Left to Point at

Two sunflowers track the light together all day. But at night, when the sun goes down, they turn toward each other instead.

For eleven years, Gruber has been the steady one. He's the rock, the protector, the best friend who catches Rocky every single time he crashes headfirst into a new disaster. But living in a tiny apartment together at twenty-one changes the physics of a friendship. Suddenly, the foot of space between their sides of the bed feels like a canyon, and Gruber is running out of ways to pretend he hasn't been quietly, agonizingly in love with Rocky since the sixth grade.

Loving Rocky has always been Gruber's default setting-but it's also a secret he's tired of keeping in the dark.

Enter Milo. Milo is steady, unhurried, and safe. He looks at Gruber in the literal daylight and isn't afraid to want him out loud. He offers a relationship that doesn't require tiptoeing around landmines or waiting for an emergency to be thrown a lifeline.

But just as Gruber starts to reach for a normal, uncomplicated future, Rocky's carefully built armor completely detonates. A single blurted confession breaks a relationship, fractures a family, and leaves Rocky kneeling in a gray parking lot with his entire universe burned to the ground. He didn't just find the courage to stop hiding-he threw his whole life into the fire rather than let Gruber go.

Now, Gruber is caught between two completely different kinds of warmth. There is the effortless, unashamed daylight Milo promises. And there is the raw, painstaking, hand-forged history of a boy who is finally, desperately learning how to show up.

When the smoke clears, anyone can face the sun. The question is, who do you turn toward when it gets dark?