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If you ask Jean, American universities are absolutely ridiculous. For one, he has no idea what the use of “mascots” is, and why they would choose something like a Trojan in the first place—do they mean to signal manipulation and general untrustworthiness? For another, the student body’s commitment to their school spirit is astounding. He has never seen so much gold and red in his life, which is nearly blinding under the Californian sun when he sees the rivers of bodies moving in currents.
The most absurd aspect of student life has to be the hundreds of student-run clubs that hold more weight than they should. Jean may not have as much room to speak here, considering how heavily exy impacts his life, but at least he can claim to be pursuing a respectable path forward instead of participating in something as asinine as a lettuce-eating club. In which members meet annually to see who can eat a head of lettuce in the shortest amount of time possible, upon which the winner is crowned king. It is ridiculous. Jean is almost ashamed to be associated with an institution that humors such activities.
But the club that offends Jean the most is not anything that has to do with cabbage, but instead, love poems. The flyer in front of him is bright pink, the ink oddly cropped at the edges, and a large bubble font reads: YOUR BAE WON’T TEXT YOU BACK? CAN THEY GHOST A HANDWRITTEN LOVE POEM? In smaller font, underneath that, it clarifies: While we promise your poem makes it to your recipient’s mailbox, we cannot guarantee that they will not leave you on delivered. Limited services available during midterms and finals. Trying our best to keep up with demand!
“It is not just a club, it is a service,” Jeremy says, absurdly indignant while he smooths one hand over a folded corner of the flyer. The sight of him and his tanned skin, even as he tosses a smile over his shoulder, does not make the advertisement any less inane. “‘Club’ is a bit of a derivative word, Jean. Makes it sound like anybody could do it, but I would imagine that it takes a—very dedicated individual to keep up the diligence.”
Jean considers this. “I suppose a college student would be the most likely to do anything for money. No more than a street busker hiding behind a screen of anonymity.”
“Not everybody can write a poem,” says Jeremy, but it’s lighthearted, as is everything that he says. He grins, the sunlight somehow bouncing off the shine of his teeth, and Jean takes the opportunity as they walk away from the flyer to look away.
Laila cuffs Jeremy over the back of his head, though the motion is done in jest. “Of course you would say that, English major.”
“The English language could not possibly do such a form justice,” Jean says.
Jeremy hums. “Perhaps someone should look into offering the sunshine scribe French lessons,” he says, and then inexplicably, he bursts into peals of laughter.
Jean grits his teeth, partly in defense against the sound of Jeremy’s joy—he has always been partial to beautiful things—and also in response to the ridiculous, self-assigned name that everyone seems to respect. The sunshine scribe is a moniker that matches the practice if only for the fact that they are both senseless. “I’d prefer that not to be the case.”
Then, considering, Jean swings his gaze back to Jeremy, who walks around campus with his unrepentant smile glued onto his face and a peppering of freckles across his face, whose name is popular on their school’s YikYak (which he only knows because Cat showed him), and he says, “Have you ever received any of these poems?”
For some reason, Jeremy very nearly freezes, a tic that Jean only notices because he has spent enough time with him, his partner on court, to have memorized the flow of his body language, which sits easier under his skin than English comes to him at times. Awareness of others’ habits is necessary for efficient teamwork, a lesson that Jean has already exemplified in his thorough assessment of each of the Trojans’ efforts. It is for that reason that he carefully catalogs movements like this, neatly sliding aside the Jeremy compartment to shelve this new tell, which he stows beside the way Jeremy swipes his thumb over the bridge of his nose when he’s embarrassed.
“A couple,” Jeremy says, hooking one hand semi-self-consciously around the back of his neck, his smile on the verge of embarrassment. “It’s not important.” Which of course, as Jean neatly translates in his head, means that Jeremy Knox, resident captain heartbreaker, even if he’s not aware that he fractures hopes merely by breathing, has been the recipient of more poems than he would like to share.
And now Jean has to know, even though considering Jeremy’s earnest, sincere self, he is much more likely to deliver a genuine confession to the face of whomever catches his attention than he is to pay for a cheapened version of sentiment: “Have you ever paid for these… services?”
“What? No!” Jeremy splutters as he frantically waves one hand in front of Jean’s face as if he can force the thought to dissipate. “There wasn’t—isn’t—anybody that I would—okay, look at your face, you already knew the answer to that. I mean, I wouldn’t pay anyone else to do what I am perfectly capable of, thank you very much.”
“It’s good to know that you wouldn’t throw money at love made into a farce,” says Jean.
“Okay, you’re really making it sound like you’re discussing the likelihood of me hiring a hooker,” Jeremy says, the slight red blooming over his face eating at his skin, half of which he hides beneath his fingers. He starts drifting from Jean and Laila, and for a moment, he thinks he’s escaping before he realizes that they’ve arrived at Jeremy’s next lecture, where they drop him off before continuing down to the library. Jeremy presses his other hand briefly against Jean’s shoulder in parting, his fingers warm and solid even through the fabric of his shirt, and then he waves cheerily. “I’ll see you guys back at the house!”
Jean watches Jeremy’s figure disappear into the engraved, wooden doors, and then he turns to Laila, puzzled. “Hooker? As in one who… hooks?”
“Oh, Jean,” she says fondly, starting forward again and looping one finger under one of his backpack straps to tug him along. “Don’t worry about it.”
They don’t always walk back from practice together, even though the four of them live in the same house. Jean is quick to shower, but he never makes the trek alone—Jeremy is always there to squeeze by his side, walking near enough to jostle their fingers into brushing while he goes on about the day. As such, Jean has become accustomed to waiting for Jeremy to finish his business on the court, which, as captain, usually extends longer than the others. Cat and Laila often make their own way back before Jean and Jeremy do, which is nicest when the season is kind enough for the sun to spill over right when practice ends, honeyed light breaking through the Los Angeles clouds as they walk.
So by the time they trudge through the door, Cat is already at work in the kitchen, the steady, dull sound of knives hitting wood striking the low thrum of music playing. “Jean, there’s a letter for you on the table,” she calls out when he crosses the entryway, Jeremy following close behind to sneak a curious glance at tonight’s dinner.
Jean frowns. He’d received a postcard from Kevin only a few days ago, and the only other person he keeps in contact with is most likely to reach him by phone, but when he picks up the innocuous envelope, he sees that it’s not from Neil, but the sunshine scribe.
He immediately puts the letter back down. “This must have been delivered to the wrong address.”
Jeremy hooks his chin over Jean’s shoulder, and Jean instinctively leans over so Jeremy does not have to go on his tiptoes to catch a look. “Definitely says Jean Moreau on there,” Jeremy muses, his warmth bleeding into Jean’s side where he’s half-pressed against him. Jean twitches, but he can’t bring himself to move away.
He presses his mouth thin. “Perhaps the customer mistyped the name.”
“And address?”
“Are you not concerned that this supposed scribe knows our address?” Jean asks the kitchen, but Cat is bobbing her head in the rhythm of the music, already tuning them out, and Jeremy beside him is so positively gleeful he can feel it spill through the air. So, with a sigh, he neatly rakes one nail underneath the opening to tear open the envelope, revealing a creamy, high-quality piece of cardstock. The poem itself has been printed, and when he flips it over, there’s nothing to indicate the sender on the back, so he frowns and looks back to the front.
Tension builds at the forefront of his head. Reading English is already a chore enough after a day of classes spent hopelessly following analytical business language, and he has nearly zero patience for poetry, of all things. As he’d said last week, he would appreciate the efforts much more if they were made in French.
After a few moments, Jeremy steps away, never able to stay in one spot for too long, and he moves over to bother Cat at the counter, though Jean can still feel his eye on him. It only takes a minute more before he’s properly puzzled out the poem, which he throws back onto the table and straightens.
Jeremy is already looking when Jean levels his gaze. “So, what’d you think of our campus cupid?” Jeremy calls, leaning one arm against the granite surface and propping his chin in one hand, upon which a smile stretches long enough that it could substitute as a line of poetry. He pushes the thought away.
“Their efforts are wasted on me,” Jean says, moving toward their bedroom. From the side of his eye, he can see Jeremy’s grin begin to dim. “But it was not a bad poem.”
It was not a poorly composed poem at all, though it irks him. He had expected something along the lines of a children’s rhyme, a lullaby, but instead he had received: it is summer. the open road blisters. / along the asphalt, the sunshine sits cupped / above earthen soil, the poppies a smear of gold, / how i brighten when you flower, how / california could not swallow you small, / how you are, still, a beacon, and the light / chases the night every morning to / nudge my swollen heart into standing.
Even after digesting that, knowing it had been composed by somebody who knows absolutely nothing about Jean Moreau, it is not nearly as easy to shove aside as it should be.
“Stellar review,” Jeremy calls after him, but Jean’s mind has already drifted along as he steps into the darkness of the room, flicking on the light and moving for his slumped-over backpack. Before he helps Cat with dinner preparation, he has something to do.
It does not take him long to find the amateur website (thesunshinescribe.com) to pull up the page, and he navigates through the minimally decorated homepage to get to the contact form, where customers presumably submit their requests. But instead of addressing a letter to anybody, Jean instead treats the form as an email, and he writes:
Do not send any more poems my way. Ignore any requests moving forward. While some of my more simple-minded peers may appreciate it, hollow flattery forced into line breaks is wasted on me, especially not from somebody who only has a shallow understanding of me.
- Jean M.
Perhaps Jean is more sensitive to the name now, but it’s only a few days later when he hears the sunshine scribe crop up in conversation again.
“Dude,” says Derek.
“Dude,” says Derrick.
“Dude,” says Derek again.
It’s a normal enough exchange that he doesn’t bat an eye, intent on carefully repacking his practice bag as he pulls his gear out of his locker. He’s already showered, but Jeremy is elsewhere, either still on court helping clean up or in Rhemann’s office discussing the upcoming season.
“You should invite Cherise to our next match, bro,” Derrick says. “She has to get used to attending if we’re going to get married.”
“Maybe if your performance on court justified the time spent watching, bro,” says Derek, and from the sound of his laughter and the resulting crash of metal rattling, he ducks when Derrick swings.
“I’ll get her eventually,” Derrick says, and Jean turns just in time to watch him kiss two fingers and raise them into the air in tribute. “I’ll give that love poem dude a try. Don’t they have a, like, one hundred and eleven percent success rate or something?”
“The sunshine scribe?” Jeremy says, having just come in to catch the tail end of the conversation. The door of the locker room slowly swings shut behind him, the shadows of the hall shrinking as the beam on his face takes precedence. He must have spent his time running around clearing balls on the court because there’s still a healthy flush on his cheeks, shining only barely under the fluorescent gleam of the lights.
Derrick snaps his fingers. “Exactamundo.”
Jean’s eyebrows raise, but he doesn’t contribute to the conversation, instead letting the cool metal of the locker seep through the thin material of his shirt as he turns and leans against it. Jeremy flicks a quick smile at him before opening his own locker and raising his voice to be heard. “You know, Jean just received a letter from them.”
Jean immediately tenses, but it’s too late—the damage has been done. It’s as if someone has thrown a bone into a pack of rabid dogs, what with the way a myriad of heads snap in their direction at once. He throws a dirty look at Jeremy, who only returns it with a nonchalant shrug and an unrepentant grin, which tells Jean all he needs to know.
At least somebody is getting their entertainment out of this. Jean, at least, had doubled back to take the poem and shelved it in the bottom drawer of his dresser, underneath a pile of socks. It’s easier that way, not to have to think about somebody mistakenly liking Jean enough to pursue the matter when Jean is entirely hung up on another person altogether. For a moment, he feels a stab of regret—he knows how it feels to love somebody with no hope of them returning the sentiment, but at least the person behind the poetry is likely only infatuated at best.
“I hope you know that you’re going to have to share with the class,” Xavier says from the other side of the room.
Jean frowns. “Class? We are a team.”
“At least tell us who it came from,” says Pat, who is lying across the bench marking the middle of the room, his legs crossed.
“There was no name.” The identity of the sender hadn’t even crossed Jean’s mind; the only thing he had thought about, embarrassingly enough, was that their intentions were wasted if they did not come from Jeremy. “I do not need to know, anyway.”
Beside him, Derrick groans in fake agony. “Jean can pull, and he doesn’t even care, but Cherise will barely look me in the eye.”
Derek elbows him. “As if you can even drag your gaze high enough to meet her eyes.”
“You’ve got a secret admirer, then,” Xavier says with a grin. “Shaking things up already, and you haven’t even been here that long.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” comes Jeremy’s voice from Jean’s side, who, when he turns, has already stripped from his practice clothes and is now outfitted in only a towel slung low around his hips as he makes steps toward the showers. “If you have a secret admirer, I mean.”
Jean swallows and quickly affixes his gaze on a knot in the wooden bench before him, a shadowed swirl smoothed into the material. Jeremy has already caught Jean staring enough times for the thought to darken his cheeks, so he’s learned his lesson.
“This is a ridiculous conversation,” Jean announces, pinching the topic closed between two tight fingers. “Perhaps you should be more concerned with tightening the speed of your passes.”
The others rightfully take it as a sign to move on, which isn’t difficult for them, the locker talk always minnowing through a dozen currents at once, and Jean is finally allowed to hang on the outskirts once again. At the entrance to the showers, Jeremy turns and catches Jean’s eye with a wave, mouthing, Wait for me, will you?
Jean nods once, a quick jerk of his chin, and Jeremy’s eyes crinkle with the force of his smile before he disappears into the stalls. Jean focuses on the spot where he had disappeared, thoughts already drifting past the letter, and instead wondering why Jeremy would ever take the time to ask when Jean has always waited.
Since the Californian sun is so cooperative in the early season, Jean and Jeremy have made a habit of eating lunch on the campus greens, just the two of them. It’s nice to be able to kill time between classes where the sun can reach them, and it makes for decent people-watching, especially with Jeremy by his side, who is quick to point out campus celebrities and quirk a smile at the passing eccentric character.
Eventually, once Jeremy cracks out the French textbook that he’d inanely had ordered to the house, Jean opens his notebook only for an envelope to fall out. Attached to it is a mini teal sticky note, which, with Laila’s handwriting, reads: this came in the mail this morning while you were in the bathroom!
He swears quietly in French, but not quietly enough that it escapes Jeremy’s attention—his head jerks up when he hears it, and then his vision narrows onto the address on the letter.
“The sunshine scribe!” he crows with a little too much delight tinging his voice. Jean winces while Jeremy puts his books to the side, but not before carefully bookmarking the page. His enthusiasm is ridiculous, Jean thinks with a tender kind of endearment, as Jeremy swings his legs to face him fully and perches his face on his knees. “Are you going to read it right now?”
“I’m getting the sense that I don’t have a choice,” Jean says dryly, but curiosity overtakes him anyway, especially after the message he had sent the scribe before. The envelope fold gives easily, and he pulls out the same cardstock material as last time. He studiously ignores the feeling of Jeremy’s eyes on his face as he scans the lines.
if i were only one poem flung / at your feet that would be embarrassing enough / if i were thirty / forty even / i would just be pathetic but i am / very careful not flung but folded / and not a single word endured in your / honor is wasted so i am not sorry for liking you / not sorry for the fireworks pricking pinstripes in my heart / not sorry for the lip of a coffee cup where / your mouth had once been / not sorry for that curl in your hair / do we have to be apologetic about wonderful things? / for small dogs and ladybugs? / sports and the grayed storm in your eyes? / if so then don’t look at me i am / already unrepentant for i love / small dogs and ladybugs and sports and you.
It is, undeniably, from the same person as before—and Jean may be looking too much into it, as this is Jeremy’s jurisdiction rather than his own, but it almost appears to be in response to the message he had sent the sunshine scribe: hollow flattery forced into line breaks is wasted on me.
Jean carefully puts the letter to the side, and when he peels his gaze off of it, Jeremy is already looking at him, no longer smiling but now contemplative. “What’d you think of it?” he asks, his voice somewhat hushed.
Jean nods to the slip of paper. “You can read it yourself, if you like.” He shoves aside the gnawing feeling in his gut, looking away when Jeremy helps himself and picks up the card. He’s a much faster reader than Jean is, and he sets it aside in half the time that Jeremy does.
“In their defense, I also think small dogs are wonderful,” Jeremy offers, that sun-splitting grin back on his face.
Jean spares one more quick glance for the sprawling font, feeling it like a strange itch in a place he can’t reach with his hands. It’s strange to be faced with the physical reminder of someone’s feelings for him—not usually something he would bother himself with or even think twice about. If he were with anyone else, he would have thrown out the envelope without cracking it open. But he knows how Jeremy would respond—has, in the past—by carefully reading the entire poem, or, if it were a confession made in real time, he would apologetically turn them down with a smile and proceed to feel terrible for not returning their feelings.
If this happens to Jean, he may not even waste the time scouring the English language for enough words to reply.
The only reason that Jean gives the poetry any consideration at all is because he thinks Jeremy’s good heart is rubbing off on him, but it feels wrong to acknowledge it in Jeremy’s presence. Maybe it’s because he wants Jeremy to react in a way that would signal he has any sort of feelings about the matter. He can’t admit that he wants Jeremy to rip the letter in half or tell him not to worry about any secret admirer when Jean should be worrying about Jeremy. At least Kevin would have confiscated it, if only for the fact that he should be focusing on exy.
It’s ridiculous that a letter coming from a complete stranger only makes Jean think of Jeremy.
“I know you do,” Jean says with a tilt of his head. “I unfortunately share the room not only with you, but with your cardboard cutout.”
“Barkbark is grateful for your graciousness,” Jeremy says solemnly. He casts another downward glance. “You know, this person doesn’t have poor taste whatsoever. Small dogs, sports, those are all good things. And the color of your eyes. I also think that is wonderful.”
Jeremy’s terrible honesty makes Jean feel as if he’s being scalded by his mere presence, as if the sun itself had forfeited some of its ancestry to pack that heat into Jeremy’s being. He’s too close; he’s not close enough. He does not care nearly as much as Jean wants him to, and though he does, a little, as Jean can get himself to admit, it is not in the way Jean wants.
It also shoves a fist down his throat, stifling in its immensity, to hear the lines of the poem enacted in Jeremy’s voice. He shouldn’t want the letter to have come from Jeremy; it is unfair both to the original sender and to Jeremy, even though Jean only has consideration for the latter.
“I’m still doubtful that this person knows anything about me,” Jean says, turning back to his notebooks to put the topic behind them. His gut roils at the equations that meet him. “They would not be paying for these messages to be sent if they really knew me.”
“Actually, I’d argue the opposite,” Jeremy says, “because I’d think that anyone with the privilege of knowing you would never shut up about it,” which sends Jean’s mind into such a tailspin that he refuses to think about it. Instead, he squints at his notes, and eventually, Jeremy slips the bookmark out of his book and begins reading again, testing small phrases in accented French made warm under the afternoon sun.
It’s unfair to himself, too, Jean thinks, later. To want like this.
That night, Jean submits another form on the sunshine scribe’s website:
It appears that you are not as adept at reading as you are at writing because I distinctly remember asking you not to send me any more mail. As it goes, I want to make clear that the sender is wasting their money because I am not interested. There is already somebody else.
- Jean M.
The next morning, by the time Jean rises, Jeremy seems to be cosplaying a useless lump in his bed. He doesn’t think much of it, instead taking extra care not to wake him if he’s decided to sleep in, and when he emerges from the bathroom, their bedroom is vacated.
He finds him already in the kitchen with Cat and Laila, nursing a cup of coffee. Even though Jean doesn’t recall Jeremy going to sleep at an unreasonable time, he looks as though he was visited overnight by death itself. His eyes sport larger dark circles than he’s ever seen, and Laila is calmly running her fingers through his sandy hair as he stares into the distance.
Now, this is odd. Jean has never been greeted with anything less than an enthusiastic hello! on each day that Jeremy stays at the house, and the fact that the kitchen is sullen with the same quiet devastation one would expect from hearing that they’ve suddenly been diagnosed with an inexplicable and incurable disease is… strange, to say the least.
Sinking into the seat opposite Jeremy with the overnight oats he’d already prepared ahead of time, Jean finally breaks the silence: “Is everything okay?”
That pierces the strange haze settling over Jeremy’s shoulders; he immediately sits up, his shoulders straightening as Laila leaves him be with a final brush against his neck. He looks at Jean as if he hadn’t even noticed he’d entered the room, and a second too late, a smile cracks over his face, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Jean! Did you sleep well last night?”
“I did,” Jean says. He motions to the other. “Did you?”
“Uh,” says Jeremy, and oh, he’s definitely hesitating. Jean’s eyes narrow, uncertain whether he should be worried or suspicious. “I mean. It wasn’t the greatest sleep of my life, but that’s most nights, isn’t it?”
“Did something happen?” Jean asks, casting his gaze around the room.
Jeremy visibly deflates, his fingers knotted together. “It’s nothing. It’s just that… there was… a dog at the animal shelter, a really cute one, he was adorable and he had black fur and gray eyes. I saw him on their website, and I know that I’m not supposed to be getting attached to things when I’m barely a blip on their radar, but Laila bugged her uncle again, and it seemed like he might think about letting us keep a pet, until the dog got adopted. It’s okay. It’s not like I really had a chance in the first place. There are so many other, better dog owners out there for this dog. To presume that I would be the best fit was simply—”
“Jeremy,” Cat says sharply from across the room. “No use going down that route.” Jeremy abruptly shuts up, his eyes trained on his folded hands sitting atop the table.
Jean can’t tell if Jeremy is merely covering up a bigger, more consequential matter or if he is entirely serious. Knowing Jeremy, his entire morning may have been ruined at the prospect of not being able to adopt a dog. It is believable. It may very well be true.
“I’m sorry that the dog has been adopted,” Jean tells Jeremy in earnest. “It must not feel good to have your hopes shot down.” If Jeremy is serious about it, then Jean shall be as well. Where he comes from, such sensitivity would be viewed as a weakness, but coming from Jeremy, he can’t help but be a little fond. Jeremy and his big heart. How could Jean ever begrudge him for that?
“Oh,” Jeremy says, looking momentarily stunned, before smiling as if he can’t help it, a curve so deeply engraved that his eyes crimp shut around the edges, his hair flopping slightly to the side as he tilts his head. “It’s all okay. There’s nothing to worry about, really. I’m just glad that he’ll be loved by somebody else, even if it couldn’t be me.”
“We’ll be late for practice if you keep dropping your sap around the kitchen,” Laila says, already refilling her bottle at the kitchen sink. “Chop chop, boys. It wouldn’t reflect well on your captaincy if you were the last person there, you know.”
“I’m going!” Jeremy yelps, flying out of his seat and grabbing a stray shirt off the back of their couch on his run to the room, and Jean quickly shoves down the last spoonfuls of his breakfast before following.
No more letters come in the mail from a certain scribe, so Jean assumes that the latest message must have finally gotten through. He doesn’t think much of it, or anything at all, at least not until it’s brought up again in practice.
“Dude,” Derrick says.
Inwardly, Jean sighs. This again? Don’t they get tired?
They’re all warming up on the sidelines of the court, Jean stretching out his hamstrings while the rest of the team alternates between various flexibility exercises or preparing for drills. Jeremy plops down at his side, giving him a sunny beam before kicking his legs in front of him into a butterfly pose. Like this, his shorts ride higher up his thighs. Jean looks away before he can be caught staring. It’s very distracting.
“Dude,” Derrick says again. “I was going to hire the sunshine scribe, but then I go onto the website, right, and they’re not writing anything anymore! They said they’re on hiatus. Cherise is never going to want me.”
“It’s good that you’re starting to realize that,” Derek snarks back.
Though Jean’s face is turned toward the floor, his eyes move in Derrick’s direction. A hiatus? Jean hadn’t heard of that.
“Why don’t we keep the conversation on exy, boys?” Jeremy says pleasantly, beside him.
Derrick drops into a low lunge, his hands on his hips. “Come on, practice has barely even started. Coach isn’t even here yet. Anyway, you’re an English major. Isn’t poetry, like, your thing?”
“Well,” Jeremy starts. He doesn’t finish his sentence, shifting uncomfortably. “I mean, it’s a pretty expansive field of study? Sure, there might be some poetry involved, but it really depends on—right, I’ve lost you.”
“Maybe Jeremy can write our love letters,” Cody says.
“Hm,” says Jeremy.
“Who would you have a love letter addressed to?” Pat asks them, elbowing them in the side and laughing when their face turns red.
“I don’t know how important that is,” Cody insists, turning to the side so they’re no longer looking at Pat. “Let’s ask Jeremy that question. Who would you send a love letter to?”
“No celebrities, though,” Cat chimes in, appearing from nowhere. She settles into a squat and returns Jeremy’s injured look with a blistering grin. “That’s a cop-out. What! We want to hear some real gossip.”
“What even makes you guys think that I have someone in mind?” Jeremy says incredulously, crossing his arms. He looks a little ridiculous, especially sitting down, as if he’s been reduced from their captain into a much younger version of himself.
“Dude,” Derek says.
Xavier, who’s been listening to the conversation silently, raises his hands as if at gunpoint. “I’m not naming names, but I think we all know.”
Jean does not know. “What? Do we?”
“Hahahahahaha!” Jeremy turns to Jean, desperation making his eyes wide and shiny and his smile a little unhinged. “That was a really funny joke, Jean. ‘Do we?’ A real knee-slapper. Um. What about you? Who would you have a love letter sent to?”
To be asked that question by the very person whose name would be the answer, especially in front of half of their team, seems to be a new kind of cruelty, and Jeremy doesn’t even know what he’s inflicting.
Jean turns his head stoically to the side. “I refuse to entertain such ridiculous notions. You already know how I feel about the mere concept of a campus cupid, anyway.”
“We’re not asking whether you would send it, Jean,” Cat says unhelpfully, “we’re asking who it’d be addressed to. All hypotheticals.”
“I…” Jean hesitates, casting his gaze up to the ceiling, the wooden beams arching so high above them that he wishes he could be up there instead of under the scrutinizing gaze of his teammates.
Apparently, his silence is answer enough because three of them gasp in unison.
“He’s taking too long to answer,” Cody says, hushed.
“He’s thinking,” Cat says, and the tone of her voice is a little insulting in the sense that it implies that Jean doesn’t ordinarily think about anything other than exy.
“He just doesn’t want to tell us who it is,” Xavier says, eyes narrowed.
Great.
As the rest of them turn inwards to discuss who it could be, forgetting about Jean himself in the process, he frowns and gives up on stretching entirely, lowering himself onto the ground to sit. When he turns to Jeremy, it’s to his wide-eyed gaze already prickling at his skin.
Jeremy inches himself closer, scooting across the wooden flooring. “Is there actually someone you have in mind?” he whispers, leaning in so that nobody else can hear. The words ghost across Jean’s cheek, glancing off the tiny trails of panic in his veins.
“I won’t speak on this matter,” Jean says stiffly, and though ordinarily, Jeremy wouldn’t push it any farther, there’s something terribly insistent in his eyes.
“If there was, would you tell me?” Jeremy asks. “I wouldn’t tell anyone else. Scout’s honor. I just—I like knowing things about the people I care about.”
When Jean doesn’t answer immediately, he quickly backtracks, leaning away so suddenly that Jean misses the warmth like the ache of a second hand. “Sorry. Not trying to pry! I mean, you can tell whoever you want, or nobody at all if that’s your jam, and honestly, any of that is okay with me. Just expressing interest like any good friend would. But if you want to move on, I’ve got a lot of thoughts about the next batch of recruits that Coach is looking at, if you want to hear it.”
This is part of why Jean had fallen so hard for Jeremy. It’s difficult not to, not when Jeremy falls for everybody else. He is as generous with his consideration as he is with his care for everybody around him. It tugs at the corner of his lip.
“Maybe,” Jean says, startling Jeremy into looking back at him. “Eventually,” he amends, which breaks slowly over Jeremy’s face like the sunrise they’d seen at the Santa Monica pier a couple of weekends ago, when he’d dragged Jean out the door at a vile hour just to steal his breath in pinks and purples.
“I’ll be here whenever you’re ready,” Jeremy promises, nudging Jean on the shoulder, and Jean, like anything else that Jeremy says, knows this to be true, knows it to the core of his shallowly beating heart, knows that one day that sunbeam smile and those doe-like eyes will pry the truth out of him, and he won’t even have it in him to regret it.
“So I’ve got some questions,” Jeremy says, settling beside Jean on the couch. It’s late afternoon, the sun staining the living room with a golden glow, and it’s just bright enough outside that they don’t yet have to turn on the lights. He’s holding another one of his French books, which makes Jean’s heart thud pathetically against his ribs when he sees it.
“You’re still doing that?” Jean says, eyeing his textbook. “You have enough to focus on outside of learning French.”
“But I’m doing it for you,” Jeremy says, genuine confusion making his eyes go wide. “So it’s important to me.”
Jean has no response to that, so he looks away and hisses a breath in through his teeth, the air slicing the back of his suddenly swollen throat. He manages to find the words once Jeremy has cracked open the spine. “Fine, then. What did you have questions about?”
“I’m having difficulty with the tones,” Jeremy says, frowning down at the page. He runs his fingers across the letters inked across the paper, shifting closer to Jean to show him the sentence and inching near enough for their arms to brush in the process. “I guess it’s, like, an issue with not being around French enough to really pick up on the language. Learning a foreign language from a textbook alone is already difficult enough, but I don’t have much of an opportunity to hear it spoken aloud.”
It’s difficult for Jean to think of the last person he’s spoken French to. With Jeremy, it’s different. Jeremy is doing it for no other reason than Jean, as if anything could be that simple. Somehow, with Jeremy, it is that simple.
“Aren’t there recordings you can purchase?” Jean asks. He thinks briefly of a record store a couple of blocks away from the campus.
“It’s the wrong accent,” says Jeremy, shaking his head.
“Marseille-accented French is not going to get you anywhere,” Jean says, an argument they have long run the tracks of at this point. “You would be better off with the recordings.”
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Jeremy says, and then he settles back with a sigh, snapping the book closed and placing it on the coffee table. Jean watches him warily as he sinks back into the couch, a contemplative purse to his lips. His gaze wanders back to Jean. “What if you speak to me? Like, talk about anything.”
“Anything?” Jean says uncertainly. He thinks back to the folder of assignments that he has to catch up on, or the fact that he had planned on rewatching the latest Penn State match to gauge how they stack up. But the sticky sunlight keeping him here with Jeremy sounds much more tempting. “I can read to you, I suppose.”
“Really?” Jeremy looks much too excited by the idea, pulling his legs into his chest. When he stretches, the hem of his baggy t-shirt rides up and stays there, a sliver of tanned skin caught before the waistband of his sweatpants. How he is tan all over, Jean will never know. He seems like the type who would drive two hours to go surfing at the beach or strip randomly when they’re doing outside drills and the Southern Californian summer presses down on them like the head of a fat thumb.
“What’s for storytime?” Jeremy asks, pleasantly acquiescent, and Jean wracks his brain for a story he wouldn’t hate telling.
“Have you ever read The Little Prince? It was originally written in French,” Jean says, reaching for his phone.
“I haven’t,” Jeremy says, “but even if I did, I doubt I’d be able to understand ninety percent of what you’re reading.”
Jean gives him an exasperated look. “Isn’t that the point of this?”
Tilting his head against his arms, Jeremy grins at him, his eyes dancing with mirth. They glow deeper in the sunlight, the brown delineated into a thousand warm shades. Jean does not know what he did to deserve the way Jeremy looks at him. Sometimes, under the floodlight of his gaze, Jean feels like the only person to exist.
“The point of this is for me to hear more of the accent so I know how to replicate it,” Jeremy points out. “And now it’s also so I get to be read to by one Jean Moreau. Think of it as a treat for me.” When Jean doesn’t respond, he scoffs and reaches out to push gently against his forearm, leaving a scrape of color in a grayed-out world in his wake. “I’m waiting.”
“Fine.” It’s difficult enough to say no to Jeremy in the first place, and Jean doesn’t have the bandwidth to argue this, anyway, not when it’s been so long since he’s been able to speak in French at length. The only people he knows whom he could speak to are many hours from here, and Jean is famously unavailable by phone. But now he is in California, and there is Jeremy.
So he begins. At first he reads slowly, trudging through the beginning of the story as he gets used to the sound of his voice filling up the room, making it warmer, soaking in the light. Jeremy’s eyes never stray from Jean’s face. Everyone else is so far away but Jeremy. He is patient in a way that Jean had not understood could be curtailed into a person without pressure.
Is it possible that it could have always been this easy? Jean thinks, briefly, of all of the things that had led him to this point. What had delivered him to Jeremy’s doorstep. Jean doesn’t subscribe to fate and destiny even when he thinks that he’s deserved the things he’s received, but if there were strings in the universe, he can feel them in motion now. He can feel them tugging him closer to Jeremy, turning perennially toward his warmth, or maybe that’s just his subconscious, taking his body where he needs to go.
Jean is not even halfway through the story when he starts to see Jeremy’s eyes slip closed, but when his voice halts, broken partly into the sentence, Jeremy blinks sleepily up at him, the only sound in the ringing silence being the shift of fabric rubbing against itself as he looks at him.
“Are you stopping?” he asks, voice hushed. “Are you tired?”
“Are you?” Jean redirects the question back at him, but all he receives in return is a quiet laugh, an exhale as soft as the afternoon feels.
“I’m not,” Jeremy swears, slipping his eyes closed even as he breaks into a smile. “I can listen just as well with my eyes shut, thank you.” He puts on a pensive expression and raises his fingers around his ears as if giving a physical demonstration. “Actually, if you really think about it, it makes the experience much more immersive when the only thing I can focus on is you. Your voice, I mean.”
Across Jeremy’s face blooms a pinkish tint. Through the flush, his freckles come through like spots of rain, as if he’d stepped outside on a dewy morning and the sun had stained him at random. That’s what catches Jean now, luring him closer, leaning farther than is forgivable, until he’s convinced himself that he’s testing Jeremy to see how far he will go until he concedes. When he will open his eyes and see Jean, see him truly, and every shade of half-tressed truth.
Jeremy’s eyes pop open. Jean, half-expecting it, doesn’t flinch, but surprise parts Jeremy’s mouth slightly. “Hi,” he says.
“Hello,” says Jean quietly.
The corner of Jeremy’s mouth curves into the angle of soft mirth. “What, do you not trust me to listen?”
“I do,” Jean insists. “I trust you.” No one ever tells you that swallowing a truth is easier than spitting it back out. But it had been easy to say. It always is, with Jeremy. It’s the kind of sentiment that Jean would previously have had to fight to surface, but here, Jeremy underneath him, pinned by the weight of his gaze—when will Jean ever know something truer than this?
There is no answer, none that he can neither dispose of nor derive, and Jeremy seems to get it, too, because all he says is, “Oh.”
Oh, indeed. Jean moves away, farther from Jeremy’s unblinking gaze, and he finds the calmness that settles over him unfamiliar. Jean has spent his entire life one flinch away from a heartbreak. Wrapping Jeremy’s hands over his heart without the promise of reciprocation would scare him if it was anybody else, anyone that Jean trusted less.
“Should I continue?” Jean asks, powering his phone on once more, where the story of the prince had dusted into dark.
“Yes,” Jeremy says, “please.” He settles into a new position, not able to sit still for too long, this time with one arm hooked over the sofa’s back and his head tilted along the cushion, staring sidelong at Jean.
So he continues, French warming his throat almost as much as Jeremy’s presence.
They’re alone the next time Jean receives a letter. This time, they’re in their bedroom, both of them at their respective desks.
“Hey,” Jeremy says. Jean shifts around in his seat to see that Jeremy has already spun around on his wheeled chair, legs crossed over one another so that his feet aren’t touching the ground and a now-familiar envelope held between two fingers like a cigarette. “I think the sunshine scribe made another delivery.”
“Have you just been holding onto that?” Jean mutters. He hasn’t seen Jeremy get up and answer the door in the last few hours; it’s as if the letter had materialized out of thin air. Still, he reaches across the space and takes the envelope from Jeremy.
He doesn’t turn to read it because that would feel too much like hiding. Out comes the familiar cardstock and the same font as the other two poems, and as he pores through the lines, it’s undoubtedly the same cadence as the others.
i think of you entirely new, / in impossibilities, in each new and / queenly way in which i don’t care. / i have thought many times: / to hell with it. should this be all / love is, to be left wanting? that seems to me / a particular kind of cruelty. does a child / forgetting a balloon string do anything but stare, / watching their helium heart fade into the distance? what / fun could that be? but one day it will be morning / and i will see you again and it will have been / worth it. you hooking me back down onto this earth. / taking the string. tying it around my fingers. / filling my pockets with change to keep me tethered. a sore weight. / a priceless one. and even though i am so busy loving you / and you are so busy looking past it, i will dig / one coin from the cavity and offer it to you, if only to know for certain: / a nickel for your thoughts?
When Jean looks up again, Jeremy has his face pillowed against his hands perched atop the back of his chair. “What do you think? Does this one merit another message to the poet?”
“I—” Jean, having glanced down once more, snaps his gaze back to Jeremy so quickly his vision fizzes around the edges. It is with terrible, mounting horror chilling his throat that he immediately understands. “Jeremy.”
Jeremy only shrugs. The card, held limply between Jean’s thumb and forefinger, trembles as it threatens to limp to the ground. It comes together with such piercing clarity that Jean wonders how he did not think more of it before—the strange, defensive way Jeremy had first spoken of the service, his curiosity toward the contents and Jean’s assessment of the poetry, especially the way he had reacted that one practice when Cody had asked him who he would send letters to.
A nickel for your thoughts. God, how had Jean not noticed sooner? If he were better versed in English, would he have been able to read between the lines? Small dogs and fireworks and the open road. Jeremy and his beautiful earnestness. Jeremy and the way he had reacted the morning after Jean had written to the scribe, telling them that poetry was wasted on him because he already loved somebody else.
A part of Jean still doesn’t want to believe it despite the accumulating evidence. He cannot imagine that Jeremy would go to all that trouble for his sake. That multiple times in the past few weeks, when Jean assumed that he was doing homework on his side of the room, he was scribbling verses in his honor. Jean does not know what he has done to deserve it. And yet, as he’d just read in the words he now pinches between his fingers, he had done nothing. He had pushed him away. And still, Jeremy loves him.
A light, growing in the dark. A cold and empty room is not made aware of its vacuity until it has been filled.
“I realized that it didn’t matter,” Jeremy says, his Adam’s apple pushing against the hollow of his throat when he swallows, “how much I tried to pretend that I was not in love with you. I could not stop. And I know, I know you told me that there’s somebody else, and there’s a part of me that wants that somebody to be me, or even thinks that it could be, but most of all, I’ve realized that telling you would have been worth it in every iteration of our reality. I was ready to risk rejection, if only for the fact that I could tell you.
“For so long, I had been afraid that confessing would ruin our friendship. But even if I don’t know you as a lover, I know you as a friend. You won’t do that to me. You have a kinder heart than most credit you for. I know I’m giving you grief. I know that I can’t stop. You said that you trust me? Well, I trust you too.”
Jeremy stares at him unflinchingly, defiant even in the face of what Jean knows to be uncertainty, a soft kind of fear. A terror so tender that Jean, if he wanted to, could press his thumb right through the fat and cut to the nerve.
There is a part of Jean that refuses to believe it. There is an even greater part of him that knows that even if he can’t trust his heart, he can trust what he sees in front of him. Who he sees in front of him. If Jean reaches out right now, he knows that Jeremy would bridge the distance.
“Jeremy,” Jean says, feeling as though he will shake right through his composure. “It is you. Of course it is you. Have you ever seen me look anywhere else?”
Jean watches Jeremy nearly slip off his chair. “I mean,” he says, recovering, “kind of? But I was mostly sure—kinda—”
“Do not be daft,” Jean says, and before he knows it, he is rising, crossing the room in a few short strides until he is standing before Jeremy. He had dropped the poem after all because it lies discarded somewhere on his floor and his now empty hands are reaching to gather Jeremy’s face instead, holding him there, his thumbs fitting neatly into the crevices of his skin.
“Forgive me if I am being daft,” says Jeremy, “but are you about to kiss me?”
“If you want,” Jean says. It’s merely a gesture. He already knows the answer.
“Please,” Jeremy says, and that is all the permission he needs before Jean has his mouth against Jeremy’s mouth, his eyes slipping closed so quickly that it’s a wonder he managed to land in the right place. Jeremy opens slightly beneath him, and in that moment, he hears a quiet hitch of breath. It could have been either of them, their breaths becoming one. Jean knows that he would give almost anything to hear Jeremy’s poetry spoken aloud rather than read off a page. Jean knows, now, that poetry should not belong to English at all, but instead to the place where their mouths meet.
Breaking away for air makes Jean feel like all the time they’ve spent in the past few months not kissing has been a waste. But watching the way Jeremy is already smiling, as if he had started the moment they began, he feels, quite suddenly, as though they don’t have to stop.
They’re quiet for a few moments longer, Jean still bent over Jeremy, holding him between his hands, one of Jeremy’s hands sitting on Jean’s waist, before Jeremy breaks it.
“Am I allowed to give you shit for the way you thought I was destined to be heartbroken for a minute, or is it too soon?” he asks.
Jean rolls his eyes. “I thought your story about the dog was a little ridiculous, if horrifyingly believable.”
Jeremy makes a gesture as if putting his hands up in surrender. “Sorry I love so freely, I guess.” But he’s laughing, and Jean is smiling.
“Never be sorry for that,” Jean says, and then he kisses Jeremy again, just because he can.
I would like to formally apologize for doubting the success rates of your services. Please let it be known that I enjoyed your poetry even before I discovered your identity. Do not be dissuaded from sending more if you so wish, but don’t bother with the envelope and sticker deal this time. I’d prefer to hear it from your lips instead.
- Jean M.