I cleared my throat super dramatically and knocked on the doorframe. “Hey, did you see my charger?” I asked, knowing he could hear how rough that came out but trying to play it off. So I’d seen him shirtless. That was nothing between us at this point. It wasn’t even the first time.
Alex turned, giving me a quick view of his oblique muscles as he finished pulling his shirt down. “On my nightstand,” he answered, those big hands already back to moving as he started to take his watch off.
I glanced toward his bed and stopped again.
I hadn’t done more than peek into his room that first day we’d arrived. His door was usually always closed, and I hadn’t had the balls to go in there without permission. I wasn’t about to go and violate his trust like that.
So I wasn’t expecting to see the stacks of what looked like magazines on his nightstand.
And along the floor.
There was even a small bookshelf crammed to the max with hardcovers and paperbacks.
And most surprising was the framed poster on the wall with a trophy sitting in front of it.
I glanced at him. He was watching me as he set his watch into a box on top of his dresser. His face was relaxed, but something about his features told me that wasn’t totally the case with the rest of him.
Making my way toward the furniture, I spotted my charging cable sitting on top of the tallest of the stacks there. I unplugged it and then stopped again, looking at the opened notebook sitting on top of the stack of books. It was that same notebook he was always scribbling in when he was working in his office.
I shouldn’t have. I know I shouldn’t read what he wrote in it.
But I did.
I read it twice.
No.
I flicked my gaze to the poster and squinted at it. Then I looked down to read the title for the magazine below it. Only it wasn’t a magazine. It was a comic book. I froze before taking in the one below it, then the one below that.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alex cross his arms like he was waiting.
I crouched and slowly picked through the stack, finding another notebook wedged between some of them, shaking my head the whole time.
And that was when I got a good look at it.
The trophy in the shape of a star. I didn’t need to get closer to read the plaque below it either.
PLEITSKY AWARD
BEST WRITER
ALEX AKITA
I’d heard about the Pleitsky Award because one of my students had taken lessons from me in preparation to start to work with a recipient. They were comic book awards. They were the Oscars of comic books.
I couldn’t believe it.
This sneaky—
His chuckle caught me almost as off guard as what the hell I’d just read.
“What are you laughing at?” I barked.
He laughed even harder. “The expression on your face right now.”
This sneakymotherfucker. I pointed at the trophy, then held up the book closest to me. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
Alex laughed even harder. It was brilliant and beautiful and everything I could have ever imagined a genuine laugh from him sounding like. “You never asked what I did for a living.”
