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They’re on the porch swing, sitting far enough apart for there to be plausible deniability if Bitty’s parents get home from running errands early, when Bitty’s phone, sitting between them, lights up with a text from Mama. Bitty’s eyes are drawn to the message — “Is there anything you boys need while we’re at the store?” — but Jack’s eyes are drawn to something else.
“Am I your lock screen?” he asks, just one corner of his mouth lifted in the beginning of a smile. He slides it closer, picks it up like he wants a better look.
“You weren’t supposed to see that!” Bitty yelps, grabbing the phone out of Jack’s grasp and clutching it to his chest, screen facing away from Jack.
“Why?” Jack’s confusion is evident in the way his brow is knit together. He motions for Bitty to turn the phone around. “Is that …?”
“It’s us,” Bitty says, feeling a little embarrassed. Lardo took the picture of Shitty, Bitty, and Jack at graduation and the full version is on Bitty’s Twitter, but it’s just Bitty and Jack who fill the screen now. In the absence of photographic evidence of him and Jack as an actual couple, he’d opted to crop Shitty out.
He knows it’s silly, and a little dangerous, to make a photo of just the two of him his lock screen. What if one of his parents picks his phone up by accident? Bitty’s pretty sure he can convince them it’s a just a picture he likes, if it comes to that. It’s not like their casual pose suggests anything more than friendship. He hadn’t thought, though, that he’d have to explain it to Jack. Now it just seems silly. Sure, they’ve kissed, and they Skyped almost every day between their first kiss at Samwell and Jack arriving in Madison to celebrate the Fourth of July (including one very memorable session that Bitty is grateful took place while his parents were out at a football team fundraising dinner), but Skype sex and kissing are one thing. Maybe they’re not at the “Make Your Boyfriend Your Lock Screen” stage of the relationship yet. Especially since they aren’t technically boyfriends.
But darn it, they’re something. And it’s not like Bitty’s been able to stop thinking about it for more than five minutes at a time since Jack kissed him more than a month ago, but seeing this picture of them together — even in a not-officially-together capacity — lends some extra heft to the idea that Jack is real, that this thing they’re starting is real, that they’re a ‘they.’ It’s something to hold onto when Bitty can’t wrap his arms around Jack and hold him close.
Jack smiles softly, an expression Bitty is learning to read as an endearment, one Jack reserves just for him. He's seen it a lot these past two months, always through his computer screen, and seeing it in person makes Bitty light up inside. “Why were you trying to hide it? I like it. It’s just … it’s not the best picture of us together, is it?”
Just like that, the shaky ground beneath Bitty suddenly feels stable again. “I cropped Shitty out,” Bitty confesses. “I don’t have many pictures of the two of us together.”
“Well, maybe it’s time to change that,” Jack says, thumbing down to open the camera app on Bitty’s phone. “How about a selfie?”
Bitty slides over, closes the distance between them until he’s tucked up under Jack’s arm. Neither of them has to fake a smile; they’re both so giddy over finally being together that they haven’t stopped smiling since Jack arrived. Bitty had no idea Jack Zimmermann was capable of smiling so much, and if anybody had told him a year ago that they’d be sitting here doing this, he wouldn’t have believed them.
“I like it,” Jack says as Bitty fiddles with the filter. There’s no plausible deniability here, no question about what they are to each other. Jack took a series of pictures, but in this one he’s looking at Bitty, his expression undeniably smitten. It’s his soul laid bare, and Bitty’s expression is equally lovestruck. Bitty knows neither of them can share it publicly. Not yet. Maybe they can take one more, put their sunglasses on to cover up their heart eyes. That will look casual, right? Just two bros hanging out and drinking beer on a hot summer day.
But Jack is reaching for Bitty’s phone again and sending it to himself, taking his own phone out of his pocket and doing something that looks like …
“Mr. Zimmermann, am I going to be your lock screen now?” Bitty asks flirtatiously, a little surprised Jack is using such a personal picture.
“You have been for a while,” Jack confesses, showing Bitty his current lock screen: It’s a photo he took of Bitty in Faber just before graduation and lord, if Bitty weren’t already completely in love with this boy, well, this would clinch it. “I just think it’ll be nice to have one of us together.”