to the bacon & egg and pork belly cracklings.

SickSteve places the last of his waffles on Lee-Squared's plate. Lee-Squared looks at him gratefully and SickSteve squeezes his chubby side. They smile at each other. Henry won't say they're in love but they're something close.

He tears his eyes away when Koh starts talking about his soccer team. Cornell's not that high in the rankings so he's just playing with a local team but it's fun. God, he can't wait till Ryang can come to his games. It's so much better when there's someone in the stands watching.

"How's your aunt?" Henry asks Ryang since he hasn't yet.

"Good. She's got a new group of boys," Ryang says. "She's run out of nephews, though, so she has to mind her manners now."

"Did she ever?"

Ryang's laughter is genuine. "No, I don't believe she did."


When the Vancouver crowd parts to go back to their respective lives, it's with the expectation that they will see one another again. This isn't the end. The dynamics are different, though. Henry's not in charge anymore. They're not looking to him for guidance. Now it's friendship, reassurance, acceptance that they want.

This, Henry thinks, is how you do it. This is how you turn followers into lovers, into friends.

You allow them to get to know you. You show weakness, vulnerability.

You let them in.


Life doesn't end with that revelation.

When they saw each other off, Henry hugged Lee-Squared hard. He hoped Lee-Squared could deal with a sexuality crisis because SickSteve looked to be careening right into one.

Somehow he doesn't and they settle into a rhythm not unlike the one Henry remembers. He keeps up with them on Facebook and Instagram. Lee-Squared doesn't seem to be losing any weight, just keeps piling it on, thighs thicker and belly rounder in every picture, and SickSteve doesn't seem to be caring. They're all over each other, laughing, smiling, just generally over-the-top happy a year in.

The last time they met up, Broadway, in his usual tactlessness, asked SickSteve if he'd always been this much of a chubby chaser.

SickSteve didn't deny it.

In fact, he grinned, rubbed the side of his thumb against his lips, and looked across the room to where Lee-Squared, Rutherford, and Ryang were standing in the midst of a spirited debate. L2 was resting a bottle of Heineken against the side of his now undeniable beer gut, soft cotton shirt clinging to every curve and accentuating the deep hollow of his navel.

SickSteve took all this in with a look of deep satisfaction and said, "'S'a good look on him, right?" He paused, grin turning roguish. "You know what's a really good look, though? Tied up naked in my bed."

Broadway choked on his beer.

Crude comments aside, Henry has no doubts his friends are very, very happy.

Koh and Ryang stay functionally dysfunctional. Koh keeps changing his plans after graduation and there are nights when Henry and Broadway Skype with Ryang while he bitches for hours. It's obvious he's still gone over Koh, just needs someone to tell him it's alright to be this annoyed at someone and still care about them. Sometimes Koh will hear them and start texting Henry all his grievances about Ryang and it will just be ping after ping after ping.

More than once, Koh has plopped himself down next to Ryang, phone still in hand, muttered "Jjagi's such a fucking asshole", then grabbed Ryang's face and begun making out with him.

"I think," Henry said the last time it happened, Broadway almost managing to shut his laptop before the tonsil hockey really got underway, "they're happy in their own way."

"You think?" Broadway asked, reaching fingers out in a loose grip Henry recognizes with horror.

"Don't you dare," he said, jumping off the couch and running to the kitchenette where he could at least put the counter between them. "I have very sensitive sides!"

"Oh, I know," Broadway replied, cornering him.

Henry wriggled, trying to keep away, shrieking when Broadway got his fingers in, then laughing uncontrollably because it hurt in the best way possible. He took a page from Koh's book, looping an arm around Broadway's neck and bringing him down for a kiss.

It is, Henry has found, rather hard to tickle someone when your mouth is occupied.


Henry keeps expecting Rutherford to turn up with a pretty girlfriend but he says he's too busy to date. Soon he's going to have to study for his MCATs and apply to medical school. He doesn't have time for dating. There's enough on his plate without adding a relationship. Really, though, this is where he wants to be. Settling down can wait.

The last time they spoke, Rutherford said, "You and Broadway do your thing, Cheng. I've got my own."

Then he paused before adding, "Y'all better invite me to the wedding."

Henry asked him which wedding and Rutherford called him an idiot.

Henry thinks his life would have been a lot easier if people hadn't been afraid to call him an idiot sooner.

"You weren't exactly receptive to it before," Broadway says, "and your life's turned out pretty okay, considering."

"Considering what?"

"Considering you have me."

Yeah, Broadway's a sap. Good thing Henry's into that.