Chapter 10

Ten

Josh

I wake up feeling so good. Fingers stroking through my hair and Ezra's arms around me. I lie still, relishing the dream while I dread opening my eyes. Then I remember with a rush—it’s real .

Ezra’s here. He’s in my bed. I reach up to wrap an arm around his neck, pulling him down on me as my heart pounds with excitement.

His low voice vibrates as he lays his cheek on my chest. "Hey there, Miller.”

“Hey, angel.”

His hand tunnels into my hair. “You sleep okay?”

“Yeah.” My throat aches with emotion, but I swallow and move past it. “Did you?”

He smiles down at me. “Those sleepy eyes.” His smile is so big. So…real.

I lean up while pulling him down, kissing his temple. “You wore me out, Ez.”

“Damn straight.”

“It was honestly really gay.”

He laughs softly.

“So you’ve been here watching me sleep?” I grin up at him.

He grins back, looking slightly abashed. "Is that stalkery?"

"Can't stalk someone who's obsessed with you.”

I play with his hair, loving how his head feels under my hand. Jesus, I love everything about him. Every single fucking thing. I look at his face—Ezra’s face—and I see nothing but the guy I love. I want to tell him nothing could change how I feel about him, but instead I whisper, “Let’s get up and go do something. I don’t want to miss a moment before you leave.”

"Go back to sleep now if you want to.” He wraps me in his arms. “You look tired, Mills. I’ll stick around."

I decide I'll argue, but the next time I open my eyes, my room is bathed in bright gold sunlight and he's sitting cross-legged on the bed beside me. He's got his borrowed ball cap on backwards, along with a funny little smirk.

"What're you doing?" I ask, my voice sounding sleep-rough.

He slides underneath the covers with me, and he kisses my jaw.

"Got you something,” he says, looking sweet and smug.

I can’t resist kissing his cheek. "What's that?"

"I'll show you. But..." His arm slides in between us, his hand rubbing my bulge. "I see you've got me something, too." Pretty soon he's pushing my briefs down. He's underneath the covers blowing me. When he's done swallowing, I try to go for him, and he laughs.

"Did myself while I did you.” He pulls his shirt off, wiping both of us clean. “So you could eat your breakfast sooner."

Ez gives me this shy smile as he reveals a whole gas station bag of different stuff—all things I like. Plus a box of chocolate donuts.

"You used to always get me donuts,” I say.

He winks. “Gotta fatten you up.” We eat the donuts sitting cross-legged on the bed, just staring at each other. He catches me staring, and my cheeks burn. "Now who's creepin'?"I ask, covering my face.

"No one." He drags his fingertip over my bare knee.

We end up showering together, and I run my hands all over his beautifully sculpted body.

“A work of art,” I murmur.

“A work of the gym.”

We kiss and almost end up going at each other again, but Ezra pulls me up against him and holds me for so long I think he needs that more.

"I don't want to leave today,” he murmurs.

"I don't want you to either.” I press my cheek against his. “I've got an idea. What if I ride up with you and take the bus home? We could talk in the Jeep. And I could see where you live. Even if it's just the outside of the building. I know you probably have things to do today."

"Are you fucking kidding me, Josh? Please ride up with me. I have nothing to do. A team meeting at 4:30, but then nothing. It's a Sunday. I'd ask you to stay the night, but I bet you've got a class tomorrow."

"Actually, I do. An 8:30, and that professor is a psycho."

"Here's an even weirder idea.” He quirks a brow up. “How would you feel about riding up with me and dropping me off. Then you bring my car back to me in a few days, and after that, I'll drive you back home?"

I think that’s the moment that I know it's going to be okay. That he means all this. Ezra notices me being weird and kisses my cheeks and forehead, and then he gets out of the shower and wraps me in a towel like a little kid.

He wraps another towel awkwardly around my head. "Spa day."

"Is that what they do at the spa?" I tease.

"I don't know. It could be."Ez gives me a funny little grin, and then he scoops me up in his arms like I’m light as a feather. He carries me to bed and lays me on top of my covers and says, "I'll dress you today. All you have to do is call me Daddy.”

He does just that, and it’s crazy charming—Ezra in this new and gentle mode, with all his doting smiles and temple kisses. When he steps into the bathroom, I say, “Scoop the Xannies up. We can seal them in a Ziplock bag and bury them.”

Ezra borrows some of my clothes, and we head out into a chilly, sunny day together—like the last year never happened. We end up racing each another across the big student parking lot, Ezra running backwards, laughing. Then he spreads his arms out like he’s blocking me, but instead he catches me against his chest and whirls me around. After a while longer acting like romantics, we pick a spot right at the edge of the science building’s lawn, and I stand in between the road and Ezra as he digs a quick hole with a stick and does the deed.

“Did you really put them there?” I whisper.

“You want me to take them with me?” he asks, looking serious.

“No. Just put them there. I’m not going to dig them up.”

“You sure about that?”

“I promise.”

Ezra

Do Gooder. I think it suits him. I can tell, as I drive us toward Tuscaloosa, just how much it bothers him—the way his last year has gone. Somehow, band comes up, and he seems self-conscious as he explains that he’s not in band at Auburn.

“I don’t know why,” he says. “Actually that’s not true. I just didn’t feel it this year. Maybe later.”

It makes him sad. I don’t think I’d be able to read him so well if I hadn’t stalked him so hard on Instagram and Snapchat. But I know a lot of his expressions, and I feel like I have a solid understanding of his personality. I’m not shocked that he feels…maybe like a failure. Like he’s a little unmoored.

I ask him if he feels like he’s found his niche at college, and he laughs and squeezes my hand. “Nah, man. Not even a little. I don’t know what that means about me,” he adds wryly.

“I think it just means you’re normal.”

We talk a little about me and football. How it’s all I’ve had for years—the only anchor, “Except you.”

Mills tells me more about the months before he left for college. More about his car wreck.

“It was scary as fuck,” he says. “And I got in so much trouble. Plus, you know…the lost car.”

He says he tried to put up a good front for his mom and my dad so they’d let him leave for college, but they both felt pretty nervous.

"Rightfully so, I guess,” Mills admits. “I met Daniel and his friends, and…you saw my Snapchat. And when that didn't do the trick—" He takes a deep breath, blows it slowly out.

I squeeze his hand, feeling my throat tighten.

“When school got going, things got worse...a little bit at a time." He rubs his forehead, shutting his eyes.

“Did something set you off, the night you took too much stuff?” I manage, working hard to steady my voice. “What do you think happened?”

I’m asking so I can understand him. I don’t expect the deer-in-headlights look he gives me.

"You can tell me,” I urge. “Whatever it is, I can take it.”

Mills looks down at his lap, then back up at me. "It was when your mom said you went missing. My mom called me.” He must mean when my mom tried to come visit me, but I’d gone to San Francisco. She went apeshit, reported me missing like a lost five-year-old. “I thought if you were having problems,” he says, “if you’d been in inpatient, which my mom told me that same day—and you still didn't want to talk to me at all—that what we had together had meant nothing. To you,” Josh whispers. “Mom told me to keep an eye out for you. That you left Tuscaloosa. And I felt helpless. And then you were 'found' or whatever. And I was not involved in any way. When, to me, the thing between us had been everything."

I change lanes smoothly, exiting and stopping at the next gas station. I slide into a parking spot and lean over, wrapping him the fuck up. “I just need to hold you,” I rasp. “Tell you I’m so sorry for what happened.”

Miller says, “It’s not your fault,” and I tell him, “I still feel sick about it.”

“Maybe you’re just hungry,” he jokes.

We walk inside and get some powdered donuts and split the pack. As I drive us toward Tuscaloosa, I tell him more about my lonely spring and strange amnesia summer and this fevered fall. And I feel sick for me, too.

I wish badly for a time machine. So I could go back and know that whole plan with my mom was shit. That ECT would steal my memory. That we would both suffer.

"Why do you think this shit happens?" he asks, looking discouraged.

I can’t help a soft laugh. "You think I know? You think I ever saw myself as fighting with a grown man, squeezing his throat until he had a stroke? Or getting dumped off by my mom at a psych hospital to do some ECT?"

"No," he murmurs.

My throat feels too tight to breathe.

"I only know one thing," I manage, as we drive past the “Welcome to Tuscaloosa” sign.

"What's the one thing?"Josh asks.

I give him a fucked-up little grin. "What do you think?"

"I have no idea, man. Enlighten me."

I bring our joined hands to my mouth and brush my lips over his knuckles. "It's a fucked up story, Miller. But it looks like we're together at the end."