Wrath: A Sinful Secrets Romance, page 32
Then tears start to streak down my cheeks, and it hits me, the real gut-punch: I could have come here.
I went through all that shit when I could have simply moved in with Dad.
I didn't know.
I think about this comfy bed below me. I think about where I was. It seems wrong—so fucking wrong—that my dad doesn't even care I’m gay. My whole life could have been different.
I shut my eyes and try to focus on the weight of Miller's arm around me. Miller wants you. Your dad loves you. Everything's okay, Ezra.
I'm just...fucking sad. Christ.
I tell myself that it'll go away.
I stay awake till almost 3, and I look down at my arm, at what Miller drew. I want to do something like that for him. I let myself sleep, but set my phone alarm a little early. Miller is a heavy sleeper—unless I wake him up. By the time the alarm goes off, we're both on our backs, so I'm able to slip out of the bed and grab a pen out of his desk drawer.
I pick a smooth, pale spot on the inside of his forearm, near the crease of his elbow—where he left my already-fading infinity sign—and draw an angel with big wings, a halo, and some freckles.
The tickling of the pen's tip wakes him. He looks down and grins. All I can think is that he isn't mine to keep. There’s no way to believe all this…mirage shit. Life’s not that good.
I fight with myself in my head about it. Desperate to believe…but I can’t.
Dad and Suzanne are nice to us on Sunday. Suzanne cooks pancakes, and after that, Miller and I go out on the boat.
We end up in its belly on a blanket, looking up at the trees that hang over an isolated little inlet.
"I can't believe that's how it went down," he laughs.
"I know. Seems too good to be true."
"But it's not, angel. I promise. It's not."
* * *
Peace.
It's not the thing I thought it would be. It's not out of reach or unrealistic. Doesn't involve a different life, or turning into someone else.
It's...really small stuff. Like, I still have nightmares—this week, almost every night—but he's always right there. Miller. When I wake up, I see him, I feel his arms around me, and I come out of it. Leave it behind.
Football season's winding down, and it's been great. I can't deny that. What I like the most, though, isn't all the scouts and scoring touchdowns. (Although I do like that shit). I love the little stuff that's the same every game. Like all the rituals our team has—putting Pop Rocks in Brennan's locker—and the dumb halftime jokes. Walking out of the locker room to see Miller, and how we always race to my Jeep and drive straight to the old baseball fields.
Every Sunday, Suzanne makes us pancakes. At some point, she adds chocolate chips, and I liked them, so for a while, every Sunday they would get more chocolatey—with chocolate syrup and then whipped cream, and then those chocolate flakes those lunatics put in their "smoothies." I call them chocolate deathcakes, but I can't help eating four or five, covered in syrup.
I've been bulking the fuck up—even more than before. Miller and I work out on his bench in his room every other day, and I've got at least twenty pounds of muscle that I didn't have when I moved down here. Miller's gotten thicker, too. And tighter. He’s been working out with the team.
Saturday mornings, we go to his soccer games. Where he wears a helmet. He told his coach about the seizure—I think mostly just for me. Nobody minded. Not even the college scouts who came to see him play two weeks ago.
Saturday nights are movie nights...sometimes downstairs, sometimes in my room. When we do them downstairs, Dad and Suzanne skirt around us, like they want to give us privacy or something. But sometimes we see them smiling. They don't mind that we're together. Every day, it blows my mind.
Last week, Carl asked if my "depression" was because of being gay, and he said Mom had told him I was at Sheppard Pratt for four months. I didn't know she had. I mean, I'm not surprised...but when I first got here, I guess I didn't care what he knew.
I wasn't sure what to say, so I just told him "yes." He asked if I had talked to mom about it—like, come out—and I told him no; I told him that's because she's so religious. He seemed like he understood.
Dad said he thinks God would be happy about me being gay, and he would want me to be happy, too—not hiding or ashamed. Then yesterday, when I got home from school, I found this post-card-looking printout on my bed of a Jesus figure surrounded by a bunch of rainbow-colored sheep. There was a yellow sticky note on it that said "-Dad" and had a funny little smiley face. I don't know what that shit was, but apparently Dad is down with the rainbow.
"Ez?"
I jump, clutching the book in my hands, as Miller strolls into my room in just a towel.
"Hey," he says with a soft smile. He steps closer, tilting his head to read the book's spine. "The Color Purple. That one's pretty heavy, right?"
I nod.
His eyes move over my face—checking on me.
He sits on the bed beside me, leans his cheek against my shoulder.
"Don't be doing that," I whisper. We're leaving for Miller's Dad's house in...supposed to be ten minutes.
He rubs his cheek against me, tease that he is. "You can't feel my cheek without getting your dick up?"
I give him a light shove. "Yeah, I can't."
"Maybe I should suck you off," he whispers. "Hate to have this problem on the drive to Dad's."
Fucking Miller. He's got me out of my nice khakis—well, his—and on the edge of the bed, gritting my teeth to keep from groaning and then lying on my back, wrapping a leg around his shoulders as he sucks me so good I come hard enough to make him choke.
Then we're both laughing.
"Can’t let it be one-sided,” I say.
I blow him, too, and then we hurry to get dressed.
When we're stepping out onto the porch to go to his dad's, I miss a call from my mom. By the time we leave his dad's house four hours later, I've missed three calls from her. And I've got thirty-seven texts.
Fuck.
I don't turn the phone back on till Mills is sleeping. Then I slip onto the roof.
Six
Josh
Thanksgiving day, we eat a big lunch with my grandma, Mom, and Carl. It’s a good day. Grandma’s really into Ezra, even calling him her new grandson. When no one’s looking, I catch his eye and mouth, “Grandson in law,” which makes him smile.
He’s wearing one of my hunter green Polo shirts and a pair of my jeans, which fit him a little loose. At one point, as he gets up from the table, I see my mom noticing he’s got on my clothes. She smiles this funny little smile and then lifts her eyebrows at me, which makes my face heat up.
But they’re cool with it. Somehow, we fucking lucked out.
After lunch winds down, my dad calls, inviting Ez and me to come over to his place an hour early for the pie buffet—this thing he does where they put out like twenty kinds of pies and invite the whole extended family over to induce a sugar coma.
“Figured you boys might want to get in and get out, maybe fish a little while before it gets too crowded,” Dad says.
I’m pretty sure that’s code for I want a whole hour to talk to Ezra about which college he’s going to next year. But it’s okay. I’m glad my dad is into Ezra. I’m not coming out to him anytime soon, but one day maybe he’ll be happy with who I chose.
Just as I suspected, Dad talks Ezra’s ear off as Ez polishes off slices of pumpkin, chocolate, and pecan pie. I end up inside a sheet fort with Pipsa, helping wrap her baby dolls in toilet paper casts, which she makes me promise not to tell her mom about.
Finally, Ezra and I make our way into the garage, grabbing bait and poles and kissing over a bucket of crickets.
“Mmm.” I laugh, and lick his lower lip one more time. “Tastes like chocolate.”
“Sounds like crickets…” He side eyes them.
“Too much Alabama for you?” I laugh—really more a giggle, and he laughs at my laugh.
“I don’t know. Why can’t we just use fake worms?” he asks.
“Well, we could, but for the fish around my Dad’s dock, crickets work best. We could also get into the hammock down there by the lake shore. Nobody would notice since there’s so many trees.”
His eyes round out, and I snicker.
Despite Carl and Mom being cool with us, Ezra is still worried about his mom. The other day, I tried to broach the topic with him, but he quickly changed the subject.
“I’m just joshin’.” I wink, and we walk across the lawn together, so close that our arms brush a few times.
“Six months,” I say as a storm cloud drifts over the sun, making all the pine tree shadows in our path disappear. “In six months, we move to wherever you pick, and we can have our own place. I can. I know you might be in the dorms.”
He gives me a sidelong smile, which looks somehow both wistful and apprehensive.
“I’ll pick somewhere in-state,” he says quickly.
“No, c’mon. I told you this already. Pick the best place. If I have to move there and just work for six months till I’m an in-state resident, so what? Anything that’s good for you is good for me. What’s good for the gander is good for the other gander.”
He makes a thoughtful duck face.
“I heard my dad say you’d be a fool to go off anywhere but Tuscaloosa.”
Ezra arches his brows as we get to the dock. “Yeah. He might be right. They’re gonna lose Brandon Winters come spring, and then it’s just that sophomore guy, Kip Hollis.”
“Plus their scout was telling you that, wasn’t he? Telling you they’ve got a vacancy? I know you said they say that shit to everyone, but I don’t think so. They want you to start.”
He snorts softly. “I don’t know about that.”
It’s so funny and ironic how modest Ez turns out to be—after how things started with us. All the arrogance and bullshit from him was nothing but an act to get under my skin. He’s not lacking confidence, but he’s a realist. Doesn’t ever strut or brag about his football talent. He’s said a few times to me that it could be gone in a second. One wrong hit, one broken ankle or torn shoulder, and it’s over.
“I’m talking to them again after the championship game,” he says.
“Really?”
He nods, and I get a cricket out for him and bait his hook up.
“Auburn wants to talk tomorrow,” he says.
“Shit. They’re in a race to get you.”
He flashes me a quick grin. “Maybe.”
But there’s no question about it. Everybody’s clamoring for Ezra. He won’t let us watch ESPN at home—he says it makes him nervous—but I’ve sneaked some time with my phone app, and his name’s everywhere. They’re calling him the best QB in high school this year. I’m not surprised. My guy’s that fucking good.
As we fish, he asks me questions about both Auburn and Alabama, pretending he thinks I’m some big expert because I’m from this state, even though it’s obvious he wants to know which one I like best.
“I feel like they have a different vibe,” I say. “But not that different.”
We both end up laughing at how I have no opinion really.
“Whichever one ends up with that QB Ezra Masters? That’s the one to go to.”
We fish for about twenty minutes with no bites, and then all the extended fam on my dad’s side start to roll up.
“Let’s go talk for a minute and then get going,” I tell Ezra. “I don’t feel like all the social stuff, and I know you don’t.”
He gives me a funny, fake smile. “I love being social.”
“You’re a faker,” I say. “And a good one.”
“Like you’re not.” He snorts.
“I don’t go out as much as you do. Bren and all them know I’m introverted. Gotta protect my peace, bruh.”
“Not from everybody.” He gives me a smug smile, and it gets me right in the chest. I realize it’s the first time he’s seemed sure of how much I love being with him.
“Never from you.”
We shoot the shit with my aunt and cousins for a minute in the driveway and then say “bye” to Dad, who’s stepped outside to help Aunt Shirley haul a cooler.
On the way home, Ezra holds my hand and pulls our joined hands into his lap, folding them against his hip.
“You look sleepy.” I smile.
“All that sugar.”
I chortle at his health concerns, and he tells me that sugar kills. He’s smirking as he says it, though.
We watch some of a game show with Mom and Carl and hit the hay early—with Ez wrapped around me as the big spoon. Right before we fall asleep, he rolls away from me for just a second, doing something with his phone.
“You good?”
He doesn’t put the phone down, but he says, “Yeah. Just a second.”
A second turns out to be more like a minute or two. Then he’s back, holding me a little tighter than he did before.
“Love you,” he whispers.
“I love you.”
It’s the last moment everything feels okay. At 1:42, he wakes up screaming. I get him awake pretty fast, and he looks into my eyes like he knows me. Then he tucks his forehead to my chest, right there below my throat, and cries—for such a long time. I feel his body shake, feel his tears, but he’s so quiet. When he leans away to wipe his face, he whispers, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, angel.”
His lips brush over my cheek. Then he’s out of bed and moving toward the bathroom. A few seconds later, I hear the shower running. When I try the bathroom door, it’s locked. It strikes me as strange because he never locks me out. I tell myself I’m being codependent and he’s back in bed in twenty minutes, smelling like Dial soap and toothpaste, wrapping himself around me like normal and kissing my neck.
We jerk each other off and fall asleep curled up together, and the only thing I notice is that he can’t seem to take his eyes off of me.
Friday morning, we drive to these old Native American burial mounds in Cillin—just to have somewhere to go. Ezra’s quiet and seems distracted, but he holds my hand all day—he even kisses my cheek inside the mounds, where it’s shadowy and cool—and on the drive home, he talks again about what we’ll do together at college.
“Where do you see us, Millsy? Auburn? Bama? Somewhere else?”
“Wherever you end up, Ez.”
Someone from Auburn calls at 4:15, and Ezra beckons me onto the back porch with him. He keeps smiling at me as he talks. They’re clearly courting one another. He asks if he’d have to live in the dorms. He asks about the team’s values and how they treat players, and I can tell he’s trying to discern how they might treat a gay quarterback.
All he says when the call ends is, “Whew.” He shakes his head and laughs, and I say, “Stressful?”
“Sort of,” he says.
That night, we eat my mom’s spaghetti dinner, and I notice he doesn’t have much of it. He seems flat, a little tired, maybe, but it’s nothing standout. We watch a movie after, holding hands discreetly on the couch while Mom and Carl sit on the loveseat. Then Ez starts to fall asleep and ends up lying with his head in my lap. I stroke his hair the way he likes and feel a bolt of satisfaction when his body twitches. When I wake him and we go up to bed, he’s so zonked he doesn’t even brush his teeth.
“Can you get behind me,” he rasps, and I’m happy to hold sleepy Ezra.
He’s dreaming within the hour—shaking…panting. Moaning about Paul—a name I’ve heard before—and I wonder if I’m stupid for not pressing more about who that is.
When I run my hands through his hair, whispering “wake up, angel,” tears spill down his cheeks. He curls up close to me, and I wrap my arms and legs around him.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“Love you more,” he rasps back.
That happens twice more before sunup. I wonder why he’s so “off” right now, and I wish I could ask. I doze off at 6:20 and wake to donuts and a tired smile from him. Also, a little pen-scrawled note inside my wrist.
Thank you <3
Ez is sitting at the foot of the bed, wearing a black T-shirt, plaid sleep pants, and that strained smile he has when something’s bothering him.
I lift the covers up. “Come get in bed with me.”
He gets in and wraps his arms around me.
“What’s the matter?” I whisper to his hair.
“I don’t know.” His voice cracks as he says it.
Fuck.
“Did something happen?” I ask, leaning back a bit so I can see his face better.
He shakes his head, and I trace my finger along his hairline at the nape of his neck. Football season’s basically over. Maybe he’s sad that the season’s ending?
“You feeling depressed?” I murmur.
He shakes his head, curling into me more.
“Okay. It’s okay, angel.” I want so much to ask what’s in his nightmares, what’s stealing his smiles from me in the past few days. But I just…can’t. It feels invasive. This is still so new between us. All he needs right now is someone to hold him and make him feel good.
So that’s what I do. I hold him for almost an hour—an hour during which he barely moves—and then Bren calls and asks if we'd like to go water skiing in wetsuits.
"You wanna go?" he asks me. He's got this dazed look I've seen before—like when he wakes up from a nightmare.
"I don't know." We're sitting up, facing each other. I cup his face with my hands. I can't resist leaning in and brushing my lips over his, even though he doesn't look like he feels great. I'm surprised when he kisses me deeper, wraps an arm around me. He almost gets in my lap, kissing me the desperate Ezra way until we have to break apart to breathe. Afterward, we end up lying together, wrapped up in each other. Looking into each other's eyes.
There's something wrong. He looks so fucking bleak.
"Tell me what's the matter, angel."
I trace my fingertips over his forehead, my stomach flipping when tears well in his eyes.
"Just tired," he rasps.
