Time. The enemy was time.
Not Dante. Not Marcus. Not even Adrian's own cowardice, though that ran a close second. Time—each day that passed with Adrian locked in denial was a day Dante moved further away. Entropy. Emotional distance accumulating like debt, compounding interest on eighteen years of mislabeled feelings.
Adrian could feel it. The window closing. The possibility shrinking. Every morning Adrian woke up and performed good boyfriend for Isabella, every evening Dante came back to the dorm more resolved and distant—time won. Time always won unless you acted faster than its erosion.
The realization arrived at 11:47 PM on a Thursday, sitting in the library pretending to study while actually tracking Dante's location on Find My Friends. Dante's dot had been at the gym for two hours. Unusual. Dante typically capped workouts at ninety minutes.
Adrian's phone buzzed. Text from Sage: Call me. Now.
Adrian packed up, walked outside, pressed call.
Sage answered on the first ring. "What's the endgame here, Adrian?"
No preamble. No casual lead-in. Just the question, sharp as surgery.
"What?"
"The endgame. You date Isabella until graduation, then what? Pretend you don't love Dante for the rest of your life? Marry her to prove a point?"
Adrian's jaw clenched. "I don't love—"
"Don't." Sage's voice cracked like a whip. "Don't lie to me. You've been in love with him since we were kids, you just called it hatred because that was easier."
The words hit like fists. Adrian stopped walking, stood on the brick pathway between library and student center, students flowing around Adrian like water.
"Even if that were true," Adrian said carefully, "it doesn't matter. He's with Marcus."
"Because you're with Isabella!" Sage's frustration bled through the phone. "You're both hiding behind other people instead of being honest! You think I don't see it? You think nobody sees it?"
"Sage—"
"No. Listen. I love you. You're my best friend. But I'm done watching you destroy yourself—and Dante—because you're too scared to admit what everyone else already knows. Figure it out, Adrian. Before it's too late."
The call ended. Adrian stared at the phone screen, Sage's name fading as the display went dark.
Adrian started noticing.
Small things. Details Adrian's hypervigilant attention catalogued without conscious decision.
Dante and Marcus didn't post couple photos anymore. Adrian scrolled through Instagram—Marcus's last photo of them together was three weeks old. Dante had never posted about the relationship at all, but Marcus had. Past tense. Had posted. Not anymore.
Dante came back to the dorm most nights. Even when Marcus texted asking Dante to stay over—Adrian saw the messages light up Dante's phone—Dante made excuses. Too much homework. Early morning practice. Needed his own bed. Always something.
At the intramural basketball game Tuesday, Marcus had shown up to watch. Sat in the bleachers with other varsity players. But Dante—on the court, supposedly focused on the game—kept looking at Adrian. Not at Marcus in the stands. At Adrian. Playing against a different team entirely but tracking Adrian's movements like magnetic north.
Marcus stopped coming by the dorm. Used to show up three, four times a week. Now: nothing. Two weeks of absence so complete Adrian almost asked about it before realizing how that would reveal Adrian's own obsessive awareness of Dante's schedule and visitors.
The signs accumulated. Data points forming picture Adrian didn't want to see but couldn't ignore.
Dante wasn't happy with Marcus.
The thought should feel like victory. Felt like ash instead.
1:34 AM. Adrian lay in bed, phone screen illuminating Adrian's face in the darkness. Google search bar blinking, cursor waiting.
compulsory heterosexuality
First result: article from queer psychology website. Adrian clicked.
"Compulsory heterosexuality refers to the societal pressure to perform heterosexual attraction regardless of actual orientation. Many individuals, particularly those raised in environments where heterosexuality is assumed default, may genuinely believe themselves to be straight while experiencing same-sex attraction as something else—admiration, jealousy, intense friendship, or even hatred."
Adrian's stomach dropped.
New search: repressed sexuality signs
"Common indicators include: fixation on a particular person of the same sex disguised as rivalry or competition; discomfort with physical proximity that reads as antagonism rather than attraction; relationships with opposite-sex partners that feel emotionally flat despite checking all the 'right' boxes; excessive attention to a same-sex person's romantic relationships with others."
The list described Adrian's entire existence with disturbing precision. Clinical language for eighteen years of calling it something else.
Another search: rivalry as masked attraction
"In psychology, we observe cases where romantic attraction manifests as competitive antagonism, particularly when the attracted individual lacks framework for understanding same-sex desire. The competition provides socially acceptable reason for obsessive attention and intense emotional investment."
Adrian set the phone down. Picked it up again. Searched: psychological effects long-term emotional denial
"Chronic denial of authentic feelings creates sustained psychological stress. Individuals may experience depression, anxiety, difficulty forming genuine intimate connections, and a persistent sense of living someone else's life. The longer the denial continues, the more entrenched the defense mechanisms become, and the more difficult honest acknowledgment appears."
The words glowed on the screen. Indictment in academic language.
Adrian scrolled. Found article titled "The Hatred Paradox: When Enemies Are Actually Lovers."
"Sometimes the person you think you hate is actually the person you're afraid to love. The intensity of hatred often mirrors the intensity of potential love—both require enormous emotional energy and constant attention. The question becomes: why does this person matter so much? What would it mean if the hatred was actually fear?"
Adrian closed the browser. Opened it again. Read more articles. Fell deeper into the rabbit hole of psychological frameworks describing exactly what Adrian had lived without language for it.
The research should feel like discovery. Felt like drowning.
Because if Adrian admitted this—if Adrian acknowledged that eighteen years of rivalry was actually eighteen years of mislabeled love—then what? Confession risked rejection, sure. That was obvious danger.
But it risked something worse: complete loss. Even if the rivalry was toxic, at least it was reliable. At least it meant Dante stayed in Adrian's life, stayed constant, stayed present. What if honesty destroyed even that? What if Adrian confessed and Dante recoiled, disgusted, done—not just with the maybe-relationship but with any relationship at all?
Adrian could lose everything. The one constant across eighteen years. The person Adrian knew better than anyone, measured himself against, structured his entire existence around.
Risk losing Dante completely for the possibility of—what? Love? When Adrian didn't even know if Dante felt the same way anymore, if Dante hadn't already moved on despite the signs suggesting otherwise?
The phone's screen went dark. 2:47 AM according to the clock on Adrian's desk.
Adrian lay down. Stared at ceiling. Counted water stains—seven plus one shadow, eternal fixture of sleepless nights.
Across the room, Dante's bed. Dante's shape under blankets. Breathing pattern not quite right for sleep. Too controlled. Too steady.
Adrian watched for fifteen minutes. Dante didn't move except for breathing. But the rhythm was wrong. Dante was awake.
3:04 AM.
"Are you awake?" Adrian whispered.
Pause. Long enough that Adrian thought maybe Dante would ignore the question, pretend sleep, maintain the fiction.
"Yeah." Quiet. Careful.
Adrian's heart hammered. Throat tight with everything Adrian couldn't say, didn't know how to say, had spent eighteen years not saying.
"Do you ever wish things were different?" Adrian asked. Vague enough to be safe. Specific enough to matter.
Long silence. Longer than before. Adrian counted breaths—his own, Dante's, the way they synced despite distance.
Then Dante turned. Rolled onto his side, facing Adrian's bed across the narrow room. Eyes catching ambient light from the window, reflecting like an animal's in darkness.
"Every single day," Dante said.
The words hung between them. Simple. Devastating. Acknowledgment that Dante was unhappy, that Dante wished for different circumstances, that whatever Dante had with Marcus wasn't enough and whatever Dante didn't have with Adrian was a daily loss.
Neither spoke again. The silence stretched, but different quality now—not uncomfortable, not tense. Just... present. Both awake, both aware of the other's wakefulness, both wishing for something different without ability or courage to specify what.
Adrian lay on his back. Dante stayed on his side, facing Adrian's direction.
Minutes passed. Maybe ten. Maybe twenty. Time moved strangely in the darkness.
Adrian heard when Dante's breathing finally shifted into actual sleep. Heard the change from controlled steadiness to natural rhythm. Watched Dante's silhouette relax incrementally as consciousness released its grip.
Adrian didn't sleep. Lay awake until 5:30 AM when pre-dawn light started bleeding through the window, turning darkness gray.
Something had shifted. Adrian felt it even if Adrian couldn't name it. Some barrier eroded. Some truth acknowledged even without explicit words.
Every single day.
Dante wished things were different every single day. Not occasionally. Not sometimes. Every day. Daily awareness that current circumstances weren't what Dante wanted, daily wishing for alternative neither of them had language to describe.
Adrian's research came back. The articles. The frameworks. The clinical descriptions of rivalry as masked attraction, of compulsory heterosexuality, of long-term emotional denial.
Adrian had been calling it hatred for eighteen years. But hatred didn't keep you awake at 3 AM wishing things were different. Hatred didn't make you score eighteen points only when the other person was guarding you. Hatred didn't make you write award-winning papers about how rivalry masks attachment.
Hatred didn't feel like this—like drowning and flying simultaneously, like everything and nothing, like the most important thing in the world.
The window was closing. Time was winning. Every day Adrian stayed with Isabella was a day Dante moved further away. Every day Dante stayed with Marcus was a day the possibility shrank.
Entropy. Distance. The very real chance that Dante would move on completely, that the window would close, that "every single day" would become "used to, every single day, before I let go."
Adrian had to do something. Had to act faster than time's erosion. Had to risk the loss for the possibility of—
What?
Love. The word sat in Adrian's chest like a stone. Heavy. Undeniable.
Love. Not rivalry. Not competition. Not eighteen years of justified hatred.
Just love. Mislabeled, channeled wrong, called by every name except the right one.
And Dante—lying three feet away, breathing the steady rhythm of sleep after admitting every single day—Dante might feel the same thing. Might have been feeling it all along while they both called it something else.
The gray light strengthened. Morning arriving whether Adrian was ready or not.
Adrian had eighteen years of rivalry to unlearn. Eighteen years of calling it hatred to reframe as fear. Eighteen years of competition to recognize as obsessive attention that was always, fundamentally, about love.
And Adrian had maybe—maybe—a chance to fix it before time won completely.
If Adrian could find the courage to try.