Short Stories - Chapter 28: Chapter 28

"Honestly, I don't think it's all it's made out to be," I said around a mouthful of cookies 'n cream, scrunching my nose in protest when Ezra snorted at my thick voice and butchered consonants.
"No?" he mused. "I feel like it would be nice to know so many people; you've always got someone to distract you."
His shoulder bumped against mine as he raised his own chocolate milkshake to his mouth. Even Appa had gotten a sweet treat; the girl working at the counter of the ice cream shop had just about fallen over herself to get him a pup cup, and he still had white clumps around his nose to show for it. It was definitely too cold a day for the food choice, but Ezra stood by his "urgent craving," even as he shivered every time the wind blew.
I chewed on my straw, thoughtful. "It was— it is. But I think I'd rather be close with a few people than acquaintances with so many. It's exhausting, you know? Having to put on a different version of yourself depending on who you're with."
Ezra's shoulder rubbed mine again as we walked. When he dropped his arm after a contemplative sip, cold fingers brushed against my elbow. If there was anything I'd learned about Ezra in the time I'd known him (and there were many, many things), it was that he was touchy. Always making contact in some way. A hand on an elbow walking side-by-side, ankles crossed under a table, a head on a shoulder sitting against a wall, knees bumping over the grass. It had been jarring at first — I'd never had that sort of relationship with my friends — but it had only taken a bit of time and the repeated reminder that he experienced the world through touch to get used to it. Ezra liked it, and I didn't mind, so I found myself walking close, returning playful flicks and meaningful squeezes.
"Why put on a mask, then? Isn't one version of you enough?"
He was so honestly confused, all pursed lips and creased brows, and for the hundredth time, I envied him. So unapologetically himself that he couldn't even comprehend why I wouldn't be. I rolled my eyes, fond and jealous and disbelieving all at once, and I could only think, aren't you something to admire?
"Different people have different expectations," I said after a poke in the bicep from Ezra, a sign that I had been quiet for too long.
"Who says it's your job to meet them?"
"Who—" I blinked, a little stupid, because it was a simple question, really, and I was hopeless to answer it. "Is that a rhetorical question?"
Ezra let a wispy little laugh slip under his breath. "You're cute. What version am I getting, then?"
"Ah, see, you're a special case."
"Oh?"
"I already hit rock bottom with the first impression, so I don't have to worry about how I act around you."
"Give yourself some credit, the first impression was pretty good. Second one was where you tanked." The wind disrupted his hair as he walked, throwing it into his face and his mouth so that he was constantly pushing it aside and spitting it out. It seemed pretty pointless to have your hair half-up only to intentionally pull some strands loose in the front, but I wasn't about to talk style to someone who couldn't see and still dressed better than I did.
"Let's talk about that redemption arc."
Ezra drifted off on that laugh of his, the gentle tide that swept me up and whisked me away without my feet ever leaving the ground. "I'm glad," he said.
Another bumped shoulder. "Glad?"
"That I get the real thing."
My quiet "oh" didn't make it over the wind. Shaking the chill of the passing gust, I said, louder, "It's a trade. You lose the shades, I lose the mask."
Ezra couldn't fully smile with his mouth around the straw, but what hid from his lips showed in the crinkling of his eyes. "I'm glad I get to see you."
I didn't get a chance to respond, and fortunately so, because the coherent part of my brain had apparently taken a leave of absence. Two hands came down on Ezra's shoulders from behind, causing us both to jump, and a feminine voice cooed, "Guess who?"
A smile bloomed across Ezra's face, water-lily wide. "Oh my god, George Bush?"
"So close, babe, you're getting better at this."
"Alexander, this is Kayla," Ezra introduced over the noise of a sloppy kiss being planted on his cheek. Kayla -- the best friend I'd heard so much about -- used her thumb to wipe away the glossy wine-red residue. "Kayla, this is--"
"Alexander, Alexander, the celebrity himself." She faced me with raised eyebrows and an arch smile that turned smug when Ezra's face went pink. I missed the silent exchange that followed, too busy gaping at her for two reasons.
1. I had seen her face before. It had been so long ago, but I was sure she was the girl in Ezra's portrait.
2. She was impossible not to gape at.
She had been lovely in the photograph, sure, but a picture could never compare to flesh and blood. Big hair, dark skin, pierced septum, deep eyes. Coy smile. I belatedly realized that she was 100% talking to me, and I was 100% staring at her like I'd never seen a girl before, but woah.
"I'm . . . sorry, what?"
"It's nice to meet you," she repeated, and it took me a second to process (because, woah), but I managed to return the sentiment without embarrassing myself. "Well, I won't keep you two--"
"You can stay," I offered, far too quickly. "If you want, I mean."
She placed a hand on Ezra's shoulder, some wordless question I couldn't translate. His smile was honest when he said, "We're heading to the studio. Walk with us?"
As she fell into step, walking next to me to give Appa space, I forcefully recovered from my cottonmouth and managed to make decent conversation. This, at least, I could do -- I spent enough of my time surrounded by near-strangers to know how to make small-talk.
And she was cool. The patchwork sleeve, film and music double-major, deep voice sort of cool. Her presence was at once calming and magnetic, the type of vibe that had me lowering my own voice for fear of talking too loud. I knew I was acting different, talking slower, thinking over my words more than I normally would to avoid coming across as a stupid fratboy. And I knew Ezra noticed. I was breaking the deal I'd only just made -- he still lacked the shades, but I was freshly masked. I couldn't help it. It was less the desire to impress, more the fear of disappointing.
It all felt so, so weird. Being around Ezra like this. The absence of his shoulder against mine -- at some point, I had gravitated away from him and toward Kayla, and it was fine, Kayla was fine, but it was weird. The distance, the small-talk, the fact that Ezra was hardly talking at all. This felt a lot more like my world than the wonderfully strange place Ezra brought me to whenever we were together.
I was used to him holding up most of the conversation, but his interjections seemed few and far between. I got the feeling I wasn't making it up, because Kayla kept throwing glances his way and drawing him into the conversation, but in the end, she was the one carrying, full of stories and thoughts, unafraid of letting her words act as a window into her mind.
She was gorgeous and cool and crazy easy to talk to.
My gaze kept drifting over to my other side.
I didn't even notice until I turned back to Kayla, still mid-sentence, to be met with a quiet laugh and a knowing smile. I felt my ears grow warm without really knowing why, opting to watch my feet rather than meet her searching eyes.
"You know what, I just remebered," Kayla said, cutting off her own spiel on an upcoming short film contest. "I have to, ah, give this kid a piano lesson." Ezra raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything, and I stubbornly turned my gaze back to the ground when I realized I had once again been watching him instead of the source of the conversation. "I'll have to leave you to it--"
"Is that paint?" Ezra interrupted, nose slightly upturned. Now that he mentioned it, I could smell it, and the culprit wasn't all that hard to spot. A short distance away, a group of students stood at the wall of one of the smaller study halls, wearing ratty sweatshirts and surrounded by open cans of paint. The once-brown wall had been covered in a base layer of white, still wet and reflective in the midday light.
"Ezra!" called out one of the students, a boy who stood a head above the rest. The girl next to him -- a complete opposite, unusually short -- turned around at the shout, and after mumbling something I couldn't hear between themselves, they approached together.
"Um, Ezra," said Kayla, a tentative mutter that made me think I was missing something. Her piano lesson was apparently forgotten as she stepped closer to him.
"It's fine," Ezra said, and yeah, I was definitely missing something.
The sunglasses were back on by the time we met the pair halfway. "Ezra! It's been so long!" the boy said, reaching out to put a greeting hand on Ezra's shoulder. He was even taller up close; the sleeves of his fading Whitman sweater hung loose off of his thin frame and yet didn't reach his wrists. He turned his wide smile onto me and extended a hand. "I don't think we've met. I'm Lance; we went to highschool with Ezra and Kayla."
Before I could give my own name, he had dropped my hand and the girl had snatched it up, and I had to switch between raising my chin to face him and dipping it to look at her. From above, I could see that she'd somehow managed to get paint on the strict middle part of her chin-length hair. "Call me Mari," she said with a matching Cheshire-cat grin, then immediately turned her attention back to Ezra.
"How've you been? Anything new you're working on?"
It seemed innocent enough, but I didn't miss the way Ezra winced beside me. "Nothing new."
"Oh, bummer," Mari pouted. "You're still entering the Hallies though, right?"
Ezra took far longer to respond than appropriate for such a simple question. I watched him through the silence, looking for a tell in the lines of his face, but all I saw was the reflection in his glasses. I wondered regretfully if this was how he'd felt ealier, when I hadn't been myself.
Finally, "I'm not, actually."
Lance and Mari exchanged a frown. "Aw, damn," said Lance. "I guess it's probably for the best, huh? There's always next year."
"Maybe."
"We've been missing you out here!" Mari gestured behind her at the painted wall and assembled students. Looking back and forth between them was going to make my neck hurt. "Sucks we can't have you, we could always use talent like yours."
I spared a glance at Appa, sitting dutifully at Ezra's feet, curiously watching the exchange. There wasn't a thought behind those umber eyes of his, and I was starting to feel like I understood what was going on about as well as he did. Ezra asked, "What is it you're working on?"
"Oh, did no one tell you? We got the greenlight to paint a mural on the west wall of the study hall, the one that was all brown and nasty because apparently no one here has ever heard of a power washer." Mari laughed at her own joke, and Lance joined in, but Ezra was silent, and Kayla . . . Kayla looked kind of scary. I was definitely definitely missing something. "It's a super cool design, I wish I could show you. Lance and I have been working on it for a while now."
"You two are heading this, then?"
"Yup! So excited they trusted us with all of this."
"So who else did you think would've told me?"
Kayla blew out through her lips like she was holding back a whistle. Mari's smile remained, but her voice fell short, fingers moving to toy with the hem of her hoodie. Next to her, Lance spoke up. "You know we'd love to have you out here, man. But we've sort of got a deadline, and you don't usually do groupwork, so we figured it would be easier if . . ."
"Hey, no worries," Ezra said, offering up his own smile. "I get it."
"We really mean it," Mari piped up. "If this was happening a few years ago--"
"No really, I get it," Ezra said. He sounded tired, like this conversation was draining him, and I brought a hand to his arm, wishing I could pull him out. It didn't feel like my place.
Fortunately, Kayla had best friend rights, so it was her place. "I hate to interrupt, but I've really gotta get to that guitar lesson, remember?"
It was an easy escape. Mari and Lance seemed relieved to let us go, and the mural couldn't disappear behind us fast enough.
"Thanks," muttered Ezra.
When I asked about the change from "piano" to "guitar," Kayla's brushed it off with a sheepish laugh and a noncomittal, "Oh, right." She had taken the spot next to Ezra as we left, and now she turned to him to say, "I can, uh, cancel that, if you want--"
He shook his head. "I'm good, don't worry. You should probably get to that, though."
"Ezra . . ."
"I think I'm going to head home, if that's alright. I'll see you later."
"Oh. Of course," I said, which was pretty useless, because he was already starting off in a different direction. "Later," I added, though I might as well have been talking to myself. Frowning, I looked to Kayla. "I . . . don't really know what just happened. Is he okay?"
She nodded, though she didn't look totally convinced. "He just needs a minute."
"By himself?"
"So he'll say," she said, complete with an exasperated sigh. "I'll see you around, okay? Violin lesson and all."
xxx
I lasted about three hourse before I caved.
I couldn't get those plastered grins and Ezra's tired voice out of my head. I couldn't forget the way, even with the shades on, I had known his smile wasn't meeting his eyes. And I couldn't forget those words from Kayla: so he'll say.
I definitely, definitely, definitely didn't understand what was up between Ezra and those kids from his high school. But I understood what it looked like to veil mean sentiments behind nice words. And I understood Ezra. At least, I hoped I did.
So I threw open every cabinet in my apartment to find a decent poison. Turned out, we were fresh out of alcohol save for one bottle of fucking red wine in the fridge. Mack's for sure, because I hadn't bought wine since my mom's birthday in May. Recalling how the whiskey I'd brought home a couple weeks ago had mysteriously gone missing, I felt no remorse taking it. Cheap wine didn't exactly carry the "drown your problems in liquor" vibe I was looking for, but it would do.
So I lugged it onto campus, only realizing halfway that I probably shouldn't just carry it in my hand. Not that the bulge in my hoodie was much more inconspicuous.
I knocked on the door to Professor Florence's studio, waited, then knocked again when no response came. This would turn out pretty lame if he really had gone to his apartment, but if I understood him like I hoped, he was here.
"Ezra," I called through the wood. "It's me."
"I know."
Thank god. There was a girl walking up the stairs, warily eyeing me and my wine-shaped belly, and it would've been embarrassing if he wasn't there.
Figuring that was the closest I'd get to permission, I pushed into the room. Ezra was in front of his easel as per usual, but he wasn't sitting on the stool. He was hunched on the floor with his back against the stool legs, gripping one paintbrush in both hands. Three others had been tossed to the floor nearby, still coated with paint and definitely leaving marks on the tile. Whatever had once been on the easel was nothing more than a wasted canvas now, an unfinished image cut through with streaks of bright red. His glasses were on the floor, too, leaving me victim to the sight of the watery corners of his eyes.
I crouched near him and collected the discarded paintbrushes. The one in his hand slipped from his grasp without resistance. Setting down the bottle of wine, I carried the brushes to the sink and washed them like I'd seen him do so many times, knowing how annoyed he would be later if he let the paint dry. He hadn't moved by the time I sat in front of him, but I waited for him to speak anyways.
"Please don't try to comfort me," he muttered eventually. "You know I hate that mind-over-matter shit. I don't want . . . not right now."
"I sort of figured," I said. "So I brought wine instead."
Ezra put his face in his hands, took a deep breath. Muffled, he said, "You're the greatest."
So we sat together on the studio floor with our backs to the counter, saying nothing and drinking straight from the bottle. Every now and then a tear would slip down his cheek, and I would bite my tongue. We made it halfway through the bottle before he spoke.
"I haven't painted anything in six months."
He pressed the mouth of the bottle to his lips, either taking a long, slow drink or pretenting to, buying himself time.
"Anything real, I mean. Anything to be proud of. The kind of thing I could enter into the Hallies -- that stupid flyer you gave me. The contest, it's nicknamed after the gallery owners. Robert and Caroline Holloway," he said their names bitterly, as if they'd wronged him somehow. "I've always wanted to enter. Since high school."
He still could. The deadline for entry hadn't come yet. But he wouldn't; I could hear it still, how tired he was. How tired he'd been. I couldn't believe I'd missed it this whole time.
"Lance and Mari, I've known them since middle school. They're incredible, some of the most talented people I've ever met. We've always been sort of friendly rivals, you know? We used to do peer reviews on each other's work all the time. Brutally honest. And I'm fine with taking criticism, always have been but, um."
He ran a hand over his forehead, pushing loose hair away from his face. It fell back over his eyes and cheeks immediately. Huffing out an almost-laugh that failed to curl his lips or meet his eyes, he settled for tucking it behind his ears.
"I guess rivalry can only be friendly for so long, I don't know. They came in here a while back." Ezra tipped his head back against the counter. "Said they wanted to look at my work, like the old days. And I guess they, ah, said a lot. They said what people like you and professor Florence don't say, 'cause you like me too much to be honest."
He twisted his hands in the fabric of his sweater. There was a smear of pink on the white turtleneck he wore underneath.
"It's different, having your work picked apart when you can't see it. They found everything. Every little flaw. They told me none of it was good enough, and they told me why, and what can I do but believe them?"
He took an extra second, then an extra sip.
"It sucks, you know?" He didn't sound like himself. The voice that had always lifted me up had gone one-dimensional and deadweight heavy. "I can still paint and draw better than the average person, sure, fine. I'm still good at it, on a basic level. But this is my dream, and it's the kind of thing you have to be great at, and that's not possible for me."
According to what rule? I wanted to protest, but he'd said it himself enough times: he didn't believe in that mind-over-matter shit. I settled for pushing my shoulder against his. He hummed his acknowledgement, and when I started to lean away, he followed my movement, leaning himself against my side.
"I've always tried to make the most of my situation and do what I can with what I have, but there's only so far I can get on willpower alone. I wanted to be an art major, but I can't do that. Even my minor is adjusted to cater to my differences, because what the fuck am I supposed to do in an art history class, or a peer review? I can't join in on shit like group murals because I work at such a different pace and with a different technique and I can't fucking see what anyone's doing and--"
Another tear, but Ezra's voice pushed through the strain, tight as it was with poorly-concealed frustration. "Lance and Mari have evrything I lack and can do everything I can't, and they just fucking walked in here and ripped my work to shreds, and I haven't been able to make anything worth half a damn since. It was so easy for them to tell me everything wrong with every piece. What am I supposed to think? I have no idea what my finished products actually look like. All I have is what I want them to look like, and that's not good enough."
Hands dragged up his face and back into his hair, inadvertently pulling it further loose. He let out a long, resigned sigh into his palms, and when he removed his fingers, his cheeks were dry but his eyes were red. "Ever since they came in here, I haven't been able to make anything worthwhile. I tried so hard at first to prove them wrong. I spent every hour I could in here trying to paint something, then went home and painted some more. I ran myself ragged trying to make something even they couldn't shit on, but every time I tried I thought about the things they said, and how they were right, and I just knew I was butchering every ounce of inspiration I got. Eventually, the inspiration stopped coming, and now . . ." he gestured to the easel with the ruined painting.
"I miss it, you know? Getting an idea and feeling so compelled that I would drop everything until it was finished. I don't get those ideas anymore. Just these half-assed attempts to make something."
He finished with a trembling breath, allowing his head to loll to the side like he didn't have the energy to hold it up anymore. There were so many things I wanted to say -- that Lance and Mari weren't professionals, that he should trust his professor over them, that they were probably just trying to mess with his head and get rid of competition. But Ezra was too smart not to know all of that already. Knowing couldn't make their words hurt any less, not when he had no power to prove them wrong.
Except he did. He could enter the contest and beat them, and then he would know he was still just as good as they were. Looking at his face now, at the chewed red of his lips, I knew he wouldn't do it. Oh, aren't you something to admire? If only you knew.
I didn't voice any of that. I handed him the bottle and said, "That's tough."
Ezra's eyes brightened, at first with surprise. He let out a breathy laugh, then another, until giggles were tumbling from his throat. The dead weight slipped away so suddenly, replaced by some (slightly unhinged) hysterics and a rush of tipsiness. Ezra was still crying as he laughed, and something about that was hilarious in its own right, so I found myself laughing right along with him.
"God, I'm a mess," he gasped through a sob-laugh, wiping his tear-streaked faced with both sleeves.
"You're a mess," I agreed, and he grinned at me, then hiccuped, and I lost it.
I wasn't sure how long we stayed like that. I wasn't sure how much of it could be blamed on the alcohol. By the time we sobered, Ezra's face was pressed into my shoulder, nose tickling my collar. I ran out of laughter first, maybe because I ran out of breath; his tipsy smile brushed the tiny bit of exposed skin between my neck and the neckline of my shirt with every lingering chuckle.
When he finally came down, he sighed, sending an involuntarily shiver down my . . . everywhere.
"I'm starting to notice a pattern of you giving me of alcohol," he muttered. "I'm only twenty, you know," he whispered conspiratorially. "This is illegal. You're an enabler, you enabler."
There was a definite slur to his words as he mocked a gasp. He certainly didn't handle his alcohol very well. "Guess you'll have to turn me in, then."
"Mhm," Ezra agreed. "Not right now, though. Another night. Pretty sure I have a pair of handcuffs in my apartment somewhere."
I choked midway through a sip, sending red dribbling down my chin onto my shirt. "Jesus Christ, Ezra."
"Hm?" he feigned innocence, even as I could feel him smirking against my skin.
"Asshole."
"Alcoholic."
"Says the guy struggling to find the wine right now."
Ezra's hand paused where it was ghosting above the floor in search of the bottle. He poked out his bottom lip in a pout, but he couldn't hold it very long, breaking into a fit of giggles. "You're mean. Help me, enabler."
When I handed him the bottle, he didn't bother lifting his head, instead turning so the back of his head was on my shoulder and his chin was tilted upward. There was something so ingeniously comedic about the sight of nimble, paint-splattered fingers wrapping around the wide base, tossing it back like he was drinking from a soda can instead of a huge bottle of wine.
"This sight, right here," I snickered, "is an absolute disaster."
Ezra laughed against the mouth of the bottle, curling the fingers of one hand against the glass to flip me off. "Says you," he said, just barely moving the bottle from his face. "Don't act like you're not a train wreck. I'm very perceptive, you know." The moment he was done speaking, he latched back onto the bottle, and I wondered if he intended to finish the entire second half by himself.
"Very perceptive," I agreed. "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with my life, but I'm pretty sure I hate it. Sounds like a wreck to me."
There was a beat of silence after I said it, and my brain didn't catch up to the words until a moment later. The air in my lungs rushed out all at once, and I stuttered on the inhale as if I'd been holding that breath in for months. "Oh," I whispered. "Sorry, that was a lot."
Then Ezra started giggling again, like I had just made the joke of the fucking century rather than unceremoniously dumped my problems onto him. I was surprised for all of one second before I got caught up in the draft of his laughter like I always did, floating away in its breeze.
"I'm sorry, it's not funny," he said, even though he was still laughing. The irony of it set me off; I doubled over, making a victim out of poor Ezra as he slipped off of my shoulder, unable to hold himself and careening sideways onto the ground with a high-pitched yelp.
"Isn't it, though?" I said — wheezed, really — leaning over so much that I pitched forward. My forehead clunked against the floor, which, ouch, but the sound of it made Ezra roll over with laughter, and I was gone, gasping with my face pressed into the tile.
"Sorry, sorry," Ezra said again once he'd mostly come down. His breathing was still uneven, but the laughter had mostly died away. "I think I'm tipsy."
"You think?"
"Keep talking. I'm serious, I swear. I just had a moment."
Easier said than done. The closest I'd ever gotten to talking about this -- or even thinking about it -- was picking a fucking color out of a basket.
"I'm not sure I even know how," I mumbled. I was still doubled over, forehead to the floor. The tile was cool against my skin, a sharp contrast from the heat of wine in stomach and laughter in my cheeks.
"That's okay. You can just try, if you want. No expectations, right?"
"Right." When I spoke, my breath puffed against the tile.
"I'm two and a half years into my major and I absolutely cannot stand it," I admitted, to my friend and to myself. "But I have no fucking clue what else I would do with my life, and holy fuck Ezra, I don't think I like anything anymore? Like, I can hardly keep my eyes open during my classes and I hate being around people even though I swear I used to be a social guy and all of the shit I used to love is just . . . there. All the time. I feel like I'm asleep on my fucking feet and everything is so . . ."
"Portland Gray?" Ezra supplied. He lay on his side, flushed cheek against the tile. His hair tie was hanging on by a thread; most of his hair was splayed out on the ground around his face.
"Portland fucking gray, dude!"
Ezra extended the wine bottle to me like some sort of solidarity offering. "I think you need this."
"I think you're right."
"You okay?"
I let out a sharp huff. "Definitely not."
"Frustrated?"
"Frustrated as hell. What do you even do when the one thing you've wanted to do all your life suddenly goes off the rails?"
"You're asking the wrong guy."
I laughed, short and breathy. "I guess so."
"Wanna talk about it more?"
Groaning, I finally rolled onto my back. The shift put me closer to Ezra, and when my thigh bumped his knee, he twisted around so that we were laying next to each other, knees bent in the short space between ourselves and the counter.
"I don't know that I can."
Ezra hummed. "If you figure it out, I'm all ears."
Then it was quiet breathing and the clink of glass against tile and nothing else.
"I don't know what to do," I muttered eventually, hardly louder than the breath Ezra had just taken. "What's the point of being here if nothing interests me anymore?"
Ezra raised himself up slightly on a forearm. I didn't understand the sudden shift until I caught the worried crease between his eyebrows.
"Oh god, not like that. I'm fine," I promised. "I just mean . . . you asked me, once, if learning about space made me feel tiny. And I said—"
"Being able to understand all of that insane faraway stuff made you feel larger than life."
"You remember."
"I thought about that a lot, after you said it," Ezra admitted. "I don't think you realize it, but some of the things you say are fascinating as hell. Sometimes I wish you'd talk more, 'cause I really think I could listen to you all day."
I gaped at him. That sounded a lot like— exactly like— how I felt when he spoke. And it didn't make sense, because Ezra and I weren't in the same league. We weren't even playing the same game.
"Yeah," I said, sounding rough even to my own ears. "I, um. I think . . . I think learning makes me feel bigger. So space was perfect, because there's literally an infinite number of things to learn about. And it's all so much greater than me. It's kind of crazy, if you think about it. That a tiny human being can know about the fucking sun, and the sun won't have any idea. In that giant ball of gas there isn't an ounce of consciousness, but in my tiny little brain I can fit the details of its existence. I know how it came to be and I know how it'll die. Planets and stars and galaxies are massive, but they're empty. As long as I'm thinking and learning, I have something they don't."
Ezra was smiling. This fucking stupid, dopey-ass smile he got whenever I said something that particularly interested him. It always made me squirm, because I wasn't sure I deserved to be looked at like that.
"But now . . . now I'm not learning anything. It feels like my head is empty all the time, and if there's nothing in there, then there's nothing keeping me from being some tiny, insignificant spec in this plane of existence. I can't rival you, let alone the sun. Not when it seems like there isn't a damn thing that interests me anymore."
There was a short pause, the slightest hesitation that told me the wine hadn't hit me too hard yet (if it had, I wouldn't have had the presence of mind to consider self-preservation). "That wasn't true. There's—"
"There's one thing," Ezra said. "Me."
"Am I that obvious, or are these your so-called perceptive powers?"
Ezra edged my way. My hand was beneath my head, my arm bent in his direction, so he had to rest his cheek on my bicep to get as close as he wanted. Unconsciously, I switched arms, extending my right to give Ezra more room and using my left to prop up my head.
"'S just what I wanted to hear."
We lay like that for a while. There was still a decent amount of wine left, but I couldn't be bothered to shift our position to take another drink.
"Mm, can I tell you something?" Ezra spoke up eventually, and I could hear in his voice, in the way he drew out his hum, that he had crossed the line from tipsy to drunk.
"'Course."
"I'm not a super insecure guy," he said. "Not talking about art. Y'know, other stuff. But I think you're fucking with my head, 'cause today really messed with me. Like, on top of all the shit with Lance and Mari, there was you and . . . fuck, what am I saying right now."
He pressed his face into my arm. I could feel the warmth seeping to his cheeks. "I don't know." I hadn't meant to whisper, but I didn't think it could've come out louder if I'd tried.
"Nevermind," Ezra muttered. "Just . . ."
He ran one hand along the arm supporting his head until he reached my wrist. Wrapping it in his fingers, he tugged gently, and I allowed my hand to be pulled until it rested in his hair.
It took me a moment to realize what he wanted. If I'd had anything to say, it flew from my head as I hesitantly carded my fingers through his hair. The tie gave out easily, falling to the floor, and god was his hair soft.
Ezra's hand was still on my wrist. Before he let go, he pressed two fingers against my pulse-point. He smiled privately at whatever he felt there, then let his hand fall to his chest.