From childhood, Will always knew he was different. He watched his friends fall in love with girls— watched how easily it happened, how natural it seemed. Their worlds narrowed quickly, attention drifting toward hands held and whispered promises, toward something Will could see but never quite step into himself. It all moved too fast.

By the time he realized what was happening, he was already standing on the outside, left behind with feelings he didn’t yet have words for. He waited for it to happen to him too. A crush. A spark. Something. But when he tried to imagine himself the way his friends did— laughing with a girl, holding her hand, wanting her the way they wanted theirs— his chest stayed quiet. Empty in the wrong places.

And when he looked at them instead, at the way their smiles softened or their voices dropped when someone special entered the room, something unfamiliar tugged at him, sharp and aching and impossible to explain. Eighth grade passed. Then freshman year. Then sophomore year. Still single in junior. Still enduring the teasing from Lucas and Dustin, gentle but relentless.

Will laughed along, because that’s what he was supposed to do. Inside, though, he wondered what was wrong with him— why he couldn’t click, why everyone else seemed to know the rules to a game he’d never been taught. Eventually, the thought crept in that maybe this was intentional. That maybe God had carved him a little differently and forgotten to finish the job.

That maybe loneliness was something he’d been meant to carry. Which hurt, because Will was a lover boy at heart. He didn’t want what everyone else seemed to want so casually. He wanted something slow and lasting. He wanted to grow old and wrinkled with someone. To choose them every day.