The ball sails between the uprights and I sink to my knees in relief.Thank fuck.
epilogue
Iris–EightMonthsLater
The coffee is terrible. Stadium coffee always is, thin and bitter and barely warm by the time you get it back to your seat, but I wrap my hands around the cup anyway because the October wind is cutting through the stands and my fingers need something to hold onto.
Milo is crouched in front of me, nipping at the straps of my sandals.
"Stop it."
"Your toes are purple, Iris. Actual purple. That's not a color toes should be."
"Then I'll take them off and go barefoot."
His head snaps up, his eyes wide with genuine alarm. "No! Then you'll get sick." He pauses, his expression shifting into something sinister. "Actually, do that. Get sick. Then I can takecare of you. I'll make soup. I'll fluff pillows. I'll be the best caretaker you've ever—"
"Stop fidgeting. You already forced me into this wool coat." I tug at the collar of the monstrosity he wrapped around my shoulders in the parking lot, the one that makes me look like a shepherdess from a period drama. "Just watch your brother."
Milo snorts and drops into the seat beside me, his leg bouncing immediately. Eight months of this and his energy hasn't dimmed a single bit. If anything it's gotten worse since we moved into the apartment, a two-bedroom near campus that we found in June after three weeks of increasingly unhinged apartment tours. Milo cried at the first one because it had a window seat. He cried at the second one because it didn't. The third one had a spare room big enough for the nest and a kitchen with enough counter space that his cooking disasters don't spread to every surface, and we signed the lease before the realtor finished her pitch.
The nest takes up the entire spare room now. We've rebuilt it twice since the original, each version bigger than the last, Quentin's architecture and Milo's chaos and my colors layered together until the room smells like all three of us the moment we open the door.
My father came over for dinner last month and paused in the hallway, looking at the closed door with an expression I couldn't read. He didn't ask to see it. He just nodded and said, "Your mother would have loved this place," and kept walking toward the kitchen.
The monthly dinners at his house have become a fixed point in our lives, every third Sunday, lasagna or pot roast or whatever recipe he's pulled from the box of my mother's cards that he finally took out of storage. Milo brings dessert and breaks something every single time. Last month it was a wine glass. The month before that, the towel rack in the bathroom. My fatherhas started keeping a tally on the fridge. The current count is seven.
Quentin got into med school and got drafted by the Ridgemont Wolves in the same week, which meant forty-eight hours of logistics that would have broken a less organized person. He's doing both because he's Quentin and the concept of choosing one thing when he could do two has never occurred to him. Pre-med coursework in the mornings, practice in the afternoons, games on weekends. He sleeps about five hours a night and has never once complained about it, though I've started leaving coffee on his desk before he wakes up because the circles under his eyes worry me more than I let on.
Milo started working at a boutique hotel downtown, while studying for his masters, because apparently, ‘you can never have too much school.’ I disagree wholeheartedly but the Ridgemont Wolves have offered him an internship once he hits his second year.
In the meantime, he’s flourishing workin at the front desk and guest services, and discovered within the first week that his particular brand of chaos translates beautifully into hospitality. Guests love him. His manager loves him. He came home after his first shift vibrating with the news that he'd talked a couple out of canceling their anniversary dinner and into rebooking with a room upgrade, and Quentin said, "You annoyed them into staying," and Milo said, "Icharmedthem into staying, there's a difference," and they argued about it for forty-five minutes while I sketched them from the kitchen table.
He still hasn’t weaned off the suppresants, moving to a more aggressive cycle that skips heats altogether, not that it’s an issue but he’s mentioned more than once he’s just not ready to have one yet. I don’t mind and neither does his brother but that’s going to be a whole other dynamic when it does happen. Just another awkward thing we’ll have to deal with when it comes.
I started with an interior design firm in August, a small studio that specializes in residential spaces. My first client wanted a nursery and I spent three hours helping her choose paint swatches and fabric samples and cried in my car afterward because the instinct to build safe spaces for other people finally has a name and a paycheck attached to it. Milo found the invoice on my desk and framed it. It's hanging in the bathroom next to the nest room.
And now, eight months later, I’m sitting next to one boyfriend while I watch my other one on the field playing the game he so desperately loves. I still don’t know when we’ll make things official with bonds and marriage or if that’s even in the cards but right now? I like how everything is. No expectations. No rules.Just us.
Quentin catches a pass on a crossing route and turns upfield, his cuts so sharp the defender stumbles trying to mirror him. He picks up fifteen yards before the safety brings him down at the thirty.
Milo shoots out of his seat. "Yeah! That's my brother! WOOHOO! LET'S GO Q!"
The couple in front of us turns around. A woman two rows up covers her child's ear. Milo is completely oblivious, both fists in the air, his scarf whipping in the wind.
"God, you're embarrassing."
He drops back into his seat and kisses me, his cold nose bumping against mine. "YOU LOVE ME."
"Yes, I do. But that doesn't take away from the fact that you're still embarrassing."
They switch out the offensive unit and Quentin jogs off the field, pulling his helmet off as he reaches the sideline. He scans the stands until he finds us, then steps up to the railing below our section, his face flushed from the drive.
"Hey, Alpha." Quentin started calling me that a few months in but he still never concedes. I love it, though I won’t ever tell him. Granted, the smile it brings to my face gives me away.
I lean over the railing and kiss him, my hand finding the side of his face, the stubble rough against my palm. He tastes like Gatorade and cold air and I don't care. "Nice catch."
He hums against my lips, lingering for a beat before pulling away. "You keeping her warm, Milo?"
