Chapter 37
Ren
Eight Months Later
Miller’s giant, sprawling apartment with the multi-million-dollar views really did turn out to be not that bad, after all.
It turned out to be my favourite place.
And not just because my favourite person bought it when he was young and silly and had no real worries before life stole something so precious and irreplaceable from him.
But because it really is just the right size to fit all the pieces of both of us. All my reasons to be me. Miller, all that he is—awake and vibrant and fun and so alive—and all the things we’ve tried together and still want to.
A horrible artistic rendering of a jellyfish hangs in the living room on stretched canvas with paint splotches, fingerprints, and both of our signatures scrawled in the corner from a paint night we did with Imani and Joel.
Below it, a sideboard we found at a vintage market, my record player in the middle, the surface littered with half-burnt candles and struck matches.
Victor, sitting right beside a framed picture of Miller and Matthew on their draft day.
And laid in front of that, a fossilized flower Imani gave to Miller the day Matt would have turned twenty-eight.
In our kitchen—cutting boards propped up against the walls from all my failed attempts at learning different ways to chop vegetables, a bamboo mat we only used once when I thought it would be a great idea to learn how to make sushi.
It was a great idea, but not because I turned out to be some sort of rice-rolling savant.
Because all our rolls fell apart and we spent the night chasing each other around with sushi rice in our hands.
Unfair, actually, because he’s so much faster than me and he caught me every single time I tried to run away.
Hanging above our bed, looking out over messy sheets we never bother to straighten because there’s nothing better than cotton still wrinkled from the body of the person you love so much—two framed lists. One for him, and one for me.
It even fits our two best friends—who became a really unlikely pair of friends themselves, out on the patio, even though it’s February.
“What are they doing out there? It’s cold out.” My fingers hover above my laptop, and I roll my shoulders back, always set in the curve of his smile now, and when they hit the leather of the couch, Miller wraps his arms around me from behind, chin resting near the crook of my neck.
Miller angles his head, and the waves of mahogany hair curling around his ears brush across my cheek. He gives a laugh. “Think she was talking him through some sort of . . . uh, physics of pitching book she just read before he reports to spring training. Said she needed room to demonstrate.”
“Wouldn’t he—know that stuff?” I frown, looking away from my computer to see Imani through the patio door, miming some sort of throwing motion with her arm while Joel nods along, looking vaguely confused.
“Probably.” Miller’s thumbs tap against the jut over my collarbone before he presses his mouth to my ear before he stands. “Quit stalling.”
“What if I don’t get in anywhere?” My hands leave their ever-permanent hovering position over the keyboard, wrapping around Miller’s forearms.
He shakes his head. “Not going to happen.”
“Okay, but what if I get in and it’s somewhere . . . bad?” I trace a pattern over the ridges of muscle hidden beneath the sleeves of his sweater.
“Doesn’t matter.” His hands tighten against my shoulders. “I go where you go, remember? I’ll go back and play in the minors if I have to.”
Tipping my head back, I arch a brow. “Do they have sexiest shortstop competitions in the minors?”
“Yeah, and I’ll probably win those too.” The corner of his mouth kicks up, amused, and his eyes flash before he jerks his chin back towards my waiting laptop. “Baby. Just get it over with.”
“What if I go nowhere?” I ask, some of those old worries and insecurities poking up from somewhere very deep that, even though it doesn’t get much sunlight anymore, might always be there.
“Then I go nowhere.” He leans down, a wave of hair falling across his forehead when his mouth moves over mine. “Don’t care. As long as it’s with you.”
“Okay,” I whisper softly, pressing my lips to his before he drops a kiss to my nose. “Close your eyes.”
His fingers dig into my shoulders, and he tips his head back, groaning. “Ren, I swear to god, if you don’t open the email—”
“Fine!” I frantically smash my fingers to the keyboard, but I slap my hand to cover my eyes as soon as my email opens. “I can’t—you look.”
He taps against my collarbone again, his stubble dragging across my cheek when he bends down to look over my shoulder, and even though I can’t see it, I can feel when his full lips tip into a grin—all of me stretches towards it.
Oxygen, sunlight, and everything a person like me could need to grow and flourish live in the tilt of his mouth.
That same mouth moves against my ear again, and I hear the smile in his words. “UChicago paleobiology graduate program mean anything to you?”
I peek through my fingers. “You’re kidding.”
“I don’t kid about dinosaurs, Ren,” he murmurs, burying his face in the crook of my neck. “You know that by now.”
“Oh—I—Oh my god.” I finally drop my hand, scrambling closer to the computer screen to read the email, but my eyes start to blur when I get to the first line and see the word congratulations. “I got in.”
“Obviously.” Miller bites at my throat. “Can I start calling you doctor?”
“No.” I snort, wiping away tears.
He grins against my skin. “Can we play doctor, then? What if I get hurt during spring training? I’ll need you to patch me up.”
“Unfortunately, I think the only thing I’ll ever be qualified to do is patch you up with consolidants.”
“That’s alright. Think you already did all the fixing I need.
” He pulls his mouth away from my neck when I drop back against the couch, turning to look up at him, and his thumbs sweep across the pillows of my cheeks, catching all the tears.
And I think I might hear some in his voice, all rough, when he says, “I’m so proud of you.
Every day—but uh, right now especially.”
My hands find his. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Yeah.” His mouth tips to the side, and he lowers it to meet mine. “You could have.”
“But I didn’t want to,” I whisper, and I don’t think, as our mouths move together, when the tears on my cheeks meet the ones on his, that there’s ever been a love like ours that can water you and help you grow into exactly who you’ve always wanted to be.
The patio door creaks open, and the cold air rushes in with two of my favourite voices in the world, and I do think there are all sorts of love that help you grow.
“They’re always doing this,” Imani mutters, and I can hear her eye roll.
Miller’s mouth shifts into a grin against mine, but he keeps kissing me.
Joel makes a noise of agreement. “Try sharing a fucking room with him when you’re on the road. The Facetimes. The inappropriate phone calls I can always hear? Hotel bathroom walls are paper thin. Don’t get me started on the text messages I’ve seen that make me wish I could burn my own retinas off.”
“I’d rather you didn’t do that. I have a lot of money riding on you this season,” Imani says sharply.
I sniff a laugh, and one of Miller’s thumbs brushes the last of my tears off my cheeks before he pulls back, grabbing my shoulders and shaking them. “Sorry. Ren was just checking her email. Got some good news and got, uh, carried away.”
Imani’s eyes fly to my open computer screen, and she straightens her glasses, waiting.
“UChicago,” I breathe, a smile splitting through the soil of me when it stretches across my face.
She gives a shriek before clearing her throat, composing herself with a shake of her head.
“Best place for vertebrate paleontology in North America. No surprise.” Her hand rubs across her chest absentmindedly, and I think, tears gather in her eyes too.
She turns to Miller with a frown. “And you . . . I guess that means—Chicago is . . . fine, I suppose.”
Miller blows out a breath, amused. “I’ve appreciated your, uh, loyalty, this last season Imani. It’ll be tough to lose after this year.”
“You can still be loyal to me.” Joel gives her a sideways grin before turning back to Miller. “One more season together then?”
“Looks like it.” Miller’s fingers dip below the neck of my sweater, and he taps them against my skin in time with my heart.
Joel angles his head, all competition. “Think we can go for another World Series before you defect?”
“Miller Colson-Burke. Three-time World Series champion. Loving partner of future Dr. Ren Jacobs, PhD. Father of Victor?” I smile up at him before lifting my brows. “I like the sounds of that.”
The planes of Miller’s face soften with his smile. “Yeah. Me too.” His palm splays against my chest, and my heart thrums against my rib cage, desperate for the only hands that ever held it properly. He jerks his head towards the kitchen. “Come on. Lots to celebrate.”
And because this giant, stretching monstrosity of an apartment has enough room for the four of us to sit down on the living room floor, we do celebrate, legs stretched out and tangling like roots on trees, passing around a bottle of champagne.
Miller winks at me, dropping his head against the couch with a lazy grin, tattooed hand gripped loosely around the neck of the bottle, and not for the first time, and not for the last, I come up with another reason why I always, always want to be me if she’s someone who gets to love him.