Chapter 19 Landon
LANDON
It was hard to sleep at all that night, after the day’s excitement, because I didn’t want it to be over, not ever. Still, there was only so late the body could keep going, even after the best day.
Maybe especially after a long day of walking and music and everything I loved.
I woke to the scent of coffee permeating the air, and it felt like one of those perfectly cozy fantasies about hot cocoa in front of the fire as it snowed outside.
I was nice and warm in my own blankets, surrounded by the scent of Dean, and coffee, and just .
. . warm. A different kind of warm than just having the heater running or a fuzzy blanket.
When Dean came back in, wearing just his boxers and carrying two mugs of coffee, it got even warmer, in more ways than one.
“Hey,” he said, swinging himself down onto the bed until his back rested on the headboard next to me, somehow without putting the drinks down or spilling a single drop of coffee. Then he handed me one. “Milk, right? You got a cappuccino, so I figured not so much sugar.”
I smiled as I took the cup he’d held out for me, pulling it against my chest and breathing deep. Perfect. How was he perfect?
“The poem on your fridge is pretty great,” he said, out of nowhere, before taking a drink and looking away.
Poem on my fridge?
Oh, he meant a silly magnetic word set I’d bought and screwed around with because the apartment had felt too empty.
Also, why was he acting shy all of a sudden?
“Um, thanks? I was just screwing around.”
“You write a lot?”
And that? Well technically, I did write a fair amount, or at least, I had once.
I’d mostly stopped since things had settled in San Francisco, but especially when I’d been down back in Boston, I’d written a lot of my feelings down.
I still had the stack of journals to prove it.
I’d never much made that much effort to put it in any kind of specific poetry format with meter and specific numbers of beats—villanelles and I had not been best buds in college—but I had always liked words.
Especially since most of the ones I used in work were utilitarian and boring, pretty ones had always felt like a luxury. So, freestyle poetry it had been.
I set my coffee on the nightstand, rolled out of bed, and started going through the boxes I’d put in my closet. It only took a moment to uncover the specific notebook I thought was there. A tiny thing with a wood pattern on the front, and an embossed gold foil leaf.
Without any kind of theatricality, I tossed it over to Dean, who caught it with one hand. “It’s all a little maudlin, and I won’t say I won’t be embarrassed later, but I wrote a lot when I was struggling with my family and fiancé and stuff.”
He blinked at me for a moment, leaning over to set his own coffee down, looking at the book like it was a treasure chest that someone had offered him on a random Saturday morning. “Seriously? I can just . . . you don’t mind?”
I crawled my way back up the bed and snatched up my perfect cup of coffee, which was worth more to me than all the words I’d written in that book.
“I don’t. I also don’t know if I can recreate it if you like it.
I’m not miserable anymore. But . . . I got into that hole”—I waved at the book—“because people I cared about were keeping secrets. Keeping secrets isn’t worth the pain it causes. ”
He bit his lip, opening the book and paging through, and . . . was he excited? That was weird. “You . . . you’re really good. You know that, right?”
Was I?
That was a weird idea.
“I’m an IT guy, Dean. I’m not”—I waved a hand around, indicating nothing in particular.
“No, but you are.” He held the book up in front of him, and started to read.
It was strange, hearing my own words from .
. . well, I wanted to say it was long ago, but it had only been a few months.
A few months before that I’d been writing about a darkness in my soul and storms on the horizon and .
. . okay, when he said the words aloud, adding meter and his gorgeous voice, it actually did sound pretty good.
He looked back up at me after a moment, waiting, like there was something important I was missing.
All I could do was shrug helplessly. “I mean, if you can use it, then you should? I’m not .
. . I don’t feel that way anymore, so it doesn’t feel like something I need to keep hidden.
” I leaned against him, looking at the words in my own handwriting, and it was strange, just how far away they felt.
“If I were writing poems now, they’d be a total cliche.
Coffee and cuddling in bed, wearing your shirt, your beautiful smile, and just .
. . how I’ve been waiting my whole life for this perfect day. ”
He blinked, staring at me, and I winced. “Unintentional rhyming, sorry.”
“No, but . . .” He jumped up and rushed out into the main room, coming back with his own tortured notebook, jotting things down for a moment, muttering to himself as he worked.
It was weird, but somehow, utterly adorable.
After a moment, he grinned up at me. “I got it. Figured it out. You don’t have to write them, but you . . . you’re the words.”