50. George
George
The apartment on Warren Avenue sits on the fourth floor, about halfway between Lance’s clinic and my school. East-facing windows usually throw light across the kitchen counter until late morning, but now the day is already sliding into evening.
We moved in two months after we stopped pretending this wasn’t permanent.
His clinical binders live on one side of the shelf. My engineering textbooks sit on the other. The middle filled itself over time—shared notes, loose papers, whatever either of us left there and never bothered to move back to our own sides.
The place stays neat without ever feeling stiff. The deep blue couch is broken in just right. Lance’s darker throw blanket stays folded over the arm. My coasters actually get used. One of my spare hoodies is always on the back of a chair because Lance keeps stealing it.
Nothing matches perfectly, but it works for us.
The whole group finally comes over to see the new place. The energy shifts the second the door opens.
Vince and Adrian show up first. Vince hands me a bottle of good bourbon and gives me a quick tap on the back as he passes it over. Adrian comes in behind him with Thai takeout and a couple of boxes of dumplings, and the smell hits the apartment straight away.
Trevor and Becca roll in right after, juggling beer, pastries, and warm garlic bread. Shoes get kicked off by the door. Voices fill the space fast.
We’ve only got a table for four, so we spread out across the living room.
Lance drops onto the rug with his back against the couch and reaches for the game controller on the coffee table.
Adrian immediately flops down beside him and snatches it out of his hand, pulling up my Need for Speed garage on the TV.
All my cars are lined up across the screen before anyone can stop him.
“Adrian,” Lance warns, shoving his shoulder.
Adrian just grins and starts flipping through the cars. “Dude, why the hell are all your cars completely stock? You study and build engines, and this is what you run in the game? Sad-ass factory ones?”
“Someone reset everything,” I mutter from the couch, narrowing my eyes at Lance. “Even the levels I already passed.”
Lance throws his hands up, all fake innocence. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. Must’ve been a glitch.”
Adrian barks out a laugh. “A glitch called Lance, maybe?”
“Touch my saved file again and I’ll hide the controller in your ass,” I say to Lance, but I’m already fighting a smirk.
The rest of us take the couch and the armchair, plates in hand, passing food around while everyone talks over each other.
I’ve got carnitas slow-cooked and pulled apart, set out with cilantro, lime wedges, and a stack of warm corn tortillas that keeps disappearing before anyone builds a proper plate. We’re all reaching across for food, arguing over who gets the last of something, then handing it over anyway.
Marcus shows up at almost seven, the doorbell cutting through the noise. Lance pushes himself up off the rug, steps over Adrian’s outstretched leg, and pulls the door open. Marcus stands there in a dark suit, jacket still on, the day written all over him.
Lance steps back to let him in, slapping his back. “You made it.”
“Barely,” Marcus says, already loosening his tie as he walks past him.
He pauses just inside and takes in the room in a single pass.
“Sorry, I’m late,” he says, dropping into the armchair. “Long day.”
“Sounds brutal,” Trevor replies, passing him a glass of wine.
“Brutal barely touches it,” Marcus answers before taking a long sip. His gaze moves around the room until it lands on Lance and me. “The place suits you.”
Lance smiles easily at his brother. “Thanks.”
The evening rolls on with its usual loud warmth as everyone catches up. At one point Becca sets her wine glass down and clears her throat.
“Trevor and I have a bet,” she says, eyes sparkling. “We’re settling it tonight.”
Trevor groans. “Darl, come on. Not here—”
She ignores him completely. “During charades night at our place, you two disappeared into the bathroom to ‘check on George’s wound’ after Trevor bumped into it.”
The room goes dead silent at the air quotes she just made. Adrian lets out a sharp laugh and shakes his head. “Oh, you’re kidding!”
“What I overheard through the hallway wall,” Becca continues, grinning directly at us now, “was definitely not a dressing change. And I’m a hundred dollars richer if I’m right about that.”
Heat floods my face. Lance’s expression lights up like pure trouble.
“He was doing the dressing,” I mutter, already sounding guilty as hell.
At the exact same time, Lance says casually, “You lost this one, Trev.”
We lock eyes. The tension snaps and the whole apartment explodes.
“It’s your fault,” Lance says, pointing at Trevor sounding deeply disappointed. “You’ve known me for how many goddamn years and you still bet on me keeping it in my pants? That’s on you, man.”
Trevor throws both hands into the air. “I trusted you! Thought maybe, just once in your bloody life, you’d act like a civilized human being in somebody else’s fucking house!”
Vince snorts from the couch. “Your first mistake was expecting Bradford to act civilized at all.”
Trevor sighs like a man walking to the gallows and pulls a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet, slapping it onto the coffee table beside his wife. “I had literally just cleaned that bathroom.”
Lance responds, dry as a scan report, “I swallowed. Cleaned up after too. I can be civilized, Holloway.”
I reach over and smack the back of his neck. The laughter kicks up another notch. Becca tucks the money away with a victorious grin while Adrian laughs so hard he has to wipe his eyes while trying to balance his plate on his lap.
Even Marcus, who missed the original incident and clearly wishes he still had, struggles to keep a straight face. He just shakes his head, like this is somehow not surprising.
“I had to finally kick Lance out of my apartment after walking in on them twice,” he says. “Once on my couch, then on the kitchen counter. I didn’t use either for a while.”
I drag my hands down my face, the memory of getting caught on top of his brother hitting all at once—just pure embarrassment.
Vince just laughs under his breath and reaches over to pat my back, like this is all mildly inconvenient at best.
Lance keeps eating like nothing happened. “I’d like to think I made a graceful exit, brother. Happens to everyone.”
“No, it doesn’t,” everyone in the room says, shaking their heads.
We break into smaller conversations. I head to the kitchen to bring out the last portion of carnitas.
When I return to the living room, Lance is already seated on the couch, one arm draped over the back.
He glances up the moment I step back in, that quick check he always does whenever I leave the room.
I lower myself onto the floor at his feet, close enough that he can feel me there.
Without looking, he leans forward slightly, letting his hand brush lightly against my shoulder.
He takes a generous bite of the carnitas and lets out a deep groan of appreciation.
“So good, George,” he says with his mouth full, the way he always does whenever he eats my cooking. “Marry me.”
I don’t answer that the way I usually would.
I set my plate aside and then move into his line of sight. It’s only a small shift, but it pulls his attention completely. I bend a knee beside him.
I reach into my pocket and pull out the simple titanium band I’ve been carrying for weeks. Black, wide, brushed matte finish.
“Yes,” I answer him, nervous, holding the ring between us.
Lance looks like he’s forgotten how to move.
“What are you doing?” he asks, half-smiling thinking I’m messing with him.
Trevor lets out a sharp breath, Becca’s hand comes up to her mouth, and Adrian goes still beside him, eyes wide on the ring.
“George,” he says, his tone roughening, “Are you serious—”
I’ve turned these words over in my head more times than I can count, but they come out plain because that’s the only way I know how to say something this big.
“The first night I met you and brought food to Trevor’s dorm, I didn’t have enough for four, so I gave you most of mine. I remember feeling glad doing it. After that, every time I showed up with food anywhere, my first thought was always you—whether you’d eaten, whether you were okay.”
Lance’s eyes grow bright with emotion he makes no effort to hide.
“I didn’t understand it then,” I add. “I do now.”
He exhales sharply, a quick hitch in his breath, and closes his eyes. When he meets my eyes again, every wall he ever kept up is gone.
“You’ve been there when I was too stubborn to ask for help. You held me together. You even saved my shop.” My voice drops lower. “You make me happy, Lance. Annoyed as hell sometimes, but happy. So yeah…marry me.”
Lance wipes at the corner of his eye, shaking his head like he’s physically trying to wrangle his shit together and failing. A breathy laugh escapes him.
“Jesus Christ, G,” he says, “You see me at my absolute worst—when I’m being a petty, sarcastic asshole just to piss you off—and you’re still here. That’s it for me. That’s fucking everything.”
He locks eyes with me, bright and a little wild.
“You’ve got the biggest heart. You give and give more, even when no one asks, and you deserve to be happy more than anyone I know.
” He grabs my face with both hands, thumbs rough against my jaw.
“I love you, George. I love you more than I know what to do with. So yes… I’m fucking marrying you, Big Guy. ”
Around us, Becca makes a sound like she’s crying. Trevor lets out a loud cheer. Vince pulls Adrian closer without taking his eyes off us. Marcus lifts his glass in a small toast.
I show him the ring. He looks at it curiously until he sees a subtle line engraved on the inside.
“What is that?” he asks.
“The coordinates of the ridge.”
He pauses, looking like he’s deep in thought.
“You picked the ridge,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Even after that—”
“Especially after,” I say.
It’s the same ridge where everything between us once blew up and said things to each other that hurt.
But then I think about all the road trips that somehow always led us back there, the long stretches of road where neither of us needed to say a damn thing. That place belongs to us more than it ever belongs to that one last fight.
“I love you too,” I whisper, smiling, as I slide the ring onto his finger. It fits perfectly.
Lance stares down at it for a long moment, then pulls me up and kisses me hard, deep and full of everything we are. He laughs softly against my mouth, and I smirk into it, catching his grin mid-kiss. When we pull back, he rests his forehead against mine.
“You don’t get to take that back,” he says under his breath.
“I won’t.”
“And I’m absolutely telling the kids you’re the one who proposed.”