Chapter Five

In the next day and a half, they only text long enough to agree on where to meet for lunch—a café near Alex's office that he knows has plenty of room for them and the books, and that won't mind if they hang out there for a while. The time they spend apart isn't much though, and as Alex showers and gets dressed on Saturday, he's still trying to make sense out of Elijah's reactions to everything that happened at the bar. Elijah had been so excited to invite Alex there, then surprised and relieved when Alex said yes, teasing when he arrived, certain when he first showed him the pictures on his phone, entirely unbalanced afterward, and then just plain strange when he brought up the two women asking about Alex while he was there.

For his part, Alex tries to convince himself he was only lost in the fact that he and Elijah had fully missed that they'd been reading the tentative beginning of a gay romance, and he's as eager to see where it goes as he is scared of how terribly it might end.

He quiets that part of him that's eager and scared to find out how Elijah's doing, or what this love story might mean to either of them now.

They pull into the parking lot seconds apart, and when Elijah climbs out of his truck, shoves his hands into his hoodie pocket, and tilts his head just so, Alex thinks maybe Elijah feels the same way. It's a terrifying thing to believe in—the idea that they might be on the same page—but Elijah's still standing with the car door open, watching and waiting, so Alex grabs his messenger bag and goes to him, trying not to crowd him there, even if there's an instinct to keep moving closer.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah," Elijah says, glancing toward the building. "There's a patio, too?"

"Mmmhmm. I've spent many an afternoon there, working on various columns."

Elijah turns around to pull two books from the passenger seat, then he closes the door and nods to Alex, who leads them inside. They order at the counter—Alex paying for lunch after Elijah had taken care of his dinner and drinks Thursday night—and then they take everything out back, the weather just cool enough that most people have opted to stay in. He sets his bag down on the chair between them and Elijah's books get piled on top of that, and then they relax with their sandwiches and just talk for a while.

A very long while, as it turns out.

Alex learns Elijah is the youngest of three, his sister, Vanessa, and her family living in Connecticut, his brother, Austin, and his family in the Bay Area, which Alex remembers from the garage sale. His parents divorced years ago, and neither one lives far away, but Elijah's never been all that close to either of them, his mom and dad somehow always part of his life and also not, and Alex can almost see the bruises left behind by wounds Elijah doesn't even recall.

"Honestly, I was always closest to my grandpa. My grandma too, I guess, but she died when I was in high school," Elijah says. "The rest of my family has never been bad to me. It just never felt all that good to be around them, either."

"All the good memories were the ones you said you had at the house."

Elijah smiles, a sad little thing wrapped around his straw as he drinks. "Yeah, lots of them. Again, mostly just hanging out there all the time when I was an awkward kid. Sleepovers whenever I wanted—"

"And a Hans Christian Andersen story before bed?"

"Exactly. And the poetry when I was a little older," Elijah tells him, running a finger along the spines of both books. "After my grandma died, my mom stepped in for a while to help—and I mean, she was grieving too obviously—but then it seemed like it was just my grandpa and me, at least when I wasn't being a typical idiot in my teens and 20s."

"All your relationship attempts and failures," Alex says.

"Basically, yeah. College was a good way to get into that kind of trouble, and then I started bartending, which comes with plenty more. I'd like to think I've been better about it the past couple of years, but I don't know."

"Never married though?"

"Nope. Want to get married. Want kids, too," Elijah tells him. "But sometimes it feels like a crazy fantasy to have when most of my time is spent alone at my place or at work behind a crowded bar."

"Hey, don't knock the crowded bar. Those two women from the other night might've asked about me, but let's not pretend like they weren't happy to be looking at you. And you could always look back, right? When someone you think you might like smiles at you—you can always smile back."

Elijah stares at Alex like there might be a right or wrong answer to his question, and Alex doesn't want his stomach to turn the way it does while he waits, everything made better enough when Elijah's response is hardly more than a whisper.

"Is it that easy to start falling for someone? Or to get them to fall for you? Is smiling back all it takes?"

"I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask," Alex argues. "But you'll let me know if you find out?"

"I can try."

Alex swallows that and pretends nothing gets caught in his throat, then they both take another bite and Alex pushes his chips toward the middle of the table for them to share. "So, do you think reading the messages between P and E has made the wanting better or worse?"

"Worse," Elijah answers immediately, though he looks like he wants to take it back, too honest, too quickly. "Or maybe that's not the right word. I don't know."

"Is that why you weren't sure whether you were okay the other night?" Alex asks.

"I don't—it's not—" Elijah sighs and lifts his hood over his curls, and he looks so damn small for someone who is very much not, the brief description of Peter's strong body—Elijah's great grandfather's body—becoming a tangible thing in front of Alex today. "I still don't know how to answer that—not right now. But I'll say that their story makes me ache and I still want more, and I'm not totally sure how to balance those two things. Not when you're sitting across from me, probably feeling the same way."

A couple walks past them, food in hand, and gets settled on the other side of the patio, and it should give Alex enough time to take a deep breath and think about where to take the conversation from here—for him to back up or turn around or maybe even run away—but then he's asking a question he only halfway understands, and he knows he's less ready for Elijah's next answer than any that have come before.

He knows the answer matters in ways he can barely admit.

"Do you think me sitting across from you makes the wanting better or worse?"

Elijah's eyes fall closed for only a second, but by the time he opens them again, it seems like he has all the self-control Alex lacks, and maybe he lies, if only by avoiding Alex's question altogether. "How long were you married?"

"Twelve years," Alex says, taking the out that Elijah has offered, if it's an out at all. "We were together almost 20, though. Since high school."

"You guys have cute little prom pictures and all that shit?" Elijah teases.

"All that shit," Alex huffs. "Yeah, definitely. And most of it's probably in boxes in my garage now, leaving even more empty space inside."

"You think there's any chance you'll get back together?"

"No."

He waits for Elijah to push for more than that, but he gets nothing but a foot nudged against his, a touch that should probably be there and gone, but one that lingers instead. "You close to your family?"

"Mostly," he admits. "My little sister is awesome. Gabriela. She's just incredibly busy, which means I don't get to see her as much as I'd like. And she's married with two kids, so my daughter loves to hang out with her cousins when we can make it work. My parents are still married and very, very Catholic, so they're not happy about the divorce. Ditto the aunts and uncles and my grandmother. My grandfather, God rest his soul, probably would've just yelled for a minute and then split a bottle of tequila with me. But yeah, they all love Cass and love to look at me like I screwed up, which I guess maybe I did, so that's where things are at these days."

Elijah's eyes narrow. "Why do you think you screwed up?"

"She left me, Elijah. That wouldn't have happened if I'd done everything right."

"It seems so quiet, though—the end of your marriage."

"You're not wrong," Alex admits, a small frown thrown onto the table between them. "But what makes you think that?"

"I mean, you're not screaming about her, which makes me think you're probably not screaming at her either. And if you're not screaming at her, there's a decent chance she's not screaming at you," Elijah says. "Not that I don't think you ever fought, but you're heartbroken and you're taking the blame, and you've already told me you miss your best friend and what you were supposed to be. So, it's none of my business at all, but I am curious about whether anything else was said out loud."

"By her?"

"Probably, yeah. Because maybe your only mistake—" Elijah trails off and looks over at the couple engaged in a conversation of their own. "No, never mind. Like I said, it's none of my business. You can ignore me."

"Don't want to ignore you. Maybe my only mistake was what?"

But Alex watches as Elijah shakes his head and bites his lip, not intentionally toying with him, though it's a little maddening all the same. Elijah seems like he's a half step ahead of Alex, and maybe has been since they first met in his grandpa's driveway, but Alex doesn't even know where they're going. When he can't keep staring into the blue of Elijah's eyes, Alex drops his gaze to where Elijah's fingers are tangled with his hoodie strings, and it's not the first time Alex has noticed how much Elijah always needs to be touching things. His hoodie. His hair. His face. It's strangely mesmerizing, and Alex tries not to wonder what Elijah's like in any of those failed relationships, and how badly he might want to touch other people, too. And as though Elijah can read his mind, there's a little more pressure against Alex's foot—just a reminder that Elijah is right there.

"What would you say if I told you I didn't want to look at the books today?" Elijah asks.

Alex takes a deep breath and sits back in his chair, a napkin crumpled in his hand. "I'd ask what you want to do instead."

"More of this."

"So, today the ache wins out?"

"I guess that's one way to put it, sure," Elijah says.

"Are you giving up on the story?"

"Not even a little bit."

"Okay."

And with that, Alex lets Peter and E go for a while, enjoying the chance to get to know Elijah better, and offering up plenty of the same while they talk more about their families and their pasts and their hobbies and their travels and their likes and their dislikes. There's a conversation about favorite carnival rides—the Zipper for Elijah and the Scrambler for Alex—and at least a dozen different movies they were obsessed with as kids. Elijah admits he loves bartending for the way it connects him to so many different human moments at once, and Alex tells him he went into journalism for the same reason, even though those moments come at him more quietly than anything Elijah experiences on a rowdy weekend night.

And then Alex gets to hear about Nora, the 73-year-old widowed neighbor who is all too happy to visit Poe on the nights when Elijah works, in part because Elijah runs errands for her, and maybe mostly because she and Poe are often the same kind of lonely. The fear of his own loneliness is difficult to remember while Alex has spent an afternoon like this, and somehow it doesn't return, even after they've been sitting for too long, and Elijah tells Alex that he has to go home and get ready for work.

"You've got Elena this week?" Elijah asks as he stands to stretch, his hoodie pulled high when he takes the time to raise his arms over his head.

"I do, yeah. Cassidy's dropping her off tomorrow night."

They both grab their things and start to make their way back through the café and toward the parking lot, the two of them saying their goodbyes from several feet apart.

"Is it okay if I text you sometime during the week, just to see if we can figure out another time to sit down with the books?"

Alex swallows something light and warm and pretends he feels neither. "You can text me about anything. If I'm busy doing something with her, it might take me longer to respond, but I will. And I guess you'll be working most nights anyway, but yeah. Whenever."

"Anything, whenever," Elijah nods. "Got it."

After Elena has run inside with her suitcase and backpack and a routine greeting that still feels newer than that, Cassidy slips her hands into her back pockets and fidgets on the front porch. She has something to say, clearly, but she's already turned down Alex's offer to come inside for a few minutes, so he waits her out. Wonders if she has something more to say about how he looks and what good habits he's picked up since the last time she saw him.

But that's not it at all.

"We've been navigating things pretty well, I think. You and me. The uncertainty of how this is all supposed to go. What it's supposed to look like," she starts.

"Yeah, it's—I think we're doing okay," Alex agrees.

"It's hard sometimes, though—knowing where we"ve drawn lines, or what we're supposed to share."

"Okay," he says. "I mean, whatever we are to each other now, we've been best friends for a long time. We can probably share a lot."

Even as he says it, Alex can't quite tell if that's true. Maybe he's never understood where friendship ends and something more begins, willing to share so much of himself with the woman standing in front of him now, even if it seems like that was never enough. An entire marriage rooted in friendship but really never growing any further off the ground. He trusts Cassidy, and still loves her, but he isn't sure how much that's true the other way around. Can't figure out how long they've been living with such different feelings entirely.

"You can tell me anything," Alex promises, the simplest way he can offer everything he's always wanted to give.

But she looks up the street, uncomfortable in a way that makes his breath sticky in his chest, finally swinging her head back to him. "I've started seeing someone."

"Someone."

"Yeah, sort of an acquaintance of an acquaintance. Met him at a work thing and we've gone out a few times. It's not—I have no idea what's going to happen. It hasn't been that long. I just thought you should know."

Alex clears his throat and tries so hard to keep looking at her. "What's his name?"

"Michael," she says, her head tilted like she wants to ask why it matters. It doesn't, of course.

"Okay, well, thank you for telling me," Alex rasps. "Enjoy your week and I guess I'll see you next Sunday."

"Alex—"

"No, seriously, thank you. It's—I'm okay."

He's pretty sure he's told some version of that lie for the past 20 years even if the words taste unfamiliar now, but she nods and leaves and he stays there at his front door for another minute before he stops shaking long enough to find Elena and settle down on the couch.

The rest of their night is fine. Most of Monday, too. It's mundane and Alex knows how to work with that, lists and rules and patterns and boundaries. It's not until dinner on Monday night, when Elena casually mentions Michael while Alex's fork is halfway to his mouth, that everything catches back up to him and he knows he needs some help to keep from falling down.

Or maybe help getting back up from there.

Because after Elena is asleep, Alex is sitting on his bedroom floor, his back pressed to the closed door and his head staring down at nothing. He picks up his phone to text Elijah because he doesn't know what else to do, three texts fired off in rapid succession.

Cassidy is seeing someone

Sorry

you can ignore this sorry

The call notification is immediate, and when Alex answers, he doesn't even have a chance to say hello before Elijah is talking.

"You don't need to apologize at all, and you definitely don't need to do it twice."

"This is stupid," Alex huffs.

"Which part?" Elijah asks softly.

"Take your pick. Being bothered by something that was inevitable. Not knowing how to do the same thing myself. Sitting on my bedroom floor whining to you about it."

Elijah is quiet for several seconds, though Alex can hear him moving and he wonders whether he's somehow said both too much and too little, but then there's a small sigh on the other end.

"Inevitable things can still suck, you're better at that than you think you are, and I wouldn't have called you if I didn't want to hear whatever you have to say, whiny or not," Elijah says. "Do you want me to hang up so we can do this over text instead?"

And no, that's not what Alex wants at all, actually. "Come over for dinner tomorrow night."

"Tomorrow—wait, what? Isn't Elena there?"

"She—yeah, sorry, if you don't want—forget I said anything."

"Not what I meant," Elijah growls. "Of course I want to, but I also know your time with her is limited and I don't mind waiting until next week if you honestly want me to forget about it. I just—don't assume I don't want to see you."

"Because you do?"

"Because I do."

"Then come over for dinner with us," Alex says. "And let me know if chili is okay with you."

It is, of course.

Alex's only problem is that, while chili is easy to make, and the first thought he'd had when he'd extended an accidental invitation, he doesn't have all the ingredients on hand, and beyond that, he'd love to be able to make some cornbread too. So, after he picks Elena up from school the next day, he tells her they have to make a quick stop at the store before they head home. She's fine with it—loves going shopping with him, actually—but she brings a nearly insatiable curiosity with her, and he finds himself shaking his head at the apple that didn't fall very far from his tree.

"I haven't heard of Elijah before. Do you work with him?" she asks as they grab a basket just inside the door.

"No, I met him at the garage sale where I bought your books and games."

"Oh. So, he's a brand new friend?"

"Um, brand new, yeah," Alex agrees. "Just a couple of weeks, I guess. Does it bother you that I have a new friend?"

He can't figure out why it would, but there's a lot he can't figure out these days, and it feels like the right thing to ask. Or maybe not. Elena scrunches up her face like it's the weirdest idea she's heard, her curly hair a mess in a ponytail that had looked much better that morning.

"Why would it bother me? I have new friends all the time."

"Ah, yes, that's true, isn't it? And probably why we get emails about you being a bit of a chatterbox in class?"

Elena rolls her eyes as Alex puts a can of crushed tomatoes into the basket she insists on carrying. "Yeah, but you and Elijah would probably talk during class, too. It's what friends do."

"Maybe you're right. He and I do like to talk a lot."

"What do you talk about?"

Alex warms, everything about it more noticeable in the cool grocery store, and tries to focus on finding the beans he needs. "Well, we talk about our jobs and our families—"

"Including me?" Elena interrupts.

"Including you, yes. And we're—we've been reading together, so we talk a lot about that too."

"Ooooh, what're you reading?"

He stops short of wherever else he needs to go, all too aware that he walked right into that one. "It's kinda hard to explain, bug."

"You can try," Elena argues. "That's what you and mommy make me do."

"Mmmm, we do, but what Elijah and I are reading is sort of a complicated and private adult love story."

"Is there sex in it?" she whispers loudly, somewhere between intrigued and scandalized.

Alex chuckles when he probably shouldn't, Elena's expression hilarious even when nothing about a decades-old gay romance is funny to him, and he nudges his daughter out of one aisle and toward another.

"No sex, and it's a little bit sad, but Elijah and I are hoping there's a very happy ending."

They finish their shopping—sour cream, a couple of avocados, and a boxed cornbread mix added to the basket before they check out—and they hurry home from there so Alex can get the chili started before he catches up on the work he missed while he was out. Elena, while more interested in dinner than usual, takes her backpack upstairs without a word, and it gives Alex space he hadn't asked for but probably needs. And then it's not much longer before Elijah is at the front door with a six-pack of the same IPA Alex had offered a week ago, his other hand clutching a bottle of fruit punch.

"Wasn't really sure what Elena might like, but my niece and nephew lose their minds over this stuff," he says, handing everything over.

"It's perfect, but you really didn't have to bring anything."

Elijah shrugs and they make small talk on their way to the kitchen to put most of the drinks away, two beers open for them to drink while Alex finishes cooking dinner, Elena still upstairs with her homework. The conversation is good, but Alex is pretty sure he holds his breath until his daughter makes her way back down, the introductions easy when there's really not much to say.

Friend, daughter. Daughter, friend.

Done.

The chili turns out great, but the laughter is even better, the typical dinnertime conversation improved by having another person there. And maybe it's only because Alex and Elena are both still used to that dynamic and haven't totally adjusted to being a pair, or maybe it's because Elijah fits well here, but all three of them are engrossed in conversation without seeming to work hard at it at all, any friendly interrogation by Elena countered by all the questions Elijah fires right back.

They all move to the living room after they're done eating and play a couple of games of Clue, Alex and Elijah next to each other on the couch while Elena kneels on the other side of the coffee table. And when it's time for her to go to bed, Alex asks him to stay where he is while he follows his daughter upstairs and tucks her in, returning to fall at Elijah's side a few minutes later, the two of them sipping at their second beers as they lean back against the cushions.

"She's awesome, but I assume you already know that," Elijah says.

"I do, yeah. I love that kid. And she thought you were pretty awesome, too."

"Really?"

"Oh, shut up," Alex laughs, bumping his knee against Elijah's without bothering to pull it back again. "Pretty sure you're the same guy who was bragging about his charm when we'd barely met. That was you, right? I'm not confused?"

Elijah's bottle rests against his thigh and his head rolls sideways to look at Alex. "Didn't know you were out there meeting so many different guys."

And Alex blushes—completely fucking blushes—but when he meets Elijah's eyes, there's something there, beyond the obvious teasing and all the dull edges that come from a couple of drinks and a big meal. He's searching for a reassurance Alex didn't think he'd need and doesn't really know how to give.

"Never really had to make friends on my own before," he admits. "I'm not sure I know what I'm doing."

Elijah nods, then finishes the last of his beer. "Well, like I told you last night, you're better at it than you think you are."

He leans forward to slide the empty bottle onto the table, and only glances back at Alex for a second before he pushes up from the couch to leave, Alex's hand closing around Elijah's wrist before he can take more than a step. Alex thinks he blushes again, and it's getting harder to mind.

"I forgot to tell you, I—we have this work retreat thing in Big Bear next week. Enlightenment or empowerment or enrichment or something."

"Okay," Elijah breathes, staring down at Alex's hand.

Alex slowly pulls it away and hurries to stand, picking up Elijah's bottle so he has something to hold on to when he walks Elijah to the door. "It's Monday to Wednesday, so I know it's been a while and we're supposed to get back to the books, but we might have to wait until the weekend after that. Maybe another lunch?"

It feels far away, the week and a half they'll have to wait after seeing each other three times in the past six days, but Elijah nods. "Yeah, that would be good. Just text me after you get back."