Tris’s eyes widen, like somehow he can hear those other words I’ve just thought. The ones that I can’t stop thinking on repeat with each hammering beat of my pulse.
I love you, Tris.
Under my fingers, I can feel the movement of his throat as he swallows, hard and slow, and for a breathtaking second, I teeter on the edge of telling him. Of just saying it out loud.
From somewhere down the street come the shouts and laughter of kids playing in the late afternoon sun, but the sound is distant, like my realization’s caught Tris and me in a bubble of silence. In this moment, it’s only us.
And then the bubble bursts and my hand drops from Tris’scheek as the front door flies open with two synchronized shrieks of, “Uncle Jess!”
Behind the girls, Alex and Ellie step out onto the porch, waiting for me to introduce them to the man I’ve just realized I am irrevocably in love with.
“Ilovehim, Jesse.”
My eyes drift away from Ellie’s emphatic face, over to where Tris sits in the middle of Alex and Ellie’s toy-strewn living room rug, gravely nodding along to Sarah and Mia’s loud, lightning-speed, intermittently unintelligible narration of the game the three of them are playing with the twins’ collection of plastic horses.
For the first three minutes after Tris and I walked through the door, the girls had eyed him in silent scrutiny from the safety of their usual place on my lap. Then one, I think it was Sarah, had turned to him, grabbed his tattooed left hand and announced, “It’s bad to dwaw on youw hands. Mommy says.”
From that moment, I have been entirely forgotten, and the girls have wanted nothing to do with anyone except “Twistan.” If I hadn’t already succumbed to the inevitable and realized that there is no word but love for what I feel for him, the way he’s given himself over to their enthusiasm would have sealed my fate.
I love him too.
I don’t say it out loud to Ellie, but it’s a near thing. Not that Tris would hear me all the way from the kitchen over the way the twins are practically shouting.
Like he can feel my gaze on him though, Tris glances upfrom the pair of white spotted ponies he’s been entrusted with, and the smile that breaks across his beautiful face the moment our eyes meet literally steals my breath for a second. His smile widens, making his gorgeous dimple appear, and for a heart-stopping moment, I wonder what exactly he’s reading in my face. The next second though, his attention is fully and unwaveringly back on the twins as he follows I-think-Mia’s instructions in what I’m assuming must be the proper way to tuck his assigned ponies into the communal doll bed apparently devoted to the horse collection.
And Christ, I never want to stop watching him.
My unstoppable fall for Tris has been fast and furious and completely dizzying, and every day, I feel like I discover a half dozen new things about him that only make me care for him more. Tonight, the evening I’ve finally brought him to meet Alex and his family—my family,really—has been no exception.
His genuine, charming friendliness. How effortlessly he’s integrated into our conversations. His sassy comebacks to Alex’s inevitable ribbing. How obviously and naturally he fits into this small found family of mine. The way he is with Sarah and Mia; so kind and so enthusiastic, taking them and their imaginary world so seriously.
Without warning, my eyes prickle, and I have to look away from Tris, swallowing hard against the aching lump that’s formed from nowhere in my throat.
The stare Ellie pins me with as I turn back to her is deadly serious. The sort of stare she usually reserves for Alex when he’s in especial need of her civilizing influence. “That man is exactly what you need. He’s—” she shakes her head, eyes flicking briefly toward Tris and the twins as a smile steals over her face. “He’sperfectfor you, Jesse.”
Alex, who’s just joined us after finishing loading the dishwasher with the last of the dinner dishes, slips his arms around Ellie’s waist and rests his chin on the top of her head. She leans back into him with an unmistakably happy sigh, and for the first time in years, I don’t feel that familiar, lonely ache in the pit of my stomach in answer to their effortless affection.
“He organized my sock drawer.” I’m not really sure why it’s that rather odd piece of information I choose to share at this moment, except that I still can’t stop smiling about the ridiculous sweetness of it. How I’d come home from the library to find Tris in the final stages of tucking my now matched-up pairs in tidy rows in the drawer that had previously been a chaotic jumble of individual, seemingly mateless socks.
That, and blurting something seemed like an effective way to distract myself from the threat of tears that had suddenly felt like an impending reality.
“Really?” Alex shoots me a look that I know full well is his silent version of,what the fuck, Jess?He shakes his head, snorting out a laugh. “You found literally the perfect boyfriend to bring you back into the world of the living, andthatis what you’re excited about?”
My heart fills as my eyes land on Tris again. Beneath the inevitable shit Alex was going to give me, no matter what I’d said, is the truth. Trisisperfect for me.
45
Jesse
All along the dusky walk back from Alex and Ellie’s, it’s all I can do not to blurt my feelings to Tris. And yet, I make myself hold them in.
Tris has never had anyone take the time to make him see how stunning and extraordinary he is, and I’ve promised myself that, at every opportunity, I will be that person. I will not rush or blurt or hurry through any chance to show him that he is worthy of so much more than life has given him.
The apartment Tris and I step into is a different place than the one I returned to that night weeks ago, weighed down by the threat of Alex’s ultimatum that I find myself a date or be left to the questionable mercies of Todd.
Now, every surface is cleared of the superficial clutter that once lined the fringes of the space, and in the once under-furnished living room, a wide, comfortable couch sits across a low coffee table from my old chair. The bookshelf in the corner is crammed fuller than ever, the brighter colored spines of Tris’s quickly growing collection of contemporary romances mixed in among the more subdued covers of my books. Tomorrow morning, when I open my now highly organized kitchen cupboards, I know I’ll find multiple boxes ofappallingly sugary cereal tucked beside my tub of oats.
Last week, I even hired someone to come out and tune the piano.
