Young Hearts -

“You know how to fix this?” Leo asked.

“Hey.”

“What do you think happens after?” Leo asked, pointing at a satellite moving silently across the dark. Young Hearts

“That’s not funny,” Leo said. But his voice cracked on funny .

Eli sat down on the step, close but not touching. He looked at the scuffed toes of his sneakers. “You know how to fix this

“I don’t know,” Eli said. But he wasn’t thinking about the afterlife. He was thinking about the warmth bleeding from Leo’s arm into his own. He was thinking about the word forever and how it suddenly didn’t seem too long.

He sat up in the dark and whispered into his pillow: Oh. But his voice cracked on funny

That night, Eli lay awake. He turned the memory over like a smooth stone: Leo’s hand brushing his when they reached for the same slice of pizza. The way Leo had looked at him when Eli caught a firefly and let it go—soft, wondering, as if Eli had done something miraculous. The way Eli’s own heart hammered during those silences that weren’t empty but full of things unsaid.