“I missed you,” I say.
“I’m in love with you,” he says, at the same time.
I stare at him.
“And I’m so fucking sorry,” he continues. “And I missed you, too,” he says, with a soft kiss to my forehead. He pulls back. “I don’t know if this is too late, if you’ve already started… something, with someone else, but will you hear me out?”
I nod, my brain and Hot Girl Energy demanding some semblance of self-respect.
Elias picks me up bodily and deposits me next to him on the couch. “I can’t think while I’m touching you,” he explains.
I understand because I have to sit on my hands. But that doesn’t stop me from tucking my toes under his thigh.
He looks at my feet smooshed under his leg with that same soft smile. He takes a deep breath. “I wanted to have a conversation with you way earlier. Way before… way before Leo. Before I overheard you having that conversation with Andrea. Before you found all those pictures on my phone. Which are all gone, by the way. I realized I was falling in love with you then, and I wanted to talk to you about it. But then I got in my own head.”
I nod, giving him the space to talk it out.
“My entire life, I’ve always been… a fuck-head himbo—” he holds his hand up when I start to protest. “I liked it, Mia. I leaned into it. I liked being a goofball that no one took seriously. It made things easy. At least when I was a kid. But when I got older, it… well, it got kind of old. No one took me seriously when I became a teacher. No one took me seriously when I took over my gym. Girls were dropping me left and right. Then no one took me seriously when I couldn’t hold down a relationship. And it kind of became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I believed it myself.”
I find myself reaching out for him, but pull my hand back at the last moment. “I never thought that about you.”
He nods. “I know that. I realize that now. You’ve never fucking been one of those people. Our entire lives, you’ve thought I was amazing. I was your hero?—”
I roll my eyes. “Relax, Lax Bro Captain America. You’re making me seem like a desperate hag,” I tell him, even if I am, in fact, a huge one.
He huffs a laugh. “Sorry. But you’ve always taken me seriously, at least. I guess it wasn’t until… well, until we started… fucking?” We both cringe. “No, that’s not right. Seeing each other? Spending all our time together? Falling in love? Anyway, it wasn’t until then that I started realizing it for myself. That I was pretty fucking competent at everything I did. Because you were always there to remind me.”
“I wasn’t reminding you. I was just speaking the truth,” I tell him quietly.
He smiles at me, and it fills my body with warmth. “Thank you,” he says, genuinely. “But I got in my own head after hearing your conversation with Andrea?—”
“That was all bullshit?—”
“I know,” he says gently. “You explained yourself. I just got in my own head about it. And after you saw those pictures on my phone, reminding me of what kind of person I was. And after Leo,” he says his name with a twinge of pain, “almost caught us, I thought I was betraying my best friend. I started believing, again, that I wasn’t good enough. For you, for his little sister.”
“I’m so sorry?—”
“Stop,” he says. “You did nothing wrong. This was all me. You’ve believed in me my entire life. It took us… it took me pushing you away and being apart from you for me to realize it and remember it.”
“Okay,” I say. I link my pinky with his. He allows it.
“I heard what you said, when you were being all brave and Hot Girl energy and telling me how you were feeling, and I was being a massive fucking asshole and gaslighting you and dismissing you. I’m so sorry for doing that. I did the thing that you hated the most. I did the thing that made me just as bad as everyone else. I’m so sorry about that. That was the shittiest thing I think I’ve ever done. It was me being a fucking idiot and getting in my own head and gaslighting my own self.”
“Thank you,” I tell him, my ring finger joining my pinky in holding his, slowly gaining more skin. “That was really shitty. It might have been the worst thing you’ve ever done to me.” I pause, thinking, exuding Hot Girl Energy now. “No, actually, maybe it was when you dismissed me at the bar. With that woman.” I think about it some more, and Elias gives me space. “No, actually, I don’t blame you for doing that. I dragged Adam to the bar, and he was all over me. I dangled that it front of you, and that was super petty. I’m sorry about that, too.”
He nods, his middle finger joining our finger party. He sighs, his green eyes searching my blue. “I’ve loved you my entire life, Mia, and I’m pissed at myself for taking so long to realize it. I heard what you said. What you said about me, and what I do for you… I’m so glad to be that person for you. Even if this is all coming too late, even if you’re with that fucking soft-looking emo kid now,” he says, his face twisting with disgust and self-loathing, “I’m always going to be that person for you. Forever.”
He looks down at our hands, surprised to see all our fingers interlocked. I let him go, his face breaking momentarily, but only for a second, because I am strong and I am seen and my chin is up and my shoulders are back and my tits are out.
With this energy, I pull his face to mine.
Our lips meet, and it’s perfect and familiar and a lot like coming home.
He makes a sound against my mouth, pulling me into his lap so that I straddle his hips, and I run my tongue along the seam of his lips so he’ll let me in. He pulls back before I can take back what’s mine. “What does this mean, Mia? Use your words, please,” he begs.
“Fuck that soft-looking emo kid. I prefer juiced up Lax Bro Captain America.”
It’s as if the sun comes out from behind the clouds in the way that he looks at me, his grin wide and a little bit feral, in the split second before he drags me back down, lips meeting, mouths open, tongues drinking each other in. Through touch, we share the extent and depth of our love, my hands in his hair and his cheek and his hands on the bare skin of my back and my waist.
