Straight-Faced

the same blue eyes

"It was you." I whispered those words, but they were sharp enough to cut through the air.

I could see it now. His hair was lighter and his skin was tanner than I had remembered, both probably from being in the sun. His face was slimmer, his features were sharper, and his jaw was more chiseled. But he still had the same blue eyes.

Those blue eyes were wide, like he couldn't quite believe what was happening. "Yeah. That was... That was me."

Thankfully, Logan pieced everything together pretty quickly and took the hint. "I'm... gonna go pretend to take a bathroom break. A really long one. And then I'll go find something to clean up the pizza I dropped on the carpet. And then I'll take a trip to the moon, where there's an atmosphere I can actually breathe, unlike this one. See ya." With that, he bolted out of the room.

"Down the hall and to your left!" Luke called after him.

"Thanks!"

It was silent again. Luke and I sat down in chairs across from each other. I stared at the dining room table and let my eyes trace over the patterns in the wood.

I had dreamed of getting to meet this person again. I had thought about everything that I'd say to him. But now that he was in front of me, my mind was blank.

"I'm sorry," we finally said at the same time. We both forced a laugh to attempt to break the ice.

"Why are you sorry?" I asked.

"For being there. Wrong place, wrong time, I guess. What about you?"

"For avoiding you the rest of the day. I swear I wanted to talk to you, but I didn't think my ego could handle it."

"I figured that you didn't try to talk to me because you had important actor things to do," he said, which didn't make me feel any better.

"I was just scared of facing you," I confessed. "Our first interaction was... uncustomary."

Luke chuckled. "Nice word choice."

"Thanks."

Our exchange faded out again. What happened to him being so easy to talk to? I guess that went away as soon as I put everything together.

"You were my first kiss." I wasn't sure why I wanted him to know that, but as soon as I said it, I was flooded with relief. That was a four-year weight off my chest.

He raised an eyebrow. "Wait, you counted that?"

I guess it was a little weird, but then again, he had remembered the exact time. "Yeah."

"It was mine too."

Oh. I didn't know how that made me feel.

Luke smiled at me shyly. "Can I ask you something?"

I figured that since we were already having a really strange version of a heart-to-heart, and that Luke already knew more about me than most people did, there wasn't much that I couldn't tell him. "Go for it."

"What's your romantic and sexual orientation?"

I had to appreciate the fact that he didn't assume anything. At least, not out loud.

"I'm gay," I told him. "A homosexual, inside and- well, not out. Yet."

He nodded. "So your girlfriend from two years ago wasn't real?"

"Hey, you're pretty smart."

"So's your friend," Luke said, referring to Logan. "He seemed to figure everything out pretty quickly. Or he at least, he had the common sense to get out of this room."

"Yeah."

I wanted to ask Luke if I had a chance with him. It was a crazy question, and I was positive that it was a no. He was too hot to not already be taken. Also, I wasn't sure if I should be asking that to someone that I barely knew. Still, I wanted to hear it from him. Okay, one step at a time.

"Do you, by chance, identify under any label that may be attracted to male species?" Was that too forward? Nah, I'm pretty sure I nailed it.

"I... yeah."

WAIT, REALLY?!

"I'm bi, pan, whatever you wanna call it. I don't really care."

So, one step closer to the impossible fantasy.

"This is crazy," I mumbled. "I thought I'd never meet you again, and I've met you twice without making the connection."

Luke shrugged. "I wasn't gonna say anything about it unless you remembered it." He paused. "Which, somehow, you did. You've met thousands of girls who tell you how much they love you, and you remembered me."

"I knew your name because I recognized your voice from when we talked last week," I explained. "And then I literally just figured everything else out because I remembered where I saw your eyes before. You look really different than you did four years ago, but your eyes are exactly the same."

The entire situation seemed to catch up to Luke at this moment. "Cameron Macias knows who I am. From four years ago. You remember me. You're talking to me. You're in my house right now. How did this happen?"

I propped my elbows on the table and rested my face in my hands. "Too many coincidences, I guess."

"Yeah. Probably."

Luke, the person who had bothered to hang out with me for three hours at my own birthday party, was also cute sound kid. The person who had stolen my first kiss was also someone who had the weirdest taste in pizza. I knew him, but at the same time, I didn't know anything about him. This was a lot to take in.

"Cameron?"

I turned my head to see Logan standing there with his arms crossed and his face blank.

"We have to go home now. It stopped raining."

I looked to the window, hoping that Logan was lying. He wasn't.

I nodded and stood up slowly. "Okay, let's go." No. I don't want to leave. I have so much more to say.

"I'll walk you out," Luke said, standing up.

"Will I see you again?" I asked Luke as I stepped into my waterlogged shoes.

"If it's meant to be, it's meant to be," he said simply. That wasn't what I wanted to hear, but I had to accept it. This was the closure I had been lacking for so long. This was goodbye.

After Luke closed the front door behind us, I wished that I had at least gotten a hug from him or something. Luckily, Logan was right here.

"You found him, Cam," he said, squeezing my shoulder. "You can let him go now."

As much as I didn't want to do that, Logan was right. Like always.

"Okay," I said quietly. My mind put up the barrier between my emotions and my body so that I wouldn't show what I was feeling. Control, control, control. This is too stupid to cry over. "Let's go home."

We got into Logan's car, and I turned up the radio. He didn't stop me.

"Who's house?" Logan asked as he backed out of the driveway.

I swallowed to kill the lump in my throat. "Mine."

The only signs that it had been raining were the wet ground and a faint rainbow. The sky was clear, unlike my mind.

As we drove out of the neighborhood, I wondered if I had left too much behind.