Eight Months Later
Miller’s giant, sprawling apartment with the multi-million-dollar views really did turn out to be not that bad, after all.
It turned out to be my favourite place.
And not just because my favourite person bought it when he was young and silly and had no real worries before life stole something so precious and irreplaceable from him.
But because it really is just the right size to fit all the pieces of both of us. All my reasons to be me. Miller, all that he is—awake and vibrant and fun and so alive—and all the things we’ve tried together and still want to.
A horrible artistic rendering of a jellyfish hangs in the living room on stretched canvas with paint splotches, fingerprints, and both of our signatures scrawled in the corner from a paint night we did with Imani and Joel.
Below it, a sideboard we found at a vintage market, my record player in the middle, the surface littered with half-burnt candles and struck matches. Victor, sitting right beside a framed picture of Miller and Matthew on their draft day. And laid in front ofthat, a fossilized flower Imani gave to Miller the day Matt would have turned twenty-eight.
In our kitchen—cutting boards propped up against the walls from all my failed attempts at learning different ways to chop vegetables, a bamboo mat we only used once when I thought it would be a great idea to learn how to make sushi. It was a great idea, but not because I turned out to be some sort of rice-rolling savant. Because all our rolls fell apart and we spent the night chasing each other around with sushi rice in our hands. Unfair, actually, because he’s so much faster than me and he caught me every single time I tried to run away.
Hanging above our bed, looking out over messy sheets we never bother to straighten because there’s nothing better than cotton still wrinkled from the body of the person you love so much—two framed lists. One for him, and one for me.
It even fits our two best friends—who became a really unlikely pair of friends themselves, out on the patio, even though it’s February.
“What are they doing out there? It’s cold out.” My fingers hover above my laptop, and I roll my shoulders back, always set in the curve of his smile now, and when they hit the leather of the couch, Miller wraps his arms around me from behind, chin resting near the crook of my neck.
Miller angles his head, and the waves of mahogany hair curling around his ears brush across my cheek. He gives a laugh. “Think she was talking him through some sort of ... uh, physics of pitching book she just read before he reports to spring training. Said she needed room to demonstrate.”
“Wouldn’t he—know that stuff?” I frown, looking away from my computer to see Imani through the patio door, miming some sort of throwing motion with her arm while Joel nods along, looking vaguely confused.
“Probably.” Miller’s thumbs tap against the jut over my collarbone before he presses his mouth to my ear before he stands. “Quit stalling.”
“What if I don’t get in anywhere?” My hands leave their ever-permanent hovering position over the keyboard, wrapping around Miller’s forearms.
He shakes his head. “Not going to happen.”
“Okay, but what if I get in and it’s somewhere ... bad?” I trace a pattern over the ridges of muscle hidden beneath the sleeves of his sweater.
“Doesn’t matter.” His hands tighten against my shoulders. “I go where you go, remember? I’ll go back and play in the minors if I have to.”
Tipping my head back, I arch a brow. “Do they have sexiest shortstop competitions in the minors?”
“Yeah, and I’ll probably win those too.” The corner of his mouth kicks up, amused, and his eyes flash before he jerks his chin back towards my waiting laptop. “Baby. Just get it over with.”
“What if I go nowhere?” I ask, some of those old worries and insecurities poking up from somewhere very deep that, even though it doesn’t get much sunlight anymore, might always be there.
“Then I go nowhere.” He leans down, a wave of hair falling across his forehead when his mouth moves over mine. “Don’t care. As long as it’s with you.”
“Okay,” I whisper softly, pressing my lips to his before he drops a kiss to my nose. “Close your eyes.”
His fingers dig into my shoulders, and he tips his head back, groaning. “Ren, I swear to god, if you don’t open the email—”
“Fine!” I frantically smash my fingers to the keyboard, but I slap my hand to cover my eyes as soon as my email opens. “I can’t—you look.”
He taps against my collarbone again, his stubble dragging across my cheek when he bends down to look over my shoulder, and even though I can’t see it, I can feel when his full lips tip into a grin—all of me stretches towards it.
Oxygen, sunlight, and everything a person like me could need to grow and flourish live in the tilt of his mouth.
That same mouth moves against my ear again, and I hear the smile in his words. “UChicago paleobiology graduate program mean anything to you?”
I peek through my fingers. “You’re kidding.”
“I don’t kid about dinosaurs, Ren,” he murmurs, burying his face in the crook of my neck. “You know that by now.”
