And now…
“Anyway, he was about tokissme—inpublic—and we were having this beautiful magical moment and then suddenly, his parents showed up. I guess they were doing exactly what we were doing, and I guess that makes sense, but…”
“They saw?” Finn asked.
“Kind of?” Ezra said. “His dad called out to him and he dropped my hand like it was gonna bite him. Which I get! I get it, I don’t need him to be out in front of his parents, not really. But he just… completely rejected me. And thenwalked away.”
Ezra swallowed. Everything up to that point was fine. He didn’t want Mike fighting with his parents, but Mike could so easily have said that he planned on hanging out a little longer. He didn’t have toleave.
Again.
“Again,” Oscar said, as though he’d read Ezra’s mind.
He knew all this, obviously. Not what had happened last night, but everything that had happened before, everything that’d hurt so badly last time.
When Mike had picked someone else over him, abandoned him for their sake… that had hurt. He hadn’t been able to hide it.
And now his stomach was in knots and his chest felt tight because he’d lost Mike for a second time. It’d hurt just as much as the first. More, even, because the first time he could tell himself it would never have worked.
Now he knew better. Itwouldhave worked, if they both wanted it to. They’d been so good together up to that point.
“Yeah.” Ezra sighed. “And it hurt. And he hasn’t eventriedto apologize, so…”
“Do you love him?” Nolan spoke up from Ezra’s other side.
Everyone was suddenly looking at him.
“Do I… well…” Ezra looked down at his lap, fingers tightening around the mug he was drinking out of. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, I do.”
“Then he’s worth anything,” Nolan said, and out of the corner of his eye, Ezra could see him glancing up at Finn. “Even forgiveness.”
“I’d forgive him in a heartbeat,” Ezra responded right as he realized himself. He wished he’d been able to hide how badly he’d been hurt in the first place. It wasn’t that heblamedMike.
It was just that eventually, Mike would have to choose to keep lying to his parents and give Ezra up, or tell the truth and keep him. He didn’t need to be out to the world, but hedidneed not to walk away.
Ezra had feelings, too. He had needs.
One of those needs was not to be left in the middle of a date, even if he understood why it’d happened.
But he would have forgiven Mike. Hell, he alreadyhad.
Mike just hadn’t talked to him yet to find that out.
“But it’s his move,” he added eventually. “And I can’t do anything about that. And Iwon’tchase him down and beg. Not least of all because if he really doesn’t want to be out, to anyone at all… I can’t expose him like that. He has to come to me.”
“He does,” Ryan agreed. “Maybe don’t write him off just yet, though.”
Ezra sighed. Thelastthing he wanted to do was write Mike off.
He wanted Mike to burst through the door right now and tell him…
Tell him he wanted this. That was all Ezra needed to hear.
It was just that a visit from Santa Claus seemed more likely.
