But before he even had time to feel properly delighted by this, Luca was shoving the door closed and talking.
“I’m sorry for the joke I made when we got here.”
Emerson frowned. Luca stood in front of him with his hands in his pockets, elbows locked, shoulders up by his ears.
“What joke?”
“I said something stupid about me and Jacob trauma bonding by having to share this room. But I regretted it as soon as I said it. I just wanted you to know that like, I know I didn’t actually suffer from trauma, living here. I know how lucky I am.”
“Luca.” Emerson took a step forward. Rested his hands on Luca’s sides.
“And I just hate that you knew you had to take your baby pictures with you when you left for college. That you knew at age eighteen that you would never be able to go back home. And I’mgladyou’ve never gone back there, but—” Luca shook his head, still frowning, even as Emerson rubbed his hands up and down the sides of his ribcage. “I don’t know; it just makes me so fucking sad. I didn’t move out of this house until I was twenty, and it felt so monumental when I did, but even then I only moved like, fifteen fucking miles down the road. I never worried about losing my baby photos.”
“Luca,” Emerson said again. Luca looked away, sniffing. “Luca, it’s okay. We should have talked about it more, before we came here. What it might be like, because of the differences in our backgrounds.”
“But—” Luca shook his head again, wiping a palm angrily under his eye. “Whatisit like? Because you seem totally fine! Why am I the one who’s—fuck, who’s crying?”
Emerson wasn’t fine. But he could at least soothe Luca about this.
“Because I’ve lived with it a lot longer than you have.” Emerson swiped a thumb across Luca’s cheek. “It’s still new toyou. So I’m sorry. But thank you. For caring this much about me.”
He pressed a soft kiss against Luca’s lips. Luca huffed out a breath when he pulled away.
“Okay,” he said, still clearly irritated at himself—or at Emerson’s parents, maybe, or at the world as a whole—and Emerson smiled, taking a step back.
“Come on. Show me your room.”
Luca waved an arm.
“I mean. It’s not much.”
It was, though. It was so much.
Emerson went to the bookshelf first, the one above a small desk, crammed with the cracked spines of sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks, small, yellow-paged ones. His eyes scanned the walls, seeing the other posters and postcards that dominated half of the room: metal bands and Giants players.
“Are your whole family Giants fans?” he asked.
Luca shook his head.
“No. They’re not really into baseball at all. But I, uh, had a crush on a baseball player in high school,” Luca explained with a small, embarrassed laugh. “So I got into it. And most people here are Mariners fans, you know, but I don’t know. I always wanted to be contrary. So I decided to become a Giants fan, because they were the other closest team.”
“California, though.” Emerson looked back and arched an eyebrow. Luca laughed again.
“I know. Made me an extra traitor.”
Emerson strolled around the small room, his socked feet sinking into the blue carpet.
“Stop sleeping in the guest bedroom,” he said when he’d made his way back to Luca. “At least—stay, sometimes.” There had been two times now that Emerson had gotten to fall asleep next to Luca, but each time, he’d sensed it was merely because Luca had fallen asleep by accident. He wasalways gone by morning. “Move some of your stuff into mine, upstairs.”
Luca stared at him.
“Is that too much?” he asked when Luca didn’t respond. “Too fast? I just?—”
Emerson took a breath. Heknewit was too fast. Knew it was too much. But each new piece of Luca’s history, each new fact he picked up in this house made panic start to tangle in his chest.
He’d been working on dealing with the possibility of losing the farm for forever, but if having the farm was now wrapped up in having Luca, too?—
He wanted as much as he could for as long as he could.
