Free If Only by A. J. Pine

of the way. Only because he doesn’t expect it does his position falter. I throw open the door and storm inside, Noah following quickly after me.
    “What?” he calls. “It’s a valid question, Brooks!”
    I stop short and turn to face him. He skids to a halt milliseconds before knocking me over. His exhales tickle my cheek, but I don’t let his nearness distract me.
    “Why do you do that with my name?” I ask.
    He cocks his head to the side, and I hate the familiarity of it, that I can already tell this is his thing.
    “My name is Jordan, but you call me Brooks.”
    His brows knit together again, a small crease forming between them. “Isn’t Brooks your name, too?” I can’t tell if he’s teasing or trying to figure me out.
    “It is,” I say. “But no one except my best friend Sam calls me by my last name. It feels…personal.”
    Now he smiles, the maddeningly gorgeous sight too much.
    “You look like a Brooks to me. That’s all. If it bothers you, I can stop, Jordan. See? I have no problem calling you Jordan, Jordan.”
    I shudder and squeeze my eyes shut. “Stop! You can’t do this, go all hot and cold on me like that. You can’t be all sweet and funny and charming and have a girlfriend. And you can’t accuse me of anything more than knowing the simple truth. This year isn’t real. It’s a fantasy. Anything that happens while we are here ends when we return home in May.”
    We remain in our stand-off, close enough to repeat our train performance, neither of us daring to do it.
    “You’re dramatic,” he says.
    “I am not.” I pout. At least, I wasn’t before meeting him. But in one day he’s managed to get under my skin, and the person I thought I was doesn’t exist anymore. Somehow one kiss has turned me upside down and inside out, the level-headed girl I used to be lost in the turbulence.
    “Would it help if you called me Keating? We can level the playing field. I mean, I’m not actually requiring you to do it. Noah’s fine, too.”
    He speaks with such calm, but it only maddens me more. I’m not going to answer the question. I’m supposed to be freezing him out, not letting him in. Instead of responding, I try the door to a classroom, and thank L. Ron, it’s open.
    I walk in, and Noah follows. It’s not an intimate classroom but also not a sprawling lecture hall. Instead ten rows of desks face the head of the room where a small lectern overlooks the empty audience. Noah runs up to the front of the room and hops on top of it.
    “What are you doing?” The words come out as a whispered shriek. “You’re gonna fall, and someone’s going to hear us!”
    “Is that a concern for my well-being or for your own safety?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Come on. Whether you believe what you said, that this is some fantasy year, or you see it the way I do—a year of possibility—you have to admit this is the start of something. So get up on a desk and give me your best barbaric YAWP!”
    His words knock the wind out of me, just for a second, and it takes me several more to regain my composure before I look up at him.
    “You knew?” I pause again, trying to make sense of it all. He remembers my maniacal poetry quote from the bar, but I wasn’t quoting Whitman, per se. I was quoting a movie, a late eighties movie at that, and Noah knew it the whole time.
    “I don’t get it. Then you knew what I meant about your last name?”
    It makes zero sense, but I feel a knot in my throat. I swallow it, push it back down because he can’t see it, how everything between me and him aligns, everything except the freedom to act on it.
    None of this throws him off his game. He’s loo boy again, exuding Gatsby-like confidence with a smile all the way to his eyes.
    “I know that one of the best characters Robin Williams has ever played is Mr. Keating in Dead Poets Society . And I know that he and I share a last name and that you quoted him quoting Whitman last night. Other than that, I’m