Short Stories - Chapter 29: Chapter 29

Somewhere through the fog in my mind, I processed the distant sound of tapping.
No . . .
The not-so-distant feeling of tapping.
After the first bleary blinks of my eyes were met with the foggy pink of the campus lights, I remembered that Ezra and I had come outside to the grassy hill in Century Plaza we had long since claimed as our own. I was getting pretty skilled at reading Ezra's tells when it came to his precarious relationship with his art, and this was where we ended up whenever he needed to be far from the paintbrush threatening to snap in his clenched grip.
It cleared his head, coming out here. Mine, too -- so much, apparently, that I had fallen asleep.
"Can I ask what you're doing?" I said, turning my eyes as far upward as I could without moving my neck, just enough to see the edge of his hand as it rose and fell against my forehead to an erratic beat.
In lieu of an answer, Ezra started to mutter, "Baby we're the new romantics, come on come along with me, heartbreak is the national anthem, we sing--"
"That really doesn't answer--"
Ezra raised the pointer finger of his free hand, effectively shushing me, and continued his mumbling (singing?). Through an automatic roll of my eyes, I recognized that he was tapping against my forehead (which I still believed deserved an explanation) to the words of the song. Accepting that he intended to see this through, I occupied myself trying to poke his hovering finger with my tongue without moving enough for him to notice. It was just out of reach.
"Baby we're the new romantics, the best people in life are free."
The tapping and muttering stopped. I waited. After a solid count of five in my head, I deemed it safe to speak. "Ezra . . . what."
"New Romantics, Taylor Swift 1989 -- Deluxe Edition."
"That is really, truly not what I was about to ask you," I said, internally bemoaning the lifelong Taylor Swift obsession I had learned about last week and hadn't been able to escape since.
"You were asleep," Ezra said, like it explained everything. Next to him, Appa lay curled in a ball, and I wondered bitterly why the dog got to sleep but I didn't.
"You couldn't have just shaken me? Said my name?"
"Alexander, I was halfway through the chorus before you even stirred."
"That is . . ." I didn't want to say fair, because that might encourage future use of poorly-sung Taylor and forehead percussion as a waking strategy, but I had been told more than once that I was a heavy sleeper.
"Alright," Ezra said, landing two final taps at my hairline for good measure, "Let's go."
"Hold on," I said -- whined, maybe, if you asked Ezra -- "Why are we leaving?"
Ezra's eyebrows judged me palpably. "You were asleep," he said again, drier this time. "It's late."
"It's not late."
"Okay, well I'm cold."
"You're not cold."
Ezra heaved a long-suffering sigh and flopped back against the grass, resigning wordlessly to his fate. The pout magically slipped from his face when my sweatshirt landed in his lap, though, and he wasted no time in sliding it over his head. His content hum turned into a tittering, airy laugh as he flicked his wrists up and down a few times, apparently fascinated by the flap of the sleeves past his fingertips, and said, "Smells like strawberries." He tugged the collar up to his nose. "And you."
I found it easier to stare at the grass than watch his lips curve upward at the discovery, so I did just that.
"Why do you wanna stay out here so bad, anyway?"
My shoulder nudged Ezra's when I shrugged. "It's nice out."
"It most certainly is not."
I snickered at the exaggerated show he made of shivering. Ezra didn't mind the cold as much as he liked to let on. I'd seen him more-or-less happy in worse than tonight's twenty-eight degrees. "Reminds me of when I was younger, I guess," I answered more honestly. I wasn't surprised when Ezra turned onto his side, leaning onto an elbow to face me directly and resting patiently on his palm. This was what he did -- encouraged me to continue when I wasn't intending to. It was probably the only way he'd learned anything about me.
I might have balked at the invitation once, but it was commonplace by now, and so endearing. I would admit that Ezra was the more mature of us any day, but there was a childishness to the "tell me a story" look on his face now. "My grandparents live in the countryside. We always visit for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and my cousins and I used to lay out in the yard and look at the sky at night. They're older now, busy with jobs and kids and the like, so we haven't done it in a few years. And, I don't know. Something about the weather is making me miss them, I guess."
I looked up at Ezra, maybe just to see the fond smile he wore every time he unlocked another one of my doors, no matter how boring and beige the room behind it. Then I turned onto my back, because this, too, was hard to look at for long. "Your cousins?"
I mulled it over with eyes trained above. The moon hovered in solitude, a perfect circle if you didn't look too hard. "The stars."
In the seconds that followed, my eyes shot wide. "Oh my god, that was so insensitive, I just meant-- 'cause the lights-- but obviously--"
I shut up, because Ezra was laughing under his breath in that way he did sometimes, the way that made it hard to tell whether he was laughing with me or at me, even after knowing him all this time.
"Alexander," he said, still smiling -- smiling around my name. "I miss them, too." He rolled onto his back, blinking into the sky above. "But I can't say I ever knew them the way you do. Cared the way you do, I mean. I think I regret that."
He sat up then, palms flat in the grass behind him. "I'd like to see them again, though," he added, easy like an afterthought. His beanie had been left behind in the grass, and the tilt of his head sent mussed-up hair falling back over his shoulders, leaving his cheeks exposed to the chilly air. "You're right. It's nice out."
And then he said, "Look at the stars with me?"
I sat up, slower than he had, searching for hints, but his face was lax and unassuming. Closed eyes and parted lips, so calm I could almost believe he was dozing off. So different from the figure slumped over a counter a half-hour before, looking about ready to stab his pencil through his sketchbook. "I don't understand."
"I'm asking you to show me."
I stumbled on an inhale, then stumbled over my words. "I don't think I can."
"Just a few of them? I know you know your constellations. My imagination can fill in the rest. I told you, I'm good with mental images."
"You want me to show you the stars."
"Well, it sounds ridiculously poetic when you put it that way."
"Everything about you is ridiculously poetic."
Ezra smiled at that, but he tried to hide it. "Hm. Do you think so?"
He was smug. He had me flustered, and he knew it, and he was absolutely fucking smug about it. But the request was sincere, if still teasing, so I scooted halfway behind him and plucked one of his hands from the ground. Tugging his pointer finger from his fist and laying my own on top of it, I raised our joint hands and said, "Aldebaran."
The pointing was surely off -- I couldn't pinpoint a star sixty-five light-years away by memory, and Ezra didn't expect me to. But I knew what the night sky looked like during winter here -- I knew from a distance, from my grandparents' backyard, and I knew up-close, from the assortment of telescopes I'd stared into over the years, and I knew in theory, from books and documentaries and websites.
"It's the brightest star in Taurus -- one of the brightest in the night sky, actually -- and it makes up the eye. It's a red giant, and it's bigger and older than the sun, and if you follow it this way . . ."
My words and movements paused as Ezra shifted, using his free hand to tug at my knee where it pressed against his back until it scooted wide enough for him to plant himself between my legs. He hummed, urging me to continue when I faltered, so I led him through the rest of Taurus, tracing the shape I knew by heart and stopping to tell him about the most important stars. By the time we hit the tip of the second horn, I was comfortable in the new position. And then Ezra chose to lean back against my chest right as I was moving on to the constellation Auriga, and my voice cracked on "Elnath."
I didn't hear so much as feel him laugh against me.
I guided Ezra through the nine constellations I knew were best seen during northern-hemisphere winters, tracing the shape with our joint hands and trying to reign myself in when I realized I was saying too much. Ezra didn't talk much as I spoke, just hummed every once in a while to remind me that he was listening and encouraged me when I grew embarrassed over my rambling. He didn't seem to mind the unecessary information, the lore and facts that spilled from my brain despite my best efforts to stay on track.
"Can I ask you something?" Ezra said once I'd wrapped up my last train of thought, flushed from getting sidetracked again.
I dropped my hands to my sides, leaning back on my wrists and snickering when Ezra chased my body heat. "Course."
"Why engineering?"
I let my head fall back, eyes trained up at the real, blue-gray sky. There were no stars. Actually, there was one -- no. No, that was a plane. "What do you mean?"
I felt Ezra shift and wondered if he was nervous to ask. "I mean that I've never heard you talk about aerospace the way you just talked about the stars. And you don't like your major -- don't tense up like that, those are your words -- so why did you choose it? Why not something more like . . . this?"
"Both of my parents are engineers. It's sort of always been expected, I think, and I'm good at it." The answer came quickly, even if it felt heavy on my tongue. "It makes the most sense. Good starting pay, good growth, only four years of school."
The more time Ezra spent thinking my words over, the more antsy I got. Eventually, I poked between his shoulder blades to get him to speak, unfazed when he laughed at my impatience.
"Follow up question," he said. I groaned. "Why did you join Sigma . . . uh, Sigma Pi?"
"Sigma Chi," I grinned. "I was a legacy, actually. My dad."
"Why did you quit?"
"I told you when we met -- it was taking up too much of my time."
"I know what you told me. And I told you how I felt about your answers that day. I'm asking why you really left."
"I don't know what you want from me," I bristled. Ezra put a placating hand over my shin where it still caged his legs, and I deflated. "Look, I really -- I don't know what to tell you. My best friend thought I was acting weird, and he was convinced it had to do with the frat no matter what I told him. He suggested it might be stress from having to devote time to both school and the house, and I just. I don't know. It sounded right, so I left."
"And did you feel better after?"
" . . . I'm glad I left."
"But do you feel better?"
"Ezra."
"Sorry." He sagged into me a little further. "Can I ask you one more question? Last one, I swear."
"Promise you won't try to get inside my head?"
"Um . . . no?"
I huffed. "Fine."
"Do you ever think that maybe the reason you're never happy doing anything is because you're always doing what other people expect you to?"
I didn't say anything. The silence was so loud, but I wasn't going to be the one to break it.
"Your dad was in a fraternity, so you were expected to join, too, and you did. You majored in aerospace engineering because your parents wanted you to and because it 'made sense.' And the way you put on a different version of yourself around different people -- didn't you tell me you do that to meet expectations, too? I just feel like you might be happier if you did things for yourself, not because they make sense or someone else wants you to. Maybe that's why everything's so . . ."
"Portland gray?" I offered.
Ezra gave a breathy laugh. "Maybe I should take my own advice, hm?"
It was so ridiculous coming from him, I laughed despite the wringing feeling in my gut. "Nothing about you makes sense."
"Mm, I guess. But I think I've been trying to, lately. Make sense, that is. Meet expectations. Maybe that's the problem."
"Maybe that's the problem."
"Show me Saturn?"
I paused. Thought the question over. Thought it over again. "See, I'm struggling right now, because I'm really not sure how to break it to you that Saturn is a planet, not a star."
Ezra slammed his back against my chest hard enough to send me sprawling to the floor. I leaned my head back and laughed, really laughed, from where I lay starfished in the grass, while Ezra muttered "Fuck off, you're so annoying" from above me. He only made it halfway through before a smile broke through his pout and his words turned warm, fogging in the cold air before him.
"So? Are you gonna show me or what?"
"You know you can only see the rings through a telescope, right?"
"I want to see them anyway."
"It's not going to make sense."
Ezra's smile turned sharp, and I returned it in full. I pushed myself upright, took his hand in mine, and described Saturn as if it shone as big and bright as the moon.
"What about Jupiter?"
So I showed him Jupiter, too.
My face was starting to feel numb from the cold, but I hardly noticed as I helped him create his own version of the night sky. Planet to planet, I led him across the solar system, describing Neptune and Mars and Venus and Mercury in more detail than I ever knew I could. I provided the specifics and Ezra painted the picture -- I couldn't see it, but I knew he could, because whenever he spoke, he turned his cheek slightly toward me, just enough to give a glimpse of amber eyes bright with wonder. I almost envied him as I turned my gaze upward and saw only the bleak ashy blue above.
After a while, he stopped saying anything at all, silent even after I'd gone through all eight planets. I thought he might have fallen asleep, but when I leaned around to see his face, his eyes were wide open and a little wet, transfixed up and out on something only he could see. I didn't dare interrupt, not when he let slip a small, private sigh, and not when he curled his fingers through mine to stop me as I started to drop my hand from his. He was leaning forward, away from the heat of my chest even as he visibly shivered, like he wanted to get closer. My cynical mind whispered that it was fruitless to lean closer to the sky.
He was quiet for a long time, and I let him be. Something was happening now, something bigger than me; I could never hope to understand it, but I was happy just to be there while he searched for something in a make-believe sky. He eventually let go of me to fold his arms over his knees, leaning his chin onto them. He let out another sigh, this one louder, meant for my ears, and asked, "If money and school time and expectations didn't matter, what would you want to do?"
"I thought you said no more questions."
Ezra winced and dropped his face onto his arms, muffling his quiet groan. "Sorry, shit, yeah. I forgot. I'm sorry. I don't mean to--"
"Hey." I tugged lightly at the tips of his hair until he raised his head. "It's alright. I think I would . . ." I should've known not to start speaking until I'd thought it through, because the sentence hung in the air, incomplete, for some time. Ezra didn't rush me, though, and if I decided to leave it unfinished, I knew he would let me without comment. "I think I would like to direct a planetarium."
"Like the one you went to when you were ten?"
Of course he'd remembered. "Mhm. It would be nice, I think. To make some kid out there feel the same way I did back then. To, ah . . ."
"Show people what you care about?"
"Is that dumb?"
"It's what you just did for me, isn't it? And you did a good job."
"It was probably hella inaccurate."
"I'm serious. I-- haven't felt the way I just did in a long time. You did a good job."
I never knew what to do when Ezra got like this. I couldn't take a compliment on a good day, let alone when he was the one singing my praise. I dropped my forehead between his shoulder blades with a thump, resigned to hot-faced silence.
"I wish you could see what I see right now," Ezra mused. It was so ironic. It was so laughably ironic. But,
"Me, too."
He twisted around so suddenly, it almost set us off balance. I caught myself with palms braced on the ground while he adjusted until he was kneeling between my legs. "Can you show me one more thing?" he asked.
Our proximity was much more noticeable now that he faced me, so it wasn't really my fault when I answered, "Anything," without thinking.
Ezra's hands started up from his lap, paused, then dropped back down. "When we met at the Carvell game, and you asked me to show you my work, I was going to say no. I think you know that. Outside of my closest friends, I don't show anyone my art anymore. You know I don't feel great about it."
I grimaced at the thought of the calculated confidence blow Ezra had taken at the hands of those kids from his high school. Over and over, I'd pondered what they could've said about his work that had cut him so deep. It didn't seem right that a few words from a couple of entitled assholes could make someone so passionate turn so insecure. But then, words were all Ezra had.
"You should," I said. That, at least, I was certain of. I didn't need to know what they'd said, or whether there had been any truth to it. Ezra's work was good, regardless of what they'd said. Regardless of whether it made sense to them.
He gave an appeasing smile. "'I don't have any expectations.' That's what you said."
He hung his head, still smiling. "You said you didn't know anything about art and you had no expectations for my work. And it was . . ." He sighed. "Comforting. It meant a lot to me then. Still does now. You've seen me pretty damn low, and that's alright because I know you don't expect anything more of me. And I just want you to know -- because I never told you, and I know I ask too many questions, and I poke around too much, but. It's the same for me. With you. Always has been. I want to see you as you are now, and that's all; the rest doesn't matter. No expectations, okay?"
And it was comforting. Like being held. Or being released.
"What did you want me to show you?" I asked, trying and failing to keep my voice light around the gravel in my throat.
Ezra started to respond, blushed pink, then raised his hands from his lap instead. "Can I?" was all he said.
It took a few glances from his hands to his face for the pieces to click. I choked out an abortive, vaguely affirmative hum.
"I need a 'yes,' Alexander."
"Yes." It came out in a rush, sweeping over us and then leaving us in silence. Ezra faced me with his hands hovering an inch above his lap for another moment as if I might change my mind. When I didn't, he wet his lips like he was the nervous one out of us.
His fingers were cold against my forehead. Hardly a brush when he landed near my temples, then a bit firmer as he glided along my hairline. When I closed my eyes, his barely-there touch filled my senses. Ezra slid his fingers over the arch of my eyebrows, the curve of my lids, down to the corners of my eyes, the slope of my cheeks, the bridge of my nose. He mapped out every inch, every hollow, every angle, applying pressure in some areas and hardly making contact in others, until my face burned from his touch. I didn't open my eyes, couldn't bear to see his reactions, but I heard his hum when he dipped his knuckles beneath my ears and dragged them along my jawline, then his intake of breath when he pressed his thumb to the dip in my bottom lip.
Once he'd gotten his fill -- after one, two, three rounds across my face -- his hands fell away. Even though his fingers had been icy, my skin felt colder after their retreat. We sat that way for some time, soaking in the shared experience.
"I see you," Ezra said once it wasn't quite so hard to speak.
When I opened my eyes, he was glowing. A smile so earnest you'd think I'd fulfilled some lifelong wish. Smiling like that, all because he'd gotten to see me.
"I see you, too," I said quietly, reverently.
That smile grew impossibly wider, or brighter, or both. And then Ezra was moving -- raising his hands, replacing them on my face, drawing me closer.
His hands were freezing. It hit me at once, a shock of cold spreading fast from his fingertips to my toes. I jolted back, only to find that it was even colder there, with a foot of space between us.
Ezra's fingers hovered momentarily in the air like he didn't understand where I'd gone.
Then, "Sorry, sorry." He moved one hand to the back of his neck, matching the gesture with a sheepish smile. "I got-- a little caught-up, I guess." When I didn't respond right away, he added through a forced laugh, "Too soon? I really am sorry, I didn't mean to rush, or to make you--"
"Ezra," I cut him off. "I'm not . . ."
Ezra's confusion was childlike when he tilted his head to the side.
Then, everything fell.
His hand, from its place behind his neck, down to his side. His expression, awkward smile melting into disbelief, then twisting into something bitter, then going blank. Even his posture -- his shoulders curled forward and he sat back, tugging his knees to his chest. He looked like he was suddenly very, very cold, and it struck me that the biting chill had come from me, not him.
"So what was all of this, then?"
Ezra's voice trembled from the cold, from the endless shiver that had taken him over.
Speaking seemed impossible now, with my insides frozen over, but I tried anyways. "Ezra, I . . ." Except, I didn't have an answer to that. I didn't know what all of this was -- I hadn't known there was an 'all of this' to begin with. "I should-- it's late. I should get home. To study."
It was true. My first final was Saturday, and I hadn't finished revising yet, and I had told myself that morning not to stay out with Ezra past nine tonight. Nine was long gone -- had been before we even came outside -- but it had slipped my mind as soon as I saw him waiting outside my classroom door. I remembered now, though.
It was late. And I was cold.
"Okay," said Ezra. As I stood, he jostled Appa from his long sleep.
"Do you need--"
"Go. I'll be fine."
I hesitated, but Ezra made no move to stand even after Appa was awake and alert, and I realized he was waiting for me to leave first.
So I left. I really did have a lot of studying to do.
xxx
I jerked my head back as the textbook in front of me slammed shut, the front cover missing my nose by an inch. I hadn't heard Mack come in, but now I looked up (and up -- standing next to my bed as I lay on my stomach, he towered dauntingly over me) to see him staring down with crossed arms and a pointedly unimpressed expression.
"Did you need something?" My attempt to come across as impatient-but-generally-unbothered was somewhat sullied by the angle I had to crane my neck to look him in the eye.
"Santos. Dude." He gestured toward the post-apocalyptic disaster that was my desk, then to the hurricane of notebooks and highlighters on my bed, at the eye of which I lay with my textbook. "This is unhealthy."
"What part of me lying here, minding my own business, is unhealthy?"
Mack rolled his eyes, faring far better at affecting impatience from his vantage point. "Seriously, man. You've had your head in a book for, like, four days straight. Have you even left your room today?"
I considered listing my trips to the kitchen, but I doubted Mack would be amused. "I've got finals. Some of us actually study for those, you know."
Mack snorted at the accusation -- it was true and we both knew it. Dare I say he was even proud of it. "Fine, fair enough. But you've already taken more than half of them, and I've lived with you for five semesters now. I know how crazy smart you are, and I know how you study. This is excessive. It's been like, twelve hours. You've got me all worried and shit. Take a break."
I frowned, turning furrowed eyebrows to the digital clock beside my bed. Huh. It had been -- thirteen hours, actually. I turned back to Mack with a shrug, making a show of reopening my Diff-Eqs textbook. "Dude, it's not like I'm not eating or anything. What's your problem?"
The sigh Mack let out then bordered on exhaustion, and I wondered for a moment if he was tired of having to approach me like this. I wondered if after six semesters, he'd look for a new roommate. I turned back to my book.
I was halfway down the page before he spoke again. "Look, Alex. I don't know what it is that's got you all emotionally constipated this time, and I know you're not gonna talk about it, and that's fine. But if it's so bad you feel the need to spend every minute of every day pretending it doesn't exist, can you at least find a different way to distract yourself for a little while? This can't be good for you."
We'd had this conversation before, probably many times. The instinct to argue -- I don't know what you're talking about, man -- rose in my throat, but I swallowed instead, staring up at him with a finger still poised over the words on the page.
"C'mon," he said, gentler now that he had my attention. "Let's watch a movie?"
My fingers curled together on the page. I shook my head. Movies were too slow. They left too much space.
"Game, then?" Mack offered.
I closed my textbook, pushed myself upright. His smile was so tired, and I considered that maybe the lease was the only thing keeping him here.
My phone rang from my desk. Mack was closer, so he fetched it from between the pages of a weathered lab manual, glancing at the screen before tossing it my way. It landed face-first on the bed. "Someone named Ezra," he said. He didn't miss the way I paused in the middle of reaching for it, and before I'd even raised it to my ear, he was halfway to the door. "Meet me when you're done."
"Ezra," I said, breathless around his name. "Hi."
I was suddenly aware and embarrassed of how my voice sounded, hoarse from days of minimal use. What was worse, I knew Ezra would notice immediately.
"Hi. When and where is your exam tomorrow?" He spoke quickly, like he was in the middle of something, or in a hurry to do something, or trying to get through this call as quickly as possible. I might not have noticed before, but I'd been his friend long enough to have picked up some of his habits.
"Ten to twelve, Larston. Why?"
"Is it okay if I drop by afterward?"
And this was familiar. This was another Tuesday afternoon lunch. I realized that everything was fine, and nothing had to change, and I closed my eyes into the feeling. "Of course," I said.
xxx
Ezra was already there when I left my exam, even though we got out ten minutes early. He half-sat, half-leaned against one of the pony walls outside the building, a paper Trader Joe's bag gripped in both hands. Appa's tail wagged when he saw me, bumping against Ezra's ankles and alerting him to my approach. Ezra straightened up like he always did.
"Hey," I said, coming to stand before him, relief slipping into my voice at the familiarity of it all. "Where do you wanna eat today?"
"Actually," Ezra started speaking before I'd finished. "Can we just talk here?"
It struck me then that even though Appa was happy to see me, Ezra didn't wear the same calm smile I was used to seeing when I approached. His mouth was drawn into a tight, strictly-greeting line. I tried to find something else in his eyes, telling as they always were, but they were guarded by the dark reflection of his shades.
"Oh, sure," I said, suddenly awkward in a way I hadn't been around Ezra in months. I shifted forward to sit on the half-wall, then decided against it and rocked back on my heels. "What's up?"
He thrust the bag in my direction. "These are yours."
"Uh," I peered down at its contents. At the top, I saw a folded sweatshirt, the one I had given Ezra last night. I hadn't realized I'd leant him so many over the weeks, or that he hadn't given them back. "Oh, you didn't have to . . ."
I trailed off, because Ezra's head was tilted downward, and nothing was fine, and everything had to change.
"Listen." He didn't raise his head, instead letting his hair fall around his face, and I got the uneasy feeling he was hiding from me. "I can't blame you for how I feel; I think that was inevitable, really. But whatever kick guys like you get out of messing with people's feelings -- it's fucked up. Leading me on the way you did was fucked up, Alexander."
He raised his head then, and I was suddenly thankful for the sunglasses, because I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle whatever his eyes held. I could barely process the words coming out of his mouth.
"Wait, hold on, I didn't--" I started to say, but I cut myself off, hoping Ezra would interrupt me, or at least say something to fill the sudden silence. But he didn't. He let the fragmented thought hang in the air long enough that it couldn't be plowed over.
"You didn't what?" he said, and the chill I'd felt Thursday night was nothing like the frost that creeped along my ribs when I saw him inch back, closer to the wall, shrinking away from me. He kept his voice low, cautious of passersby, even as his knuckles popped against the handles of the bag. "Are you seriously going to tell me you haven't been toying with me for months? All for some -- I don't know, some sick straight-guy satisfaction of knowing that you can? I'm not stupid, Alexander. Or, well, maybe I am, because I fell for it, didn't I?"
I stood stock still, a few feet away now but still close enough to see the tremble in his chin. "I didn't . . ."
"What? You didn't mean to?" Ezra scoffed, but the sound was heavy, thick, and something in my chest froze over.
"I didn't know."
That gave Ezra pause. His shoulders sagged, and then the rest of him did, too, leaning once more against the half-wall. "You must really think I'm stupid, huh?"
"You know that's not true." My voice broke embarrassingly, but I didn't try to hide it. If my voice was Ezra's only indication of how I felt, I hoped he might hear within it that I'd never meant to hurt him.
But my words only seemed to breathe the fire back into him. He lifted his head once more to face me with a challenge. "I don't, actually. Clearly I don't know anything, because I thought we were-- I was so sure. I thought it was just a matter of time. All the signs were there! And I know I didn't read it wrong, okay -- I spent the entire weekend feeling like shit because I must have read it wrong, and I was making you uncomfortable, but this-- this isn't my fault! And it's not fair that I have to feel this way when you're . . ." He swallowed. "Fine."
"I'm not fine!" I desperately searched for something to do with my hands, only to shove them into the pocket of my hoodie. "Ezra, I had no idea you felt that way. I would never hurt you like that, not on purpose. I didn't know."
Ezra held the bag out again, and I took it helplessly, grateful at least to have something to hold onto. With his hands free, he raised them to his face, rubbing over his cheeks with a heavy sigh. Appa pressed his nose sympathetically against Ezra's thigh.
"That's . . . not possible. That's not possible, Alexander, because you've been acting like my-- my fucking boyfriend for months! I mean, I'm literally handing you a bag of your sweatshirts right now, like we broke up or some shit!"
Aside from a few passing students, we were mostly alone. Without the buzz of the rushing crowd, his words struck clear, and I winced.
"Can you honestly tell me," Ezra continued, wrapping his arms around himself protectively against the cold, or maybe just against me, "That you didn't know I had feelings for you?"
The possibility hadn't even crossed my mind. That was the honest truth, so I told him as much, but his face only dipped deeper into a frown.
"I didn't ask whether you've thought about it. I asked if you knew."
I opened my mouth to argue that that wasn't fair, that those were the same. The protest died in my throat, quieted by the ghost of lingering touches and unnecessary compliments and that look he always got when I talked about something that mattered. I thought back to so much touch -- hands on knees and crossed ankles, heads resting on shoulders -- written off in my mind as the way he experienced the world and nothing more. I remembered the reverence in his smile whenever I brought him a strawberry smoothie from work, like I had given him some great gift instead of a drink it took all of one minute and four ingredients to make. I remembered eyes lighting up when I offered my sweater, I remembered a trusting hand folding against mine even though we both knew it was better if I led him by the elbow, and my stomach sank.
Then I remembered my own fingers carding through soft hair, my own back against a shivering chest, my own hand guiding his from star to unseeable star, and my stomach surged right back up to my throat. I thought I might be sick.
Because I had known, hadn't I? Somewhere buried deep, intentionally inaccessible so I wouldn't have to worry about it. I had known, and I hadn't done anything about it -- I had encouraged it -- and now here we were, farther apart than we'd stood in months.
I didn't say anything, caught up in the memory of fingers lingering at the back of my neck after a scarf had been wrapped around my eyes and the warm, earthy scent that came with it.
"Right," Ezra said into the silence; it jarred me to hear his voice so rough, no longer something to float away on, but something to drown in.
"I'm sorry." It came out as a whisper, so I cleared my throat and said it again. "I know this sounds like bullshit, but I didn't -- I would never do something like that on purpose. Not to anyone, but especially not to you. I'm sorry -- I'm really, really sorry. I'm an idiot."
The smile Ezra offered then couldn't have met his eyes; it hardly made it onto his mouth. "I don't really know if I believe you, but I guess it doesn't really matter, does it? Whether you meant it or not, this," he pressed his mouth into another line when his voice caught, took a steadying breath before continuing. "This isn't good for me. And I've gotta watch out for myself, you know?"
That was when the dread set in, sickly sweet, trickling along my nerves. "What are you saying?"
Ezra stood, tugging gently to urge Appa to stand. "I'm saying goodbye, Alexander."
And then he turned away, and I didn't follow him -- it wasn't my place, not when this was my own damn fault -- but I did watch him go. Appa led him away, steady even as his tail drooped between his legs. I couldn't see Ezra's face, but I could see his hand rising to push up his shades, just enough to swipe underneath with his sleeve.
I put my headphones on as I made my way home, volume set on max. I tried to play a game on my phone on the bus ride to my apartment, but I kept dying within the first minute. Nothing, not the music nor the game, was enough to distract me from the echo of Ezra's footfalls as they grew more distant, the knowledge that I wouldn't come back from winter break to see him waiting for me outside of one of my classes.
I stared at my phone screen, switching from app to app for anything that might unstamp the image of Ezra wiping his eyes from to the front of my mind, but all I saw on the screen was the brutal reminder that I had made him cry like that. My feet fell heavy on the staircase to my apartment. I needed to get inside -- there was more to do inside, more to think about -- but the closer I got, the more I remembered.
My pulse thudding against his fingers at my wrist. A dream about paint splattered hands, recurring but instantly forgotten, or at least treated that way. Startlingly expressive green eyes, the twist in my gut when he'd first asked to call me Alexander. My tunnel vision whenever he spoke about his art. The staring-at-the-sun feeling whenever I received a smile that was just for me, and then the spotlight feeling whenever I had his full attention, somehow more exhilarating than nerve wracking. The curve of Ezra's lips around the mouth of a wine bottle. His hair -- had I always paid so much attention to his hair?
I thought about Kayla, and all of the times I'd seen her since we met. Instant infatuation each time she appeared, but then, eventually, distraction, eyes drifting elsewhere. I remembered the way she'd always made sure I stood closest to Ezra, always directed the conversation back his way, and it occurred to me that everyone had known except me. I tried to recall any disappointment when I'd realized she wasn't interested, when I'd backed off and settled on friendship, but all I could remember was my eyes drifting elsewhere.
I made it to my door but no further, leaning heavily against the frame with a hand raised to my chest. My nails dug into my shirt, pulling at the fabric over my heart like that would somehow slow it down. I stood there, eyes screwed shut, and tried to breathe regularly again, to think of anything else, or think of nothing, but all I could do was remember.
The door swung open. Mack and I both jumped. I must have looked pretty pathetic, because he swept one glance down my figure and took a step back into the apartment.
I stood up straight like that might ease the worry on his face. "Going somewhere?"
"Nowhere important," said Mack. It was an invitation. It lingered in the doorway -- take it or leave it.
Around the heartbeat pounding in my ears, I said, "Can we talk?"