Wrath

Chapter 5

Five

Ezra

I ’m awake a long time after Mills falls asleep, wrapped around me with his cheek against my shoulder. It’s so warm under his covers. He’s got the strobe light set to teal green, just a faint glow, like those blinking microbes in the ocean. My eyes shut and my mind drifts.

I can see Dad’s face—his eyes wide and his thin lips grinning—as we sit down at the table. I can still hear his voice as he says, “Well, who’s gonna give us a grandbaby?”

Suzanne’s jaw dropped, but then she laughed behind her hand.

Dad said, “Well, this is pretty awkward,” and then frowned and added, “Maybe it’s the pheromones. Like dad like son, eh?”

Mills looked like he wanted to sink through the floor. Suzanne laughed again, and that's what really broke the ice. Apparently my dad is sort of a comedic genius. Also, both of them are...well, not bigots.

Suzanne cried and told Miller she had figured for a while. When he asked why, she screwed her face up in a thoughtful look and said because he didn't look twice at some pretty girl babysitter she left him with when he was 13.

"I just... thought ," she said.“Mom’s intuition.”

Miller squeezed my hand under the table, and he almost cried again.

Dad, of course, had no idea about me. He asked if my mom knew, and all I could do was shrug.

My eyes sting now, in the privacy of darkness. I have a fucking dad who's not a fucking bigot.

What they said to us was fucking perfect . I think Dad's exact words were, "Be safe, respect each other. If you break up, nobody has to move out, so don't ask us for that. Be mature and figure out how to share the bathroom. I think if you break up, no post-breakup boyfriends at the house..."

Suzanne agreed.

They said they didn't want us hiding.

"You're both over-age, after all."

They didn't even fucking say "don't share a bed." Nothing like that. When we got up from the table, they both hugged both of us, and Dad murmured he was proud of me. Like he could tell I had wanted to protect Miller from them.

I can't even think about him saying that without getting fucked up. I feel so...old. And sad. Like, I should feel so free now, but it’s the total fucking opposite. I realize everything about me will always be marked by…what happened to me. Like that shit's all I am, and this with Miller, this with my dad and Suzanne being accepting—it's just playing pretend. Isn't real.

I can't have a real life like other people. How can I? I'm so fucked up. Every part of me is damaged somehow.

Then tears start to streak down my cheeks, and it hits me, the real gut-punch: I could have come here.

I went through all that shit when I could have simply moved in with Dad.

I didn't know.

I think about this comfy bed below me. I think about where I was. It seems wrong—so fucking wrong—that my dad doesn't even care I’m gay. My whole life could have been different.

I shut my eyes and try to focus on the weight of Miller's arm around me. Miller wants you. Your dad loves you. Everything's okay, Ezra.

I'm just...fucking sad. Christ.

I tell myself that it'll go away.

I stay awake till almost 3, and I look down at my arm, at what Miller drew. I want to do something like that for him. I let myself sleep, but set my phone alarm a little early. Miller is a heavy sleeper—unless I wake him up. By the time the alarm goes off, we're both on our backs, so I'm able to slip out of the bed and grab a pen out of his desk drawer.

I pick a smooth, pale spot on the inside of his forearm, near the crease of his elbow—where he left my already-fading infinity sign—and draw an angel with big wings, a halo, and some freckles.

The tickling of the pen's tip wakes him. He looks down and grins. All I can think is that he isn't mine to keep. There’s no way to believe all this…mirage shit. Life’s not that good.

I fight with myself in my head about it. Desperate to believe…but I can’t.

Dad and Suzanne are nice to us on Sunday. Suzanne cooks pancakes, and after that, Miller and I go out on the boat.

We end up in its belly on a blanket, looking up at the trees that hang over an isolated little inlet.

"I can't believe that's how it went down," he laughs.

"I know. Seems too good to be true."

"But it's not, angel. I promise. It's not."

Peace .

It's not the thing I thought it would be. It's not out of reach or unrealistic. Doesn't involve a different life, or turning into someone else.

It's...really small stuff. Like, I still have nightmares—this week, almost every night—but he's always right there. Miller. When I wake up, I see him, I feel his arms around me, and I come out of it. Leave it behind.

Football season's winding down, and it's been great. I can't deny that. What I like the most, though, isn't all the scouts and scoring touchdowns. (Although I do like that shit). I love the little stuff that's the same every game. Like all the rituals our team has—putting Pop Rocks in Brennan's locker—and the dumb halftime jokes. Walking out of the locker room to see Miller, and how we always race to my Jeep and drive straight to the old baseball fields.

Every Sunday, Suzanne makes us pancakes. At some point, she adds chocolate chips, and I liked them, so for a while, every Sunday they would get more chocolatey—with chocolate syrup and then whipped cream, and then those chocolate flakes those lunatics put in their "smoothies." I call them chocolate deathcakes, but I can't help eating four or five, covered in syrup.

I've been bulking the fuck up—even more than before. Miller and I work out on his bench in his room every other day, and I've got at least twenty pounds of muscle that I didn't have when I moved down here. Miller's gotten thicker, too. And tighter.He’s been working out with the team.

Saturday mornings, we go to his soccer games. Where he wears a helmet. He told his coach about the seizure—I think mostly just for me. Nobody minded. Not even the college scouts who came to see him play two weeks ago.

Saturday nights are movie nights...sometimes downstairs, sometimes in my room. When we do them downstairs, Dad and Suzanne skirt around us, like they want to give us privacy or something. But sometimes we see them smiling. They don't mind that we're together. Every day, it blows my mind.

Last week, Carl asked if my "depression" was because of being gay, and he said Mom had told him I was at Sheppard Pratt for four months. I didn't know she had. I mean, I'm not surprised...but when I first got here, I guess I didn't care what he knew.

I wasn't sure what to say, so I just told him "yes." He asked if I had talked to mom about it—like, come out—and I told him no; I told him that's because she's so religious. He seemed like he understood.

Dad said he thinks God would be happy about me being gay, and he would want me to be happy, too—not hiding or ashamed. Then yesterday, when I got home from school, I found this post-card-looking printout on my bed of a Jesus figure surrounded by a bunch of rainbow-colored sheep. There was a yellow sticky note on it that said "-Dad" and had a funny little smiley face. I don't know what that shit was, but apparently Dad is down with the rainbow.

"Ez?"

I jump, clutching the book in my hands, as Miller strolls into my room in just a towel.

"Hey," he says with a soft smile. He steps closer, tilting his head to read the book's spine. " The Color Purple . That one's pretty heavy, right?"

I nod.

His eyes move over my face—checking on me.

He sits on the bed beside me, leans his cheek against my shoulder.

"Don't be doing that," I whisper. We're leaving for Miller's Dad's house in...supposed to be ten minutes.

He rubs his cheek against me, tease that he is. "You can't feel my cheek without getting your dick up?"

I give him a light shove. "Yeah, I can't."

"Maybe I should suck you off," he whispers. "Hate to have this problem on the drive to Dad's."

Fucking Miller. He's got me out of my nice khakis—well, his—and on the edge of the bed, gritting my teeth to keep from groaning and then lying on my back, wrapping a leg around his shoulders as he sucks me so good I come hard enough to make him choke.

Then we're both laughing.

"Can’t let it be one-sided,” I say.

I blow him, too, and then we hurry to get dressed.

When we're stepping out onto the porch to go to his dad's, I miss a call from my mom. By the time we leave his dad's house four hours later, I've missed three calls from her. And I've got thirty-seven texts.

Fuck .

I don't turn the phone back on till Mills is sleeping. Then I slip onto the roof.