❝In these dreams it's always you: The boy in the sweatshirt, The boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me from jumping off the bridge. Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued. Your jeep. Your teeth. The coffee that you bought me.❞ -I Had A Dream About You, Richard Siken Twenty-four-year old Eli Forbes isn't sure where he's headed after college graduation. He might know that he's getting a degree in Exercise Physiology in the spring, but fuck if he knows what he's going to do with it. For now, he's content with spending his winter break helping at his aunt and uncle's coffee shop. Sebastian Steine, a quirky wayward spirit, is double majoring in comparative literature and theater at Berkeley University. As all around him his friends begin to settle down, get married, and start families of their own, it becomes clear to Sebastian that he still doesn't have a clue as to what he's doing with himself. He's a floater and that's not as pleasing as it used to be. When the two meet at Forbes Family Coffeehouse, they begin to realize they have a whole lot more in common than just their favorite order of a simple black coffee.

For seventeen years, Henry’s always been content with a cup of tea and a good book. But when he decides that he wants to write one of his own, he realizes he lacks something to write about. So, when the enigmatic Winter McLane transfers to his school, he thinks he may have finally found what he’s been looking for.

And she is everything. A/N: A short story I wrote quite a while ago. Posted for old time's sake. Cover illustration belongs to the admirable Paweł Kwiatkowski.

To his peers, Liam Kingsley has it all-girls, good looks, loving parents, and a best friend that'll fight for him until the death. Little does the school know that Liam's faking it. Faking it all. Fearing the loss of everything he's worked so hard to achieve, Liam forces himself to constantly keep up the act of a charming young bachelor. But when Liam becomes friends with the mysterious Connor Hawkins, a dreamy eyed misfit, he begins to lose all the control he's worked so hard to maintain for seventeen long years. Eventually, Liam realizes he knows very little about the mysteriously quiet boy, despite all the years they have attended school together. Connor breathes new life into Liam, and soon Liam discovers that when love, lies, and lust intertwine they can have consequences. Consequences he's not quite sure he's ready for just yet.

In a very grey part of an unknown city, Natalie An Fisk lives with the sole thought of becoming someone. She simply didn’t expect it to happen the way it did. After meeting seventeen-year-old George Carrington Barclay II, an avenger of rightful justice and a supposed philosopher of the despondent human mind, Natalie is thrown into a universe where watches are not simply watches, an Elizabethan queen is out to control history, and the world is infinitely more than it seems. A/N: Unedited first draft.

Reid has been homeless on the streets of New York for years now, fighting for cash in clubs and sleeping in empty buildings. With his special ability, Reid could have whatever life he wanted, but chooses not to. When Sam meets Reid on the subway, she has a hard time forgetting about him, and not only because he keeps showing up in the least likely of places. Sam doesn't know it at first, but the boy she just met is about to show her a whole other world.

Have I ever had thoughts of suicide? Sure. But they were never serious. Mainly just wondering what would happen to me, ceasing to exist; what’s it like? Or would I even cease to exist? I wonder: suicide’s a sin, right? But is it because we quit too soon, we hurt the ones we leave behind, or is it really because those who do so are jumping the gun, finding out before we’re supposed to? Peeking at the present before Christmas. Suicide. Straight shot to hell. Took a shortcut, disqualified from the race. No chance at the real prize. Makes you wonder, huh? But what if you’re killed, and you’re not ready? If you linger, is moving on a sin?