Chapter 11

Eleven

Josh

E zra parks in a shady lot beside the University of Alabama’s swank athletic dorms, and we follow a brick sidewalk to the building. He makes a funny little nervous face as he pulls the lobby door open for me, and then we’re stepping into a space that smells like new carpet and Doritos. Two guys sitting on the couches hop up and high five him, talking about the game in a way that makes me realize they must be on the team.

Ezra introduces me as his best friend Josh, from Auburn. I don’t know what I was expecting, but best friend doesn’t make me feel too bummed out.

As soon as we’re in the elevator, he murmurs, “Was that okay? I didn’t really think about it before we got here.”

“I loved it,” I tell him.

“We can change it later. Anything you want,” he says, and I can feel my face heat up as my chest goes all warm and happy.

The elevator door opens on the third floor, and he takes my hand. “C’mon, my Miller. Let’s go see my dorm room.”

I feel buoyant that he’s holding my hand in the hallway, even though his door is just a few feet from the elevator. He doesn’t seem scared or in a hurry as he opens his door.

The place smells like him. Just…like Ezra…in a way I can’t quite explain. It’s not as empty as I thought it might be, nor as sterile. The walls are medium blue—the color of the sky around dusk—and there’s crown molding around the top and bottom of them, plus a nice-looking faux hardwood floor and a rug he tells me came new with the room. He’s got a bookshelf filled with paperbacks, an oil painting hanging near his bed, a wall-mounted flatscreen, and a few plants perched near his two windows. There’s a dresser on one wall, a night stand on one side of the bed, and a gray armchair with a floor lamp near the bookshelf.

“This is pretty nice,” I tell him.

“Athlete bonus.” He rolls his eyes.

I sit in the armchair. “I think athletes deserve good cribs.”

He snorts. “So does everybody else.”

“Are you a college socialist?” I tease.

“I don’t know,” Ez says. “Which way do you lean?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “I lean the way of moving to a private island where there’s nobody but us, and we live in a hut right by the stream.”

“I’m feeling that vibe.”

We end up in his bed, both lying on our sides, turned toward each other. He’s tracing my freckles and I’m running a finger over a little bruise below his left eye.

“I swear, I don’t remember getting it.” He smiles softly.

I kiss his eye. And then his cheek. “You gotta take care of you out there for me. I’ll start sitting close to the field.”

That makes him grin. “If I get hurt, you gonna take care of me?” The smile fades from his face, probably as he considers what would happen if he did get hurt. “Could you, sometimes—sit close?” he asks. “If you’re ever there?”

“Of course. Like at the Rose Bowl? ”

A slow smile spreads over his face. “How do you know that’s our bowl?”

“I was keeping up with you, Ez.”

“Wish I would have known,” he murmurs. He presses his forehead against my chest, and I stroke his back as he tells me about some of the hazy memories he had of us that same night he took the Xanax. He says they didn’t feel like memories. More like a fever dream, but based on what they were, they are —dim memories. Which leads us back around to his wild trip to San Francisco.

“I was such a wreck. It was a fucking miracle they didn’t call the cops, have me committed or some shit.”

“A miracle?” I smile, and Ez props his head in his palm, looking a little dreamy.

“They’re good people. Luke McDowell hooked me up with the therapist I’m seeing here. A trauma specialist. I’m supposed to start doing some stuff with them this week. More stuff.”

“Yeah?”

He nods, looking down as he bites his cheek. “We said we’d wait on harder stuff till after the season was over.”

My stomach does a quick flip at the thought of Ezra doing “harder stuff,” but I know I should be supportive. “It’s so good you’re doing that. You deserve to heal from that shit.”

“Thanks. Josh.” He gives me this small smile. Sad smile? Maybe not sad—just thoughtful.

“You’re my person,” I tell him.

“You’re my person too.”

I kiss his cheeks and we do our side-lying sixty-nine, and after that, we get a bath together.

He winks as he sinks down into the tub, in the back.

“That thing is roomy,” I say.

“For tall athletes.”

I get between his legs, and we use shampoo to make bubbles.

“You need real bubble bath,” I murmur .

“Or bath bombs.” Ezra laughs.

“Fuck yeah. Bath bombs.”

It feels so good to be here with him. Ez washes my hair, soaping it up and grinning at me when I look over my shoulder, making my throat lump up.

He looks happier than I’ve ever seen him—such an improbable outcome of losing a few months of one’s memory.

“I really can’t believe you ever remembered me,” I tell him, as we tuck into his bed, having polished off a large delivery Hawaiian pizza. Ezra pulled the blinds up, so we can see a swatch of campus down below us. It’s the only light in the room.

“It wasn’t that hard, since I wrote ‘Miller’ on my arm. But I think I always would have. Shit seems like it’s shifting in my head now. That memory at your place was weird…the one where I had that déjà vu moment and said the thing about Aristotle.”

“Did it kind of scare you?” I feel hesitant to ask, but he seems okay answering.

“Yeah. It’s…I don’t know. I guess disorienting. Honestly, it felt just like strong déjà vu.”

“That makes sense, I think.”

We watch some Tiny House Hunters , and Ezra falls asleep with his arm around me and his cheek on my chest. When my phone buzzes at 5 a.m. to get me up so I can drive his Jeep to Auburn, he sits up, too, giving me a sleepy smile.

“Go back to sleep, angel.” I kiss him, and Ez kisses me back. “There’s no way I’m not walking you out, dude.”

“What if someone sees you?”

He shrugs. “Just don’t really give a fuck.”

We brush our teeth together, and it feels like old times.

We smile in the mirror, and Ezra arches a brow. “Did we do this before?”

“A time or two.”

He hugs me, taking me by surprise. “Thank you, Miller.”

“For what?” I laugh .

His hand strokes back through my hair. “For being you.”

I send him snaps as I head back to Auburn—one of the road, one of a pack of donuts I get at the gas station, one of me smiling, and another of me leaning against his Jeep in my apartment’s parking lot. I think he might be napping, but during my first class, he snaps me back. Ezra needing a shave, giving his phone’s cam a heavy-lidded smile from his bed. I send him one after class, and then he calls.

“Hey. Is it okay that I called?”

“It’s the most okay thing I can think of. Some might even say amazing.”

I can hear his smile as he says, “Good. I wasn’t sure.”

“Always be sure.”

“I miss you,” he says softly.

“I miss you too. So much. What are you doing?”

He tells me he’s outside his calculus class, and I realize I haven’t even asked about his major.

“Can you guess?” he asks. “You know me, right?” I think he’s teasing.

“Shit. You were good at physics. And kissing. You used to be a lifeguard. You loved sitting on the roof and looking at the stars. And books. You love books.” He laughs, and my pulse picks up a little. “Something with books?”

“Would that be weird?” he murmurs. “To go to college just to do something with books?”

“Fuck no. Books are awesome, dude. What do you wanna do with books?”

“My major’s English right now. Also business. But I sort of want to drop the business and just be an English major. I know you can’t do much with only English. It might be more pragmatic to be a book editor or like an agent. But if I added education as a major…”

I grin. “Then you would be an English teacher.”

“Yeah. An English teacher. And maybe a coach.”

“You’d be great at both of those things.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yeah, for sure, dude. You were always reading back in Fairplay. At the kitchen table. Physics; I’d come in and you’d be reading.”

“It’s an escape. As they say.” He sounds hoarse.

“You’d be the sexiest English teacher. When you get old, you could wear some spectacles.”

He laughs. “Some spectacles. Is that your fantasy, Mills? Me in old man glasses?”

“Any glasses,” I tell him. “Or no glasses. Maybe just you.”

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“For what, angel?”

“I don’t know. You make me feel good.”

I think about the way he used to cling to me when I would wake him up from nightmares, and about how comfortable he’d finally gotten with me, right before he left. And I feel a little spark of loss—that we both lost that. But I also feel a huge amount of gratitude that I still have him. It’s still good. Maybe in some ways, even better.

We talk for as long as we can—which turns out to be about twenty-five minutes. He says he’ll call me right after practice.

“I can come back with your car whenever you want,” I tell him. “I can take the bus back to Auburn after. I feel bad you don’t have your Jeep to get around in.”

“I love that you have my ride, Miller. I would also love to see you. I can take you back home almost any day but Wednesday. We have longer practice that day. And my Wednesday is more full because I have a long lab.”

“Shoot me down if this is too much. But what about tomorrow? Could you take me home tomorrow, if I come back up there say…today?”

“Fuck yeah.” I can hear the grin in his voice. “I could take you back tomorrow. If that would work?”

“It might.” I’m grinning, too.

Almost six hours later, I’m rolling into the athletic dorm parking lot, and Ezra’s smiling from the sidewalk beside it. He’s wearing royal blue running shorts, a white hoodie, and the backwards Georgia peach cap, which makes my heart squeeze.

As soon as I turn the car off, he’s opening the driver’s side door. Then I’m out, and he’s hugging me tight.

“Hey, Miller.” His low voice vibrates with affection.

“Hey, you.” I kiss his cheek. “Was that okay?” I rasp after I kiss him.

“A lot better than okay.” He kisses my temple. “I’m doing something,” he says, looking wide-eyed.

“What kind of something is it?” I laugh at his funny face.

“Is it okay if we hold hands?” he asks.

We do, and it feels so good. “Okay,” he says as we walk toward his dorm, “so I’m thinking I need to know how…people would be,” he rasps. “With us. And if they aren’t good…” He takes a deep breath before looking at me. “I’ll transfer to Auburn.”

“To Auburn? Maybe we should both transfer to Oregon, bruh.”

His face twists, and he bites his lip. “Do you think so?”

“Hell, I wish I hadn’t said that. I’m not trying to fuck up your vibe. This is your career, not mine.”

“It’s not a career, Mills. Not yet. Never said I’m doing NFL for sure.”

He stops by the brick wall of the building, giving me a scrunch-browed look I can’t read. “Yeah, I guess you haven’t,” I say.

“I might not. I don’t know yet.” Ezra rolls his eyes. “Nobody knows that, of course. Better for me if they all think I will. But I just want to be with you. And if we have to go to Oregon to do that in peace, we will.” His cheeks color. “If you want to go to Oregon, that is.”

“I want to go anywhere you go. What’s their team?” I ask. “The Ducks?”

Ezra gives me a crooked smile. "Yeah. The Big Gay Ducks."

"Is that true? Are they really gay there?"

He laughs. "I don't know. But maybe. Anyway,” he squeezes my hand, “I thought it would be good to test things. Nothing crazy—I don't want to mess things up for you or anything—but see if rumors start, and if they do..." He lifts one dark brow.

"Fuck, you're brave, dude."

"No I'm not." Ezra looks almost affronted. "What am I supposed to do?"

"I guess I thought you might want us to lay low. You know...really low."

"Would you be cool with that?" He's frowning at me. Narrowing his eyes. I think of a skeptical professor and almost smile.

"Yeah, I'd do that for you. I'd do anything you asked me to, Ez."

His face takes on a look of vulnerability. "Is this the way it was with us?"

I bite my lip, trying to keep from smirking. "Might’ve let you do anything you wanted to me."

His face transforms to lust mode, and he grabs my hand. "Let's go upstairs."