Lmao he likes him he just keeps telling himself he doesn’t cuz of the fact that all the things and people he loved as a kid left him. Since he's a traumatised kid it was easier to link the fact that the things he liked would leave/die because he liked them in the first place, it was easier to blame himself rather than some complex situations that a child would have no chance of really fully conceptualising in the first place.
He kept making excuses to see Jerry to try and prove that he didn’t like him and when he finally admitted to himself that he liked Jerry, Jerry nearly drowned so yo boi ended up blaming himself even more
guys help idk if ML likes jerry or not :/