Chapter 32
32
For all of Aaron’s confidence, Ezra hadn’t expected to hear from Jonathan anytime soon.
So it’s a surprise when he raps his knuckles against the doorframe of Ezra’s office the day after Aaron’s parking lot pep talk. “Hey.”
Ezra almost drops his laptop. “Hey,” he says, and it’s such a breathy exhale that he mentally kicks himself. “How—how are you doing?”
Jonathan shrugs one shoulder, mouth pulling up into a lopsided half smile. “Managing,” he says. He nods to Ezra’s backpack, half open on his desk. “Is this a bad time?”
“No.” Ezra zips his bag. “I was going to head home, but I’m not—I’m not in a rush or anything.”
Jonathan nods slowly. He hesitates, thumb tapping almost uncertainly against the doorframe, and then straightens up, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Come get a coffee with me?”
It’s the easiest question Ezra’s ever answered, even if he is about to go get his heart broken. “Sure.”
They walk out to the parking lot together. The hallway is wide enough for there to be plenty of space between them, but Jonathan drifts close enough that their shoulders brush all the same. He curls his fingers into the straps of his backpack, and manages, by some miracle, not to reach for Jonathan’s hand. There’s a rare chill to the late spring air as Ezra follows Jonathan to his car without protest, sliding into the passenger seat. Silence stretches out between them. He leans his head against the window and watches Jonathan drive as subtly as he can manage, taking in the line of his jaw, the tousled sweep of his hair, the way he defaults to propping one arm against his window, holding the wheel with the other with deceptive indifference.
They stop at a red light, and Jonathan glances at him, then clicks his tongue with an exasperated affection that catches Ezra off guard, reaching over and swatting at Ezra’s knee where he’s curled up in his seat. “Stop that,” he says. “If we crash, you’ll get your legs crushed.”
“We’re not going to crash,” Ezra says.
Jonathan knocks his wedding ring once against the steering wheel, pointed. Ezra puts his feet on the floor.
The light turns green. Ezra counts his breaths in four-part rhythm, trying to lean into the place where he’s settled into calm and quiet over the past week. The now-shared knowledge of Ben’s ghost hovers between them, as surely as if he’d been there in the car for real, and Ezra has to resist the urge to twist around to look into the back seat to see if he’s there after all.
“I’ve been going around in circles,” Jonathan says, sudden and without preamble, like he’s decided, mid-thought, to start speaking aloud.
Ezra waits to see if he’s going to say anything more. When he doesn’t, he prompts, hesitantly, “About?”
“Guess,” Jonathan says, voice tinged with a tart sort of crossness that’s almost a relief to hear. Jonathan’s already proven himself a far nicer person than Ezra could ever hope to be, but it’s oddly soothing to be reminded that he isn’t all-forgiving. The SUV ahead of them takes a left turn with heartbeats to spare before the light turns red, and Jonathan stops the car at the intersection with a sigh. “I’m still trying to figure out why you just wouldn’t tell me from the start.”
I’m a massive coward seems like the wrong answer. “At first I just didn’t think you’d believe me. I mean, I don’t usually lead with ‘Hey, just so you know, I’m a little psychic and it’s a huge pain in the ass.’?”
“That’s…not unreasonable.”
Ezra looks down at his hands. “And then I was just being selfish.”
Jonathan snorts. “Right.”
“What?”
“You’ve never been selfish for a second since I met you. To the point where I think whoever taught you the definition of the word should be beaten with a dictionary.”
Jonathan executes the smoothest parallel parking job Ezra’s ever seen, then turns off the car. He unbuckles his seatbelt and then, instead of getting out, twists in his seat to fix Ezra with a look that offers no outlet for Ezra to do anything but stare back.
“I don’t know what you want me to call it, if I can’t say I was being selfish,” he says when Jonathan’s expectant face becomes more than he can handle. “I liked you. Like you. Not past tense. And you make me feel…made me feel…” He trails off, has to intentionally relax his hands in his lap when his fingers curl of their own accord to press crescent pinpricks of pain into his palms.
We don’t do that anymore, he tells them firmly, and rubs his palms over his thighs instead. “I didn’t know who he was at first, and then when I did, we were already— I knew there could be something. And I knew if I told you, I’d lose you.”
“You didn’t know that,” Jonathan says. “You assumed that.”
“Right, sure,” Ezra scoffs. “Definitely would have gone well. ‘Hey, guy I’ve been tripping over myself about, I know we just met and we’ve got this weird chemistry going on that I’m pretending not to notice, but have I mentioned I can see ghosts? And one of them is your dead husband? Who also happens to be the son of my mom’s girlfriend, because my life is an absolute soap opera?’ Yeah. Sure. None of that would have ended with you dragging me into your car and driving me to the nearest ER with an open psych bed.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’d make Aaron drive you.” He sighs, though, and drops an elbow to the edge of the steering wheel so he can rub his forehead. “And…fine, when you put it like that it sounds nuts, but I guess I figured you’d go for tact.”
“Tact is for straight people,” Ezra says without thinking, and then, at Jonathan’s startled bark of laughter, smacks his head back against the seat, because honestly . “See? This is why I don’t say things!” Jonathan shakes his head, but he’s chuckling, a reluctant, exasperated sort of laughter that’s nonetheless soft at the edges, and Ezra can’t fully bite back his own smile, apologetic as it is.
“I am sorry, though,” Ezra says, when Jonathan stops laughing at him. “I know that’s probably not worth much, at this point. But I’m sorry.”
“It’s worth more than you think.” Jonathan rubs his thumb over the worn metal of his ring, the gesture so familiar now that it doesn’t hurt anymore to see it.
Then, to Ezra’s surprise, he holds out a hand, palm up, across the center console.
It’s an obvious, unmistakable gesture. Ezra can’t help but stare.
“Not a trap,” Jonathan says dryly, like he can read Ezra’s mind, and wiggles his fingers.
Ezra flushes, caught, but reaches back.
Jonathan laces their fingers together—like it’s easy, like it’s nothing. Ezra can see, without even having to try, why Ben loved him so much even death wasn’t going to make him leave him behind. His grip is steady. It shouldn’t feel like coming home, but Ezra feels it all the same. For a moment Jonathan just runs the pad of his thumb over Ezra’s knuckles, his face unreadable. “Can I ask about him?”
Ezra swallows. “Of course.”
Jonathan takes what must be a steadying breath. Ezra waits, but no question comes. He looks less like he’s trying to think of something to say, and more like he’s trying not to cry. Ezra squeezes his hand.
“He loves you,” he says. Because that’s something he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Jonathan looks at him. “He told you that?”
He didn’t have to. “Yes.”
“You said the ghosts don’t talk.”
Ezra shrugs. “He’s different. I don’t know why.”
A soft, sad smile curves Jonathan’s lips. It’s a Ben-specific smile, one for sharing memories and wishing for more time with someone who didn’t have any other time to give. “Sounds like him,” he says, voice damp around the edges. “Stubborn.”
There’s nothing Ezra can say to that.
Jonathan takes a shaking breath, and then another, and the glow of the streetlight is enough for Ezra to see his eyes shining. His thumb runs over Ezra’s knuckles again and again, and Ezra isn’t sure if it’s absent or intentional, automatic or an attempt to self-soothe.
Finally, his voice little more than a whisper, Jonathan says, “I wish I could talk to him.”
The words are brokenhearted, thick and choked with grief, and Ezra can’t stop himself from leaning across the console to draw him into a hug. It’s cramped and uncomfortable, an awkward-angled reversal of the roles Ezra hadn’t realized they’d fallen into, Jonathan crumbling into Ezra’s shoulder instead of the other way around. Ezra doesn’t think about that, or the thought that this might finally be the last time he holds him like this at all. He just runs his fingers through Jonathan’s hair and wraps his other arm tight around him, and when Jonathan buries his face in the crook of his neck, Ezra kisses the top of his head and holds him tighter.
He’s been a fixer his whole life, but this isn’t getting Becca to school on time or running notes back and forth between his parents when they didn’t want to be in the same room. I chose you, he thinks, holding Jonathan tighter. I’d choose you again. I’d choose you on purpose.
“He loves you,” he whispers into his hair, and Jonathan’s hands fist in the back of his shirt, tense, his breath catching against Ezra’s skin. “He loves you so much.”
Jonathan shudders. “I know,” he rasps.
“I’m sorry.”
“You said that already.”
“Not for not telling you. For…” Ezra swallows. “Because I’m here, and he’s not.”
For the space of a single heartbeat, Jonathan stills. And then he draws back enough to look at him with dark, unreadable eyes. He searches Ezra’s face for so long that Ezra has another I’m sorry on the tip of his tongue, but before he can say anything, Jonathan cups his face and pulls him in, kissing the apology out of his mouth and then some, until Ezra’s clinging to his forearms and dizzy enough to be grateful they’re already sitting.
“Don’t,” Jonathan says, raw and hoarse. He doesn’t let Ezra move any farther than a breath away from him. “Okay? Don’t apologize to me. Not for that. Not for being here. Not when I—” He makes that broken half-laughing sound again, pressing their foreheads together. “Not when I just started feeling alive again.”
Oh.
Oh.
“Okay,” Ezra says. He feels whatever the opposite of sinking is. Of drowning. Is this what it feels like to fly? “Me, too.”
This time, he’s ready for Jonathan to kiss him. And the next time, and the next. And the next.
“You’re buying coffee, though,” he says, stopping Ezra from chasing his lips with a flat, pointed hand draped over his face like a starfish.
Yeah, that’s fair. “Okay.”
“And dinner.”
“ Okay, ” Ezra says, not bothering to try to bite back a grin. “And breakfast tomorrow, I’m guessing?”
“Aren’t you presumptuous,” Jonathan says. He squishes Ezra’s cheeks, then lets him go. “Come on.”
“Do you even want coffee?” Ezra asks. “It’s, like, nine o’clock at night.”
“And yet,” Jonathan says, and flashes a grin over his shoulder, so bright and gorgeous that Ezra’s hand slips right off his door. “Here we are.”