Short Stories - Chapter 27: Chapter 27

Walking out of Aerodynamics on Tuesday afternoon, I was met with the sight of Ezra leaning against the wall, leash in hand. When I called out to him, he raised his head, greeting me with an easy smile. "Alexander."
He started off before I reached him, and I had to jog for a second to catch up. He was already holding something out to me when I settled at his side. I wasn't sure what he wanted me to do with a sketchbook, but I took it anyways -- I wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to look at his art.
I flipped through the pages, voicing my appreciation as Ezra walked silenty beside me with head tilted bashfully downard. I wasn't sure exactly where we were going, and I probably should have been paying attention, all things considered, but my eyes followed the dark lines on the pages. Ezra mostly drew people; not real people like the ones in the portraits, but the sort of mystical mostly-humans I used to read about in fantasy stories. There were a number of fairies -- delicate, pointy-eared things with flower petals in their hair. It was sort of adorable. I only understood why he'd given me the sketchbook when I flipped to the most recent page and saw my own face staring back at me.
Well, sort of.
Ezra must have interpreted my quiet "oh," because he asked, "How'd I do?"
The features, pictured from the shoulder up, were all vaguely correct. It was something someone might draw if they'd seen me from afar, enough to guess that the drawing was probably meant to be me. But it looked more like a distant cousin. Ezra had nailed my hair, the width of my shoulders, the general shape of my face. But it was off in too many ways to really look like me -- the nose was too narrow, the lips too wide, the eyes shaped all wrong. Looking at this me's bone structure, the real me couldn't help but think Ezra had a more attractive image of me than I deserved.
"I'm surprised you remembered the description so well."
"Please, that's all I remembered," Ezra said, then went pink at his own words and switched gears. "So? Are you gonna tell me how I did or what?"
"Definitely not me, but really good."
He grinned like he'd hoped I would say that. "Tell me what I can fix."
By the time I'd finished pointing out the issues, growing bolder as I realized he wasn't offended in the slightest, we had unintentionally made our way to a café on campus. I acted as if I had been aiming for this the whole time, and if Ezra caught my bluff, he didn't say. Seated at a table in the corner, he asked a few final questions and took some last (mental? unreal.) notes.
I wanted to know how he drew, so he demonstrated on a blank page while we waited for our food. He used a weird tool that looked sort of like a pencil, but with a thin metal tip on each end instead of lead and an eraser; he called it an embossing stylus. He pushed one balled tip against the page and drew a heart, leaving behind a depression in the sheet which he ran his fingers over, then filled with pencil.
"Have I mentioned that you're unreal?"
"It's a heart," he deflected. Flipping back to the attempted portrait, I could see the colorless dips in the paper that hadn't been filled, like sketch marks that couldn't be erased.
"Un. Real."
He ducked his head, hastily shutting the sketchbook. With a self-satisfied grin, I turned to the waiter to accept our sandwiches, and for a few minutes, we ate in silence.
He turned to me over the rim of his coffee mug -- black, unlike my own sugary drink -- and said, "Tell me something that matters."
I clicked my teeth. "You really don't do small-talk, do you?"
Ezra tilted his head thoughtfully. He took another slow sip before he said, "Hm, sometimes. Not when it would take time away from something important."
I stuttered on a bite of my panini. Did that mean that I was something important, or was what I had to say important? I wasn't sure I'd ever thought either to be true, and for Ezra to say it so simply, like it was obvious, like somehow this wasn't any conversation with any acquaintance, sent a ribbon of recognition floating around at the pit of my stomach.
"What do you want me to tell you?"
"A story. A fact," he said with a shrug. He leaned forward, wiggling his eyebrows, and dropped his voice. "A secret."
"You're a dork," I laughed, and Ezra looked all-too delighted to hear it.
"I feel like we've only talked about me," he said, twirling his cup in loose fingers. "I want to know what's important to you."
"That's 'cause you're way more interesting."
"I already told you I think you're plenty interesting."
I thought for a minute, then decided on my tenth-birthday trip to the planetarium. I told Ezra about feeling weightless underneath the sloping display of outer space. I told him how none of the other kids were all that interested, they kept making noise and horsing around, but I was nowhere near them anymore, captivated and floating, overwhelmed with questions in a way that was more inspiring than frustrating. Then we were given 3-D glasses, and I ascended, reaching out toward bodies that were light-years away, hanging onto the presenter's every word, feeling my mind grow to the size of the dome-shaped roof. I told Ezra how I'd traveled galaxies and grazed comets and attempted to count every star, so immersed in that other world that the end of the visual felt like being woken from a dream or left on a cliffhanger.
Ezra listened with his chin against his palm, and despite the impossible sunglasses, I knew I had his attention in a way I'd never had Mack's, or Dennis', or my parents', or my sister's. Ezra wasn't listening out of fondness, humoring me because he cared. He didn't have any reason to care about me, not really. He was listening because he thought I had something to say. Something important.
"Didn't that make you feel tiny?" he asked when it was over, sounding as far away as those wonderful galaxies.
"Honestly, I felt larger than life," I said, and he leaned closer, subconsciously, listening. "Like . . . there was so much out there, and just learning about it, understanding it, made me so much bigger."
"Alexander?"
"Yeah?"
"If I ever hear you saying some stupid shit about not being interesting again, I'm gonna dent your fucking face in."
Through a surprised, bubbling laugh, I managed to say, "Hate to break it to you, but I don't think you could."
Ezra let out an indignant gasp and promptly challenged me to an arm wrestle to "prove his strength." I eyed his slender wrists doubtfully but took him on nonetheless. When I defeated him (easily), he loudly accused me of "picking on the blind kid," and I had to hide my head beneath my arms to ward off judgmental stares from nearby tables as he snickered evilly to himself.
When his sadistic laughter had died down and I felt confident enough to raise my head, I found Ezra leaning on his palm once more with a lazy, absent-minded sort of smile, and I couldn't find it in myself to give him more than a half-hearted, "God, you're the worst."
"And yet you're here with me," he said. All I could do was huff out a conceding breath, because yeah, I was. And thank god.
"Can you paint for me?" I asked. Maybe a bit too sudden and a bit too brash, because Ezra hesitated. "No expectations, remember?" I added quickly. "I just-- I want to see you. I want to see how you do it. And . . . you told me not to be afraid to ask."
That lazy smile of his spread wide, his lips falling open just enough for me to see his tongue poking against his teeth. "I did, didn't I?" He admitted defeat happily, sounding amused and satisfied all at once. "Florence is usually in the studio on Tuesdays, planning or meditating or whatever she does, but I can meet you after class on Thursday?"
That was how I found myself greeting Ezra outside of my classroom again two days later. We stopped for lunch first, and over a Caesar salad and another black coffee, Ezra showed me a new drawing of myself -- still not quite right, but a little closer.
He ushered me into Professor Florence's old studio and departed to look for his "cheap supplies" while Appa rolled onto his back for belly-rubs that I hadn't offered but couldn't refuse. The half-finished painting of the flower on the easel didn't seem to have changed much progress-wise, but an angry green stripe now stretched from corner to corner like a claw mark. I frowned when I saw it, but thought better of commenting as I joined Ezra where he sat cris-crossed on the floor.
He explained as he worked, but I was caught up watching over his shoulder as he ran his fingers over the braille labels on the tubes of acrylic paint and pressed a small brush dipped in white to the canvas. His left hand glided over the canvas with a barely-there touch of trailing fingers while his right hand followed suit with the brush, using the movement of his left as a guide. He made some sort of outline with the white, and by the time it was finished, his starting point had dried and he began adding color over it. I tried to understand what he was doing when he mixed the colors on his palette with tiny drops of a clear fluid, how he knew which color was which as he tapped his fingers, then his brush, against the paint, but it was all beyond me.
"What are you doing?" I asked as he did it again.
"Using a medium to change the texture," he explained, brush making quick, light strokes as his left hand ran along the white outline, using it as a map. "So I can identify the colors. They all feel different. 'S how I can mix colors, too."
I couldn't say how long we sat there on the floor of the studio. Ezra worked me into something of a trance, and I didn't even realize he was finished until he nudged my shoulder with his.
"Saturn," I realized as I looked down at the muted browns, greens, oranges, and yellows; the sheer, watery black background; the telltale rings. I had been so focused on the motion of his hands, I hadn't been paying any attention to what he was creating.
"I guess your space talk got to me, nerd," Ezra shrugged, laughing when I bumped his shoulder. "Alright, now it's your turn."
Whatever smug face I'd been wearing after nearly knocking him to the ground with one bump dropped away. "Pardon?"
"I painted something for you. Paint something for me."
Ezra unraveled the warm brown scarf around his neck. I could see, now, why he always had paint on his clothes. It was all over his hands, covering every fingertip, especially his pointers, and smeared in splotches on the sides of his palms, his joints, his knuckles. I was still staring at his hands when he held out the scarf and said, "Blindfolded."
"Pardon me?" I said again, significantly squeakier this time.
"Don't worry, I'll help you," he promised, which was not at all comforting, but he was laughing, and before I knew it, I was taking the scarf from his hands. A warm, earthy scent, like fresh air, clung to the fabric, catching on every inhale as I wrapped it around my face.
Starting with white paint, Ezra tried to coach me on using my non-dominant hand to help with the outline, but I proved to be absolutely useless at coordinating the two movements. He lay his left hand over mine, guiding it, but knew I was making a fool of myself when I started again and he immediately burst into giggles. I lowered the brush.
"No, no, keep going, sorry," Ezra said, and I could hear his infuriating smile. "It's just, I can feel the brush going all the way under your hand, and that sorta defeats the purpose."
"I'm sick of you," I grumbled as I started again, focusing hard on directing the movement of my hand -- our hands. Ezra stifled more laughter when the brush slipped off the canvas entirely. "You let that happen."
"Spatial awareness is hard," he said innocently.
"Not for you, clearly."
"What good teacher does all the pupil's work for them?"
"So very, very sick of you."
Ezra snickered, bringing his other hand over mine where I clasped the brush. "Fine, fine, I'll give you a hand."
He laughed at his own pun. "Dork," I said, but it came out more fond than mocking, dammit.
He led my hands across the page. He was doing most of the work for me, but he relaxed once I started to get the hang of it, forearms drooping to rest over mine, following the curves of my brush-strokes and just barely nudging me in the right direction.
"Do you feel the difference?" he asked as I rubbed two different paint colors between the thumb and pointer finger of each hand.
"Honest answer?"
"Always."
"Feels like paint."
Ezra's floaty laugh was a whole different experience now, because I could feel his chest shaking against against my side, could feel his smile when he attempted to muffle himself against my shoulder. Apparently deciding it was a lost cause, he told me which color was which -- green on my right, white on my left. He stayed leaning against my side even after his laughter sobered. Every time one of his fingers brushed the underside of my hand, I wondered if he noticed that my palms had gone clammy. He didn't mention it.
When Ezra decided that we were done (how he knew, I couldn't figure) and untied the scarf, I nearly peed myself laughing at the product. It was . . . most certainly not Saturn.
I laughed even harder when I held our two images up next to each other, and Ezra laughed right along with me, even though he couldn't see the disaster for himself. He got an idea when the paint was dry and he was able to run his fingers over it to find that Saturn was apparently no longer round, and that I had done about as good a job at coloring between the lines as my sister's year-old daughter (who was not yet allowed to use crayons).
"Guess I'm not a very good teacher," Ezra joked.
"Well, your methods were definitely unconventional," I said. Looking at his hands now, I wondered what they must've looked like against mine. His skin was much paler, his fingers just as long but far thinner. "I think I'm the one to blame here, though."
"Maybe it's abstract," he mused.
"Or not."
He snorted. "Probably not."
A thought struck me then, as I sat next to Ezra with his scarf still hanging loose around my neck, hands covered in drying paint. I didn't want to leave. I could've spent the entire night right there, in that studio with him. I wished I could.
It was a startling thing. I hadn't wanted to be anywhere -- really wanted, to the point where I grieved the thought of leaving -- in months.
But I did have to leave, eventually. It got dark, and Ezra got sleepy, and after hours of fucking around and playing with Appa and talking about things that mattered, it was time to go.
I paused at the door to the art department building, wracking my brain for a way to keep the night going or pick it up another day. It would be so easy to stop him and say, let's do this again, or what's your number? But I wasn't like Ezra. I wasn't good at asking for what I wanted. And besides, if he wanted to see me again, he would've said something by now. He had never hesitated before.
"Do you . . . want me to walk with you?" I asked. It was a lame attempt, but at least it would buy me some time to come up with something better.
"I can make my way with Appa just fine," he said, not unkindly. "Thank you, though. Goodnight."
We went our separate ways, and it occured to me that I would have to go back home now, knowing I wouldn't see him again.
Back to normal it was. Mack greeted me with a smile, and I returned it. He told me his plans for the weekend, invited me along, beamed when I agreed to go out with him. He was the perfect friend to have, because he knew great people and places. He was always down to do something, whether that was staying in and having a movie marathon (two tubs of popcorn, two bottles of soda, two large pizzas, two of us) or getting wasted at a lakeside party. He couldn't sit still for very long; it was why we had gotten along so well in the first place. He was very go go go, and so was I.
Or, I had been. Freshman year when we met. Sophomore year when we moved in together. A few months ago, even, before go, go, go had morphed into go through the motions.
The movie marathon was great. So was the party, albeit a bit cold. It was the sort of fun I was supposed to live for at twenty-one.
It was a great weekend, and I felt as if I'd slept through it.
The shout I let out when I came in first in an eight-person sprint down the shore felt distant to my own ears. The kiss I accepted from a gorgeous, incredibly funny girl tasted like alcohol and nothing more. Mack's ear-to-ear grin when he threw an arm around my shoulders and drunkenly promised that we'd be "bros forever" was impossible to return in full, even though I did want that, surely.
Monday crawled around, and I was still sleeping, dreamless and restless, wishing someone would pinch me and wake me up. I tried to listen to my Engineering Mechanics lecture, to Dr. Horris' over-excited voice, to information I was supposed to long for. But it all faded into background noise, and it was frustrating, because I could have sworn I had cared about this shit at one point. It was easier to be distracted than frustrated -- always, always easier -- so I opened up another dumb game on my laptop and pretended to listen.
Days sort of rolled together when you slept through them. Monday became Tuesday purely because the sun sank and the calender said so, but they could've been one day, the way they seemed to blend. The last six months of my life could have been one long, drawn out day.
Proffesor Burke wove in applications and examples and stories to keep his aerodynamics lecture interesting, but all I heard was a single-toned, flat, boring lullaby. Vaguely, I considered that this was my future, and I was sleeping through it. But that verged on frustrating, so instead of dwelling on it, I distracted myself. Why stress when you can play Papa's Pizzeria?
I drifted through the door when class ended, asleep on my feet. I almost didn't see him, but when I did, it was like a bucket of cold water had been dumped on my head.
"Hi," I said, sort of breathless, very awake.
"Take out your phone," Ezra said without preamble.
"Why?"
"So you can put my number in it."
The smile he sent my way was another bucket of cold water. I returned it in earnest, and maybe it was a good thing he couldn't see how giddy it was. That would be fucking embarrassing. "Lunch?" I offered. "My treat."
We never officially made it a regular thing, and yet I found Ezra waiting for me outside of aerodynamics again that Thursday, then the Tuesday after that, and after a while, the surprise and relief faded into expectation. Tuesdays were for lunches, Thursdays were for wandering into Professor Florence's studio and not leaving until Appa started getting fussy.  Ezra gave me a few more wildly unsuccessful art lessons (which went from unproductive to shit-show when he offered me an edible), but we mostly worked to ourselves, sitting across from each other on the floor with laptops open and headphones on. I'd always thought silence was an uncomfortable thing, but Ezra was a firm believer that "awkwardness is all in your head," and I was starting to realize it wasn't so unpleasant when it was with him. When he did break the silence, he made it count.
I felt bigger every time he opened that stupidly passionate mouth of his, like I was discovering a different corner of the universe in his words. He could go on and on about the colors in clouds and the patterns on leaves and the shapes of noses -- the little things that had inspired him when he was younger, the things I had never paid any mind to. He was happy to fill the air with his own stories, but every now and then he would prompt me to tell him something. Ezra was true to his word, never wasting time on small-talk, and I was starting to think I saw a little clearer when he was around.
I hadn't realized I had so much to say. But every time he asked, I found something new to share. Memories from my high-school days, moments that had shifted the way I saw things, words of advice from my parents. And, of course, stories about space.
Those were his favorite. He never said so, but he always leaned closer when I told them. I dug into my memories for the moments that had left me speechless, and for those brief spurts of storytelling, I remembered the overwhelming awe that had led me here.
But then the story would end, and so would the feeling. Eventually we'd part, and then I was tired and bored, faking smiles to get by, waiting to see him again.
xxx
I had a dream. When I woke up, there was a warm, pleasant feeling in my stomach, and my heart was beating like crazy, and I was painfully aware of how dry my lips were. I touched my fingers to them and could've sworn I felt the ghost of some feeling there, but all I could remember from the dream was paint-splattered fingers and the smell of fresh air.
Something churning and uneasy replaced the pleasant feeling.
I called out to Mack. In a few seconds, his face poked into my room. He was so tall he had to bend his neck to fit through the doorway.
"Call of Duty?" I offered. He grinned at me, reaching for his phone to order takeout.
xxx
My knock sounded awkwardly loud in the quiet hall, but I could barely hold back my excitement. At Ezra's muffled "come in," I pushed into the studio, holding a smoothie in one hand and the sheet of paper I had just ripped off the wall in the other. It felt weird, coming in when he was already there, but my boss had scheduled me for today.
"Ezra, dude, you've gotta see this," I said, hurriedly making my way toward the stool on which he perched. He was facing a mostly-blank canvas, working on a piece I couldn't identify yet. In the last few weeks, I'd seen multiple works-in-progress up on this easel, but not a single finished product. Or anything close.
"I'll try my best," he deadpanned, and I paused with my arm half-extended to show him the flyer, dropping it back to my side with a sheepish, "My bad."
"It's a flyer about this art competition thing," I told him. "To have your work in a show."
A noncommital hum. "I know about it."
"You do?"
"They hold it at this gallery in the city," he said offhandedly. "It's a yearly 'up and coming artists' event. It's kind of pretentious, and it's pretty hard to get your work shown, but every year the Art's College's upperclassmen can enter to show a few pieces. Pretty sure the gallery owners like, went here a thousand years ago or something, and they pick one student out of all the entries. It's a good opportunity for networking and putting your foot in the door."
"So . . ." I prompted, crouching down next to the stool. I bounced on the balls of my feet, even more pumped than when I'd come in. "You're gonna enter, right?"
"I'm not, no." Ezra turned his attention back to the easel, raising his brush without actually making contact with the canvas.
I gaped at him. "But you have to! I just know you could win. You're-- come on!"
"I couldn't win." He traced a waving white outline with dull beige. He usually gave me his full attention when he spoke, but he wasn't now, and I kind of hated it. "I'm not entering."
"But--"
"Alex, please stop," he said.
I remembered the way his face had fallen when I first asked to see his work the night of the Carvell game. I'll always love art. Doesn't mean I make anything worthwhile anymore.
Glancing around the room, everything looked pretty damn worthwhile to me.
I took hold of his closest wrist and handed him the smoothie. "I brought you this. From work. I don't know what you like, but I figured strawberry was a good bet?"
Ezra raised the straw to his lips, took a sip. Smiled at me. "Thank you. This is really good."
I moved to stand, then paused and dropped back down, tongue poking against the inside of my cheek. "We okay?"
"'Course we are," he said. When I hovered there for another moment, unsure that I believed him and contemplating an apology, he switched the smoothie to his other hand so he could reach toward me. He landed in my hair, and his smile grew as he twisted a tight curl around his fingers. "You sure worry a lot for a dumb jock," he teased. "Go do your homework. I know you have a lot."
Grimacing, I fell away from him with an exaggerated groan and landed on my back. "You suck."
"Mhm."
While Ezra worked on his painting, I poured through my engineering textbook. It was a robotic process, reading and taking notes as time slipped by. I read the words, wrote down what seemed important, committed what I could to memory. The pages blurred together, the way everything else seemed to, but I understood the information well enough.
This was my future, and I was sleeping through it. I turned the page, took more notes.
The hours dragged on. I finished an assignment on my laptop and started another. Every now and then I would glance up at Ezra and see slightly altered versions of the same image: him, brush raised to the canvas or held limp in his hand, eyebrows furrowed above his frames, lips set into a thin line. The painting had hardly changed since I arrived, but I thought I could see the form of a girl taking shape.
The sun began to set. I typed the words of a monotonous essay. The girl got a dress, a frown.
The moon took its place in the sky. I stifled a yawn as I skimmed through a research paper for evidence. A dark stripe of brown was slashed across the girl's face, and Ezra abruptly stood.
He seemed to remember I was there an instant too late, because his cheeks flushed red and he turned away from me so I was looking at his back.
"I'm . . . gonna go somewhere," he muttered, hurrying over to the sink like he was desperate to put space between himself and the soiled painting.
Staring wide-eyed from the floor at his crushing grip on his paintbrushes, I asked, "Where?"
"Somewhere."
After that, the only sounds in the room were Appa's gentle snores from his dog bed and the water rushing from the sink as he washed his brushes. And washed them, and washed them. I'd seen him do it enough times by now to know it didn't take that long.
I approached from behind and placed a hand on his back. For a moment, I stood there with him, watching the warm water run over his fingers and his brushes. My other hand went to the faucet to cut off the stream. His bottom lip was caught between his teeth, and I worried he might cut himself, biting so hard, but I didn't say anything until I felt his shoulders relax. "Let's leave for a bit, yeah?"
He cursed under his breath. "Appa's asleep." The dog had curled up in his dog bed an hour ago.
"He wasn't with you the first time I saw you."
"He was at the vet. Kayla helped me get to your class," he said. Kayla was Ezra's best friend, the cheerleader he had gone to the game to support. He brought her up all the time, and I wondered if I'd ever meet her. Would she share his ability to pinch me awake? I couldn't imagine him being best friends with anyone who wasn't just as ridiculously inspired as he was. I still wasn't entirely sure how I was allowed to be friends with him. "I'll just-- it's fine. I'll stay. Sorry--"
"Hey, hey," I interrupted, pressing my hand a little firmer between his shoulder blades; he was biting his lip again. "You've got me, right?"
Ezra's hum was becoming a familiar sound. He relaxed some more against my hand. "Don't know if I can trust you."
To my relief, a playful smile accompanied his words. "Why don't we find out, then?"
I took his hand before he had a chance to respond and gave it a gentle tug. He jumped at the contact and I quickly let go, stuttering out an apology, but then he raised his palm and splayed his fingers, wordlessly asking for mine back.
I led him out of the studio, out of the building, and onto the sidewalk. He didn't seem tense, but his grip on my hand was tight, and I resolved to prove to him that he really could trust me, all jokes aside. I wasn't sure I'd ever paid as much attention to my surroundings as I did then, watching for every curb, every light post, every uneven crack in the sidewalk.
"Careful now, you might take Appa's job," he joked as I warned him of an incoming step.
"Canine unemployment is a serious issue, Ezra."
"Oh, my bad."
The night was cool, but Ezra's hand was warm in mine. I could feel the patches of dried paint along his palm and fingertips.
I brought him to a grassy area between the main library and a few extra halls nicknamed Century Plaza. During the day, the lawn was dotted with students sitting together on the grass, drinking coffee and studying for their classes on picnic blankets and benches. Now, we were the only ones in the great space, and it struck me that it was even more scenic at night, dim in the pinkish-white glow of the lamposts and haunted by the shadows of the mossy trees. The spot I chose was at the peak of a small hill, void of the larger trees students often hung their hammocks from, so when we lay back against the grass, I stared directly up at the night sky.
Indanthrone Blue.
At the time, I had been too drunk to consider why the color reminded me so much of Ezra, but looking up now, it seemed obvious. Ezra was deep and vast, and when he spoke, I felt the same way I had staring at the planetarium display. Larger than life.
"Ezra?"
"Hm?"
"Can you take your glasses off?"
He turned onto his cheek so he was facing me. "Why?"
"I don't know. You don't have to, if you're not comfortable," I backtracked, because god, way to be a prick. "It's just, I've seen you so many times, but I feel like I've never really seen you."
Amidst the background noise of the night, I barely heard his sharp breath in. I hadn't realized his hand was still in mine until he let go to pull the shades from his face, carefully folding them and resting them in the space beside his head. My fingers ached for the lost warmth, but I didn't have time to linger on the feeling, because Ezra opened his eyes.
From so close, I could see the wide ring of green that surrounded the amber center, and all I could think was,
"Why on Earth do you cover those up?"
Ezra turned back toward the sky. "People tend to find a blank stare kind of uncomfortable. I never know where to look, and faking eye contact is hard. It's just easier this way."
It made sense, even if it was a damn shame. "Do you think you could . . . can you keep the shades off with me, at least? I don't mind where you look."
"Why?"
A frown pulled at my lips. Did there have to be a reason? Ezra was my friend -- my good friend. And he had lovely eyes. "Why?"
"Why."
"I just want to see you."
There it came again, that hitch in his breathing.
"Something wrong?"
He shook his head, hair splaying out in the grass with each slight twist. "You're just reminding me of something."
I rolled onto my side, propped on one forearm to face him fully, because I could feel a story coming. He never wasted his breath, and I wanted to soak up his every word. "Tell me."
"My parents . . ." he said, eyes shut, sighing into the blue. He shivered slightly, then shifted toward my body heat, so his side was pressed against my torso. "My mom grew up in Israel, my dad in Lebanon. Things are so terrible over there, between their governments, you know? But they met when they were teenagers, in the same place at the same time by chance. My mom got separated from her family and ran into him. They weren't aware of each other's backgrounds — I don't think they even exchanged names — but by the time my dad had helped her find her way, they just . . . knew.
"They say it was love at first sight, I don't know. They wrote to each other for years before their families found out and tried to separate them. Thing is, my mom didn't believe in what her family stood for. She believed in him, and he saw her for who she was, and they came here together as soon as they could. That's . . . that's what I want."
"Love at first sight?"
Ezra bent one arm beneath his head and tipped his cheek onto his shoulder. His eyes stared past me, but the longing in them was clear, and I couldn't believe I hadn't asked to see them sooner. There was so much to be said in that ring of green alone.
"To be seen," he said. "Really seen. And to see someone. Obviously I don't-- I can't see anyone, but I don't mean it like that. I mean . . ."
Ezra rarely stumbled over his words. "I think I know what you mean," I said.
He nodded gratefully. "I think I see you can be just as powerful as I love you."