Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
“Yes.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was killed. I found him. I couldn’t…after that. I’d already lost you, Mouse, Romeo, and then him. I couldn’t do it again, couldn’t risk caring about anyone, because it meant I’d lose them.”
His hand traveled to my face, his fingers brushstrokes against my skin. “You never lost me, not really. Don’t think we work that way. Don’t think it’s possible. I was a fool to think otherwise. Even if we’re only friends, nothing will separate us forever.”
“No, it won’t,” I admitted.
“Were you lovers?”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t like that. He was more of a father figure.”
He opened his mouth, licked his lips, and it took everything in me not to taste him. “Have you?” he asked. “With other men?”
“Yes. But I’ve never… No one has ever been to me what you are.”
“No one ever has for me either.”
We were quiet then, taking this moment, savoring it. It was maybe the most intimate experience of my life, lying there, looking at him, touching him and him touching me with comfort and vulnerability, as the night moved on. If I could’ve frozen time, I would have, kept us there forever.
“I, um…bought another copy…of the baseball book I gave you. I brought it to give you. I know you’ve moved on from that, but I also…I’d gotten you a book on the stars, back then. I never had the chance to give it to you.”
“Can I read to you?” I asked, surprising myself. While I was better than I had been and progressed past the baseball book, I loved that he’d gotten it.
“Yeah, Gage. I’d like that.”
We moved so we leaned against the headboard. He handed me the stars book. It was probably middle-school level, but that didn’t matter, not to us. We lay there together like we used to, and I read, didn’t feel ashamed or stupid when I didn’t know a word and he helped. I wished I’d tried harder in prison, wished I’d made it a priority so I could show Joey how good I’d gotten, maybe even made it so this wasn’t a problem anymore, but I hadn’t.
After a chapter, I was done. “I’m tired.” It had to be almost five.
We rolled over, lay on our sides, and looked at each other. “Go to sleep, Gage.”
“You’ll stay?”
“Yes.”
I wrapped my arm around Joey’s waist, closed my eyes, and let sleep take me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Joey
I woke up on my twenty-ninth birthday the way I was supposed to have woken up the day after my eighteenth—in bed with Gage, holding him or him holding me. Us together. Last night had been…well, I couldn’t figure out the words for what last night had been.
When he called, I’d been scared. When he said he needed me, I knew there was no other option for me than to go.
I looked down at him, risked running my fingers through the strands of his hair. Gage didn’t wake up, but he did make soft mumbling sounds, smiling in his sleep. I felt that smile in my chest, deeper than that, in my muscles and my bones, all the way down to the marrow.
His smile had always been able to fix whatever ailed me, or at least mend it, until I lost that smile.
Our night rolled through my thoughts, the memories mesmerizing and scaring me, yet revitalizing.
Our touches.
Our talks.
Reading.
Sharing.
I hated that he’d lost Herbert. These years had been hard on me, had broken my spirit and irrevocably changed who I was, but I’d never been alone. I’d always had Angie and Kev.
Those truths gave way to panic, to the brokenness. Gage had been alone, and he had nightmares. He’d called me because he’d been so afraid over a dream where he’d killed me.
Jesus, what was it with us?
I am what you are.
We were forever entwined. Even when we were apart, our lives were completely entangled, as if there was no Joey without Gage or Gage without Joey.
Thinking that made my skin itch, but at the same time soothed something inside me that hadn’t been soothed in too long. It calmed me, cradled me, made me feel at home.
My thoughts were spinning too fast, everything that happened a train wreck in my brain, today’s date dousing the fire with more gas.
It was Saturday, and I had the day off. I always requested time off on my birthday. And I had a fight tonight. My whole body began shaking as memories and pain bombarded me until I had to force myself from Gage’s bed. Still, I did it quietly, gently, so as not to disturb him.
I sneaked outside, closing the door softly behind me, then pacing the grass and the cement, back and forth, just to feel their textures against my bare feet.
I was here, with Gage, on my birthday. Would he try to get me to stay? I couldn’t. Not today, of all days. It was the day I always made sure to punish myself.