31. Alexei
31
ALEXEI
D rinking soulmate tea out of my sober dope mug, I creep through the mansion in search of my dad. He’s been helping me work on one of the spare bedrooms as of late, but a few days ago, I found him creeping around the south wing of the house. We never go there, so I’m not sure what he’s doing, but that’s where I find him.
Just standing there, hands on his hips in a typical dad pose, looking at the door to the south wing like it’s stumping him. Measuring tape is tucked into the back pocket of his jeans, sagging them down.
“How very super dad of you,” I say, startling him.
He looks at me, huffing. “I smelled your tea before you even got here. Is that ginger?”
Yes, and it’s warming me up on this windy, cool day. “What’re you doing? Planning for this section next?”
He hums, walking through the door. “Thinking,” he says.
I follow. “About what?”
He leads me through the connecting rooms. “Well, it’s like its own house within the house. I got the old blueprints from Town Hall, and apparently, this was a living quarter for a nanny or something many years ago. Has its own bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Self-sufficient.”
“Yes,” is all I say because that’s obvious and I don’t know why he needs to point it out.
“We could make it into an apartment.”
“To rent out?”
He glances at me sort of dubiously, like Gage. “Sure.”
“Dad.”
He sighs, taking the tape measure out to fiddle with it. “It has everything you’d need to live here. Comfortably. The bedroom is small, but the rest of it is oversized. Big kitchen, but needs some upgrades, massive dining room and sitting room, and the bathroom needs a remodel, but it’s fully functional.”
Oh . I sip my tea. Sip it again. “For me? You’re thinking of fixing this place up for me so I can keep living here?” Flattered, really.
“What? No.” He huffs. “For me.”
I squint at him.
“Alex, I bought this place for us. At first, I thought we’d fix it up so we could… bond or whatever, and then we’d sell it and split the profits. Then you fell in love with it, and I know you don’t like to admit that, but I can see it whenever you work on anything here. I don’t want you to have to sell it because it’s… you.”
“It’s us,” I tell him. “And you don’t have to move into an offshoot apartment. Why can’t we just live together like we have been?”
He smiles at me, and it’s honestly so heartwarming that it coats me in nerves and fuzzies. He’s so terrible at being compassionate that I love it even more whenever he tries. “Because you have a soulmate now.”
“I do.” I narrow my eyes.
“And someday, you’re going to want to live with him. What better place than the one he’s also fallen in love with?”
The back of my throat burns, and my eyes do that weird watery thing. “Dad!”
“What?” He laughs. “Don’t come at me for trying to plan for your soulship or whatever you call it. I’m invested in it.”
“Soulmateship. Soulship sounds cooler, though,” I mumble. “But you don’t have to move. I don’t want you to move. I know it’s weird, but I like living with you. Some families do that, so why can’t we?”
He snorts. “I’ll only move a hundred feet away and will be literally in the same house. Unless you want me out of the house altogether? Totally okay if you?—”
“No. I don’t want you out. I just said that!” Because I love my dad, and I love the good years, and I don’t care that most adults don’t live with their parents. I want to! Because this house is big enough for thirty, and three is hardly a crowd, and I know Gage would be fine with it. “We haven’t even gotten to the ‘I love you’ part of our soulmateship yet, so moving and living together isn’t on the radar.” Even though I bombarded him with an open-door policy in our future house.
“You will,” Dad says. “Soon. And this is going to take months, maybe even a year, to fix up and build, so we better start planning, right?”
“Fine,” I huff. “We can plan and build it, but we aren’t making any moving decisions until… later. Sometime way later in the future because… because I’ve lived with you my whole life and I don’t really wanna stop now.”
He turns to hide his emotions, so I turn with him, not letting him hide from me. “You sure?”
“As shit.”
Awkwardly, he grabs my shoulder and pulls me and my sober dope mug to his chest for a horrible rendition of the best hug ever. He’s here, alive and well, hugging me. It might be one of the happiest ten seconds of my life.
“Plus, I need someone responsible here to make sure I don’t burn the place down with my blowtorch.”
Dad laughs, and then we plan the apartment.
Since Gage took the advice to measure his progress in projects instead of time, he’s been throwing himself into the library. Brian is a fairly handy guy, so he’s here, in my house, talking library plans with my soulmate and even my dad.
Becky’s little baby bump is not so little anymore. She’s farther along than I thought, but she only just started showing because… well, maybe because she was skin and bones and wore baggy clothing, so I didn’t notice. I’m detail-oriented, but I don’t tend to stare at bellies.
“Here,” Dad says, handing Becky a tea in a mug that says, ‘I came. I saw. I conquered.’ It fits her.
“Thanks.” She smiles at him and sits next to me while we watch our men work. Gage is trying to be a manly man, but he’s not the best at it compared to Brian, so it’s entertaining. “Are you coming tonight?” Becky asks Dad.
Dad nods, sitting with us. “Yeah, I’ll meet you all there.”
Because they go to meetings together now. They’re like this little band of misfits that all fit together pretty well and support each other. Brian and Becky require the most support, but I’m realizing that maybe they’ve never really had true friends before, and this is a first for them, so they’re clinging to it hard. And Becky really likes my one and only friend, Stefan. She’s the only one of us who speaks fluent ASL, so they get along pretty well. I know a few phrases, but I’m a hand talker in general, so my hand motions are usually unclear.
I understand what Gage means now when he says he feels settled. Sitting here, meshing my boyfriend with his former enabler friends turned healthier friends with my dad… and with me, feels rewarding. Like, who knew I’d be chummy with these specific people, feeling so content and excited about a library?
“It’s six feet,” Gage tells Brian.
“Those are meters, dumbass.” Brian takes the tape measure from Gage. “It’s just under twenty feet. We can make that work.”
Gage blushes, but he looks back at me with a smile on his face. We went to an appointment with Natalie earlier, and she’s super pleased with his progress and awareness, and I straight up told her his self-awareness is his sexiest trait. And his abs. And his eyes. And his everything. But yeah, sure, the self-awareness.
“Alex, where’d you put that coffee table?” Brian asks me. “It’s done, right?”
I restored the fuck outta that coffee table, so I smile to show my pride and stand up. “I’ll get it.”
“I’ll come with you,” Gage says, tripping over the toolbox. “It’s big and heavy and handsome.”
“Me or the table?”
Gage doesn’t answer. He takes my hand, palms together without our fingers linked, because he’s an old dog, but I was able to teach him new tricks, and skips down the hallway with me.
“Alexei, oh my god! I can’t even with the coffee table! Do you know how awesome it’s going to look in there with my ladder?” he asks, beaming at me as we walk down the hall to the basement stairs. “Right? You know it, right?”
Of course I know it because I’m confident in my work and I trust his work, even if Brian is the better handyman. But what I trust most is how much pride Gage takes in the mansion. Without even being fully aware of it, he’s fallen in love with a house that doesn’t belong to him. I think it’s because I live here, and deep down, his soul knows to love anything that’s a part of me, just like mine knows the same.
“And when we get the reading chairs?! God, Alexei! We’re going to sit in there and journal for hours. After many, many sexy lessons that hopefully progress into more actual sex, of course.” He smirks, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek. He trips and kisses my eyeball instead. “Oop.”
I grab his hips to steady him at the bottom of the stairs, absolutely enthralled by the way he looks at me. He’s still talking about libraries and tables, and it’s the same thing that happened at the diner that night. Sparks are flying, his mouth is moving, and I’m having a moment of pure electricity and rightness right here in the damp basement.
“Gage?”
He stops inside the door to my workshop, sucking in a breath to make up for his rambling. His hands squeeze mine and he smiles. “Alexei?”
I’m complicated, so instead of saying three words, I say, “I’ve fallen in love with everything about you. Including the fried meats.”
His smile falters and his jaw drops. Not only that, but his eyes widen and his body goes entirely still. He stares at me, and I don’t feel awkward because it’s nice when he takes in the moment. I’m not nervous because I know he loves me too, and when he finishes being shocked and awed, he’ll tell me.
“Even the fried… hang on a sec.” He drops my hand to reach into his pocket, pulling out his phone. I peek at the screen, seeing him pull up an app that tracks the lunar calendar. “It’s a full moon.”
I nod. “I know.”
“Is it suddenly allowed on a full moon?”
“Yep.”
His phone disappears and he slaps his palms on my cheeks. “You love me? Even when I get bacon and sausage?”
“I judge you for it, but yeah, I do.”
“What about when I get seven coffees and forget to drink my water?”
“Your skin will age so much earlier than mine, but yeah. Even then.”
He presses his hands harder against my cheeks, eyes seriously starting to water. “Would you eat a slice of bacon for me?”
“Only if it saved your life.”
“Holy fuck, Alexei. That really is love.”
“I know.” I nod in his grip. “Soulmate-level love. I’m confessing.”
“Alexei! Come on!” he shrieks.
“What?”
“I was gonna… and then you… I’ve been—gah!” He laughs hard, even though he’s sort of crying. “I had a whole thing planned and you swooped in here like a heroic rambler and threw me so off course. Never stop, Alexei.” He smiles at me. “Look at the bottom of the coffee table.”
So dubious, but my chest is tightening with nerves and good anxiety as I kneel to peer under the coffee table. I pull a sticker off the bottom, holding it up. “This?” It’s a ‘fried meats are our friends’ sticker.
“No. Not that one.” He snatches it. “That one was just a joke. Keep looking.”
Getting flat on my back to look at the underside of the coffee table, I see something etched into the wood. Like real carved up with a knife style. “You defiled my antique coffee table?! Gage!”
“I did,” he admits. “Read it.”
A+G= 3
He carved our initials into the wood like it’s a romantic tree?! Holy, I love him! I stare at it for so long that my vision gets blurry through watering eyes to match his. They’re so blurry and so happy that I almost miss the other sticker. It says, ‘look up.’ “Up where?” I ask Gage, scanning the whole underside of the table.
“I hadn’t really considered you’d be on your back and under the coffee table when you read that, so… here.” He takes my hand, hauling me to my feet, big brown eyes full of love. “Up.” He motions upward.
I scan all my shelves and the walls in my workshop. I even glance at the ceiling. When I don’t see it, Gage rolls his eyes at me and points right at the sign he made me. The piece of wood that says, “Alexei’s Old Things’ with ‘new’ angled above the word ‘old.’ The sign is gorgeous. He finished it a while ago, and he and my dad hung it in my workshop one night. Thinking back on that night, Gage was extra dubious. I study the words, the scrolls, and the border. He soldered the design and the shop name into the wood, and other than a little shaky line on the first letter, the rest is immaculate.
I drag a stool over to it, climbing on to get a real good look. At eye level, the details are so much more clear. His nerves on the first letter, the detail of the font he used, and the skill that shows he’s such an artistic person. I smile at it, and then I gasp. Gasp! Hand on my chest, eyes wide, mouth open, gasp!
“Gage Rossum!” The stool shakes and wobbles because I’m shaking and wobbling. “This! You… ohmygod! This has been hanging here for weeks! More than weeks. Over a month!”
“I know,” he says, taking my hand to pull me back down.
Because the border, which I thought was just intricate designs, is actually words. I love you. Soulmate. I love you. Soulmate. Alexei. Gage. Soulmateship. I love you. All blended together to seamlessly create a dark and even border.
“You told me you love me this long ago and I never noticed?” I ask, an emotional sob making my voice squeak. “Do you know how upset this makes me?”
He nods, smiling because he knows I love a romantic love confession, but he also knows I’m mad for not noticing. Because I’m detail-oriented, and I once told him I don’t like people who don’t pick up the obvious. This is obvious! Now that I’m looking, it’s so obvious, and I missed it because I’m not as detail-oriented as I think.
Meeting his eyes, I just stare at him while I let tears drip down my cheeks. He doesn’t get uncomfortable. “This is so romantic.”
“I know.” He smiles.
“Tell me. Say it out loud.” I hiccup.
He smiles, showing me his white teeth. His deep brown eyes bore into mine, and he clears his throat. “Okay, are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
He walks us backward until I’m leaning against the workbench. “Bit of a long-winded confession. Just in case you get tired.” He nods at the support behind my back. “Alexei, listen to me, alright?”
“You already said that part.”
“Right. Right, okay. Despite having a family who loves me and a healthy environment to grow up in, I lived a life of turmoil because of myself. I never really understood myself, you know? And that led to all the chasing and the numbing. But since I’ve met you, there isn’t a damn thing I want to numb, and there’s nothing left to chase because you’re… right here. Everything I tried to feel all my life, I’ve got it now. Because of the way you understand me, see me, and just… get me. For the first time ever, I’m settled and happy and in love.”
I smile at him. “You been planning this speech for a bit?”
“Yes.” His hands fall to my shoulders, giving me a gentle squeeze. “My point is, as much as it elates me that you’re my sober dope, you’re so much more than that. You're complicated and intriguing. You’re hypocritical and snarky. You’re a judgemental dick with the biggest heart and the most intense eye contact. You’re weird, I’m weird, and we’re weirder together. You’re my soulmate, and saying I love you doesn’t feel like enough. But I do, Alexei. I just really love ya. I love you.” He watches my lips, and I take a moment to let everything sink in.
It’s Sunday, our day, in our future house that we both love. It’s more romantic than the street because we’ve put so much of ourselves into this structure. It’s where things started and things will grow. Gage loves me. Not some idealized version of what and who he wants me to be, but the real me. Alexei Kopacek, neurotic rambler and social cue ignorer. And I love him, Gage Rossum, addictive personality and artistic-minded genius.
Something more comfortable than warmth fills me, but so do nerves. Because we’re gonna live life together! We’re gonna make mistakes and fight and have awesome times that lead to even better times. We’re going to have to figure out what to eat forever! Every meal! For-ev-er. My god, it’s going to be horrifying!
And I can’t wait.
“So?” I ask him, looking into his eyes. “We’re in love from this moment forward?”
“From many moments ago and moving forward.” He leans in, pressing his lips to mine. “Think I fell for ya when you asked me what I was addicted to.”
I grin against his mouth. “What are you addicted to, Gage?”
“Mm, my sober dope.”