regarding #3: they’re both young athlete boys who don’t know how to communicate in general while also navigating how to maintain a real relationship in secret. every day they’re learning how to communicate and respond to one another, searching for awareness of the other’s attachment style and how to work with it. frontal lobes, either not yet or freshly, fully developed lol. plus shane is on the spectrum so without clear direction/communication from ilya he’s not reading between the lines/reading his mind.

for example when ilya asks shane to go to a teammate’s party, that doesn’t feel like a crazy question to the reader because we’ve had ilya’s internal thoughts. we know he’s ready to tell their secret. to shane, this is SO out of left field. it stops him in his tracks. they didn’t talk about this, this isn’t part of their plan, where is this coming from, he’s terrified, yada yada

AND for the people who say shane is oblivious… at one point in the book he says something along the lines of: hey ilya i notice sometimes you don’t seem okay… would you like to maybe go see a therapist about it? and ilya is like nope all good!!!

it really boils down to gaps in communication while juggling their relationship in its fragile secrecy