Page 16 of Margins

“Because you asked me to be, and I—I guess I wanted to be. There’s still a lot more of the story, isn’t there?”

Elijah finally looks up and nods. “If you want to keep going.”

There’s something melancholy between them now, and Alex doesn’t know whether it’s only about the books, or whether he’s missed something more, but he gently knocks Elijah’s hand away from the beer, and wonders how many more times he’ll touch him tonight.

“You okay? I mean with this and—I don’t know. Everything?”

“Everything?” Elijah laughs, and it’s the heaviest sound Alex has heard in a while. “That’s a loaded question better left for another time.”

“Like when you get me drunk some other night?”

“What?”

Alex shrugs. “Earlier you said you wouldn’t get me drunk now. Just wondering when else you think that might happen, or whether it’s something that’s supposed to take us both by surprise.”

Elijah doesn’t answer, rapping his fist against the table a couple of times before he picks up his phone and gestures back to the bar, spending long enough over there that Alex thinks maybe he’s supposed to grab his bag and duck quietly back into the rain. In the end, he closes his eyes for a few seconds, strains to hear Elijah’s voice among the crowd of people who know how to have fun, and then he opens them as he reaches for the book he’d brought, finding where they’d left off there.

E, yes. Yes, I will meet you there. I’ll let you hold me if I can do the same. If you trust the shadows, I’ll learn to trust them, too. The next time you deliver to our office, give me a signal. Tell me when and where. And until then…

Alex re-reads it, committing it to memory as much as he’s tried to do with all of them. It’s the transition from only seeing each other in passing, E delivering the books, alone or with something else, to P at the law firm, and finally agreeing to meet somewhere they can be alone, however briefly. And then there’s the message he read on Elijah’s phone about P meeting E late at night, no kiss happening yet, but some kind of embrace enough to keep them going.

Bittersweet, always.

And maybe it makes sense that that’s when Elijah finally returns.

“You asked if I was okay, and I don’t have a good answer for you right now. I just—I don’t.”

“Not sure you really owe me one,” Alex says.

“Maybe not. Still want to try sometime, if you’re willing to wait a while.”

“Of course. Yeah,” Alex agrees. “But I—can I ask you something?”

Elijah looks back at the bar and then at Alex again. “Sure.”

“Do you still think this is Peter, or did we just end up with a random story on our hands?”

“I think it’s him,” Elijah says, his voice somehow both unsteady and firm. “The first initial, the time frame, the law firm, and the fact that my grandpa had these books all kept together on his shelf, like they mattered. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am.”

Alex nods. “And you said the books you have are ones your grandpa read to you when you were younger, so he would’ve seen the notes. You think he knew?”

“I think he must have, yeah.” Elijah picks up the mostly empty plate and waits for Alex to down the last of the beer before he reaches for the glass, too, clearing his throat and going nowhere. “You know, those two women at the bar have been asking me about you.”

“Okay,” Alex says, strangely careful about not looking at them. He’s not sure he’s ever known how to do it right anyway. “And what did you say?”

“That you’re a friend of mine.”

“Okay,” he says again, relieved somehow. Settled at the sound of a word that seems so incredibly safe. He wants a friend. Needs one even. Glancing past Elijah for more than that already feels like it would be a mistake, and as he stares at the swan again, Alex tries not to want something new.

“Did you want me to tell them anything else?” Elijah asks.

Still distracted, Alex feels his mouth twist into something that wants to be a smile and hasn’t quite made it there. “Why? So, you can be a margin of my very own?”

Elijah laughs at that, though, incrementally lighter than he was earlier. “I’ve been called worse.”

There are so many things Alex wants to say, but he can’t imagine how any of them would be okay here, tonight, with the fragility of the love story still on the table, the book closed for now but unlikely to stay that way. Everything feels pulled taut in a way that he doesn’t understand, and he’s almost certain most of his thoughts would only cause him to fall apart and come dangerously close to bringing Elijah down, too. What he does say is the only thing he thinks he can.

“I um—I should go. I have to work in the morning.”

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