It sounds like a rhetorical question, Freddie thinks. But even if it's not, Freddie's can't answer out loud. He's choosing empty hook-ups over been told over and over and over again that he's not good enough to stick with. And he doesn't care. It's nothing he doesn't already know. It's just tiring.

Noah's still touching him, fingers lightly petting along his skin and Freddie tries not to focus on it, how kinda gesture it is. How fucking fleeting.

"My parents met at school," Freddie says, finally meeting Noah's eyes again. "Dated for three years and got married before they were twenty. They've been together now thirty-five years. So I know a thing or two about happy endings." He doesn't mention that he'd met someone back at school, too. The person he thought he'd spend the rest of his life with. He'd met him and fallen in love and had three years of the best sex of his life, telling himself the entire time that as soon as he graduated, they could tell everyone. He could have just what his parents had, a future with someone who made him feel like the best person in the world.

Except none of that happened. He graduated and moved to London and no one ever know. Gregory continued teaching. Got married. Had kids.

He doesn't say any of it. Can't even now. Not even his parents ever knew, not even after all the business with the picture and scared little Gregory leaving town.

He doesn't say it because he can't. But he can think it and Noah will understand.