68. Eli #2
“Because I thought I’d break you,” I admit.
“I’m not made of glass, Eli.”
“I know.”
“Then act like it.”
“I can try,” I say, and just as I lean in to kiss him again there’s a knock at the door, followed by the sausage-and-biscuits timbre of Milo.
“I brought you both wet wipes, clean towels, and electrolyte drinks. Not sure if either of you needs a postcoital electrolyte, but if you don’t take care of your sodium you’re asking for a headache.”
Micah tries to sit up, but his limbs have conspired to mutiny. “Come back in ten minutes,” he calls.
“I’ll be back in six and a half, but I’ll knock extra loud,” Milo says, and I actually believe him. The footsteps retreat. I shake my head, still laughing, and look back down at Micah.
His head is on my chest, his fingers drifting over my ribs, aimless patterns, like I’m his favorite fidget toy.
“This family of ours,” he says. “The relationships we all share—they’re . . . interesting.” He looks up at me, eyes the color of a washed-out sky in the afternoon light.
“How so?”
“The way we can all be in love with Sage. And she’s in love with us. But then you and I . . . ” He lets the words trail off, and all I can do is squeeze him tighter.
“I don’t want to share you.” I swallow hard, then add, “With the guys.”
“I know. You don’t have to.” He keeps looking at me, waiting for me to expand on that. It takes me a moment to find the words.
“I love Sage like a fire,” I say eventually. “Everyone can see it. It’s loud and obvious and half the time it’s destructive and I’ve never pretended otherwise.”
“I see that,” he says. No bitterness. Just fact.
“But I love you like—” I stop. Not because I don’t know the word.
Because the word feels too small for what I’m trying to hold.
“Like the thing that’s always there. Like gravity.
Like the reason I don’t fly apart into pieces.
I love you like the ground under my feet, Micah, and I have been so stupid—so monumentally, catastrophically stupid—because I thought being careful with you meant being good to you.
And all I was doing was making you feel like you were less. ”
“Eli—”
“You’re not less. You were never less. You’re the reason I can love anyone at all.
Before you, I didn’t know how. I had the violence and the discipline and the compartments and none of it added up to knowing how to be with another person.
You taught me that. Not with words. Just by being there.
Just by—staying, and meeting me wherever I was. ”
His hand finds the side of my face. His thumb traces the line of my jaw, the way Sage traces it, the way I’ve seen him do it a hundred times with that quiet, patient focus that is uniquely, irreplaceably Micah.
“I stayed because there was nowhere else I wanted to be,” he says.
“Even when I made it hard?”
“Especially then.” He leans forward and kisses me. Slow. Unhurried. The kiss of two people who have finally arrived at the same place after years of parallel travel.
“Don’t put me in a box,” he says against my mouth. “I know you have them. I know it’s how your brain works—the teacher box, the killer box, the Sage box. Don’t make a Micah box. Don’t decide what version of Eli I can handle and then give me only that. Give me everything and let me decide.”
“Everything’s a lot.”
“I’ve met everything. I’ve been watching it from the next room for years. I can handle it.”
I pull him closer. Press my face into his neck. Breathe him in, the scent I fall asleep to on the nights he’s beside me and miss on the nights he’s not.
“Okay,” I say. “Everything. No boxes.”
“No boxes.”
“And if I slip—”
“I’ll tell you. Loudly. And then we’ll do whatever we just did again until you remember.”
“That’s a solid incentive structure.”
“I thought so.”
We lie there. The afternoon light shifts across the floor. I can hear the TV downstairs—the renovation show still going, volume cranked, and I realize Milo turned it up to cover for us. Which is either considerate or a power move, knowing Milo.
Downstairs there’s a TV and a man on a couch and no work. There hasn’t been work in eight days. I keep reaching for the box where I put the mission and finding the lid already down.
Right on cue, the knock comes. Loud. Theatrical. A full percussion sequence that could only belong to one person.
“It’s been six and a half minutes,” Milo announces through the door. “I’m respecting the boundary, but I need you to know it’s costing me emotionally.”
Micah drops his head to my chest and laughs. “Come in, Milo.”
The door opens. Milo appears holding a tray—two electrolyte drinks, a stack of wet wipes, fresh towels, and what appears to be a plate of toast cut into triangles.
“Postcoital care package,” he says, setting the tray on the dresser.
“Electrolytes, because dehydration is the enemy. Towels, because I respect your sheets even if you don’t.
Toast, because carbs are required when you’ve just had your brains fucked out.
” He surveys us—tangled, wrecked, the bed a disaster zone.
“You both look terrible. Like, thoroughly destroyed. Ten out of ten.”
“Thank you, Milo,” Micah says.
“You’re welcome.” He leans against the door frame.
There’s a beat where I watch his face for any trace of hurt—the sting of being left downstairs, the complicated mess of wanting something and watching it go to someone else.
If there’s any hurt there, Milo has buried it beneath a full-wattage grin bright enough to power a small city.
“For the record,” he says, “I could hear everything. And I have notes.”
“Absolutely not,” I say.
He pulls out his phone and checks the screen. “First note: the headboard. Guys. Invest in a wall mount. The knocking is atmospheric, but the drywall is going to need patching.”
“Milo.”
“Second note: Micah, your vocal range is genuinely impressive. I didn’t know you could hit that register. Have you considered a cappella?”
Micah throws a pillow at him. Milo catches it, hugs it to his chest, and keeps going.
“Third and final note.” His voice softens a fraction.
Just enough that both of us hear the shift underneath the comedy.
“I’m glad. Genuinely. Because . . .” He gestures between us.
“This. Whatever wall came down in here. It needed to come down. And I’m glad I got to be the idiot who accidentally knocked it over by asking about a blow job. ”
The room gets quiet. Not awkward. Warm.
“You’re not an idiot,” Micah says.
“I’m frequently an idiot. But sometimes my idiocy serves a higher purpose.
” He straightens up. “Now. I’ve eaten all the gummy bears, rejected three structurally irresponsible platform designs, and developed a comprehensive theory about why that renovation show uses so much shiplap.
So whenever you two are done being disgustingly in love, I’ll be downstairs.
With no one to hold me because everyone is out right now. ”
Micah sits up. “Milo. Come here.”
“I’m not getting in that bed. I know what’s on those sheets.”
“Get over here.”
Milo rolls his eyes but crosses the room. Micah grabs his wrist and pulls him down onto the mattress. Milo yelps, flails, and ends up wedged between us in a tangle of limbs.
“This is unsanitary,” Milo says. “I want you both to know that.”
“Shut up,” I say, putting my arm over both of them—Micah on one side, Milo on the other—and for a few minutes nobody talks. We just lie there in the afternoon light, three men on a wrecked bed, breathing the same air and letting the silence be enough.
Milo’s phone buzzes. He checks it without moving his head off Micah’s shoulder.
“Sage says she and Holden are stopping at the store on their way home. She wants to know if we need anything.” He pauses. Grins. “Can I be the one who tells her you two are in love now?”
“Tell her we need milk,” I say.
“I’m telling her about the passion and the tears and the declarations of forever.”
“Milo.”
“Already sent. She’s typing. There are a lot of emojis happening. I see a fire, a peach, and what I think is a—yep, that’s an eggplant and a bunch of water drops and fireworks. Classic Sage.”
Micah buries his face in the pillow and laughs, and it’s so bright and beautiful that I can’t help but lean in to kiss him again.
“Whoa! Okay.” Milo untangles himself and slides off the bed, and I’m quick to drag Micah closer.
“Looks like, uh . . . I’ll just go back downstairs—maybe change this shirt first because I think I got someone’s jizz on me.” Milo heads for the door. “Have fun, lovebirds, and don’t forget to hydrate.”