Page 17 of Margins

“Yeah, of course,” Elijah agrees.

He takes the dishes away while Alex slides the book back into his bag and stands, turning toward the door just as Elijah returns. Looking at him gives Alex such an easy view of the bar just over his shoulder, and the chance to smile at the two women he’d opened the door for a while ago.

He still doesn’t take it, blinking up at Elijah instead.

“We still on for Saturday?”

“Looking forward to it.”

Chapter Five

In the next day and a half, they only text long enough to agree on where to meet for lunch—a café near Alex’s office that he knows has plenty of room for them and the books, and that won’t mind if they hang out there for a while. The time they spend apart isn’t much though, and as Alex showers and gets dressed on Saturday, he’s still trying to make sense out of Elijah’s reactions to everything that happened at the bar. Elijah had been so excited to invite Alex there, then surprised and relieved when Alex said yes, teasing when he arrived, certain when he first showed him the pictures on his phone, entirely unbalanced afterward, and then just plain strange when he brought up the two women asking about Alex while he was there.

For his part, Alex tries to convince himself he was only lost in the fact that he and Elijah had fully missed that they’d been reading the tentative beginning of a gay romance, and he’s as eager to see where it goes as he is scared of how terribly it might end.

He quiets that part of him that’s eager and scared to find out how Elijah’s doing, or what this love story might mean to either of them now.

They pull into the parking lot seconds apart, and when Elijah climbs out of his truck, shoves his hands into his hoodie pocket, and tilts his head just so, Alex thinks maybe Elijah feels the same way. It’s a terrifying thing to believe in—the idea that they might be on the same page—but Elijah’s still standing with the car door open, watching and waiting, so Alex grabs his messenger bag and goes to him, trying not to crowd him there, even if there’s an instinct to keep moving closer.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Elijah says, glancing toward the building. “There’s a patio, too?”

“Mmmhmm. I’ve spent many an afternoon there, working on various columns.”

Elijah turns around to pull two books from the passenger seat, then he closes the door and nods to Alex, who leads them inside. They order at the counter—Alex paying for lunch after Elijah had taken care of his dinner and drinks Thursday night—and then they take everything out back, the weather just cool enough that most people have opted to stay in. He sets his bag down on the chair between them and Elijah’s books get piled on top of that, and then they relax with their sandwiches and just talk for a while.

A very long while, as it turns out.

Alex learns Elijah is the youngest of three, his sister, Vanessa, and her family living in Connecticut, his brother, Austin, and his family in the Bay Area, which Alex remembers from the garage sale. His parents divorced years ago, and neither one lives far away, but Elijah’s never been all that close to either of them, his mom and dad somehow always part of his life and also not, and Alex can almost see the bruises left behind by wounds Elijah doesn’t even recall.

“Honestly, I was always closest to my grandpa. My grandma too, I guess, but she died when I was in high school,” Elijah says. “The rest of my family has never been bad to me. It just never felt all that good to be around them, either.”

“All the good memories were the ones you said you had at the house.”

Elijah smiles, a sad little thing wrapped around his straw as he drinks. “Yeah, lots of them. Again, mostly just hanging out there all the time when I was an awkward kid. Sleepovers whenever I wanted—”

“And a Hans Christian Andersen story before bed?”

“Exactly. And the poetry when I was a little older,” Elijah tells him, running a finger along the spines of both books. “After my grandma died, my mom stepped in for a while to help—and I mean, she was grieving too obviously—but then it seemed like it was just my grandpa and me, at least when I wasn’t being a typical idiot in my teens and 20s.”

“All your relationship attempts and failures,” Alex says.

“Basically, yeah. College was a good way to get into that kind of trouble, and then I started bartending, which comes with plenty more. I’d like to think I’ve been better about it the past couple of years, but I don’t know.”

“Never married though?”

“Nope. Want to get married. Want kids, too,” Elijah tells him. “But sometimes it feels like a crazy fantasy to have when most of my time is spent alone at my place or at work behind a crowded bar.”

“Hey, don’t knock the crowded bar. Those two women from the other night might’ve asked about me, but let’s not pretend like they weren’t happy to be looking at you. And you could always look back, right? When someone you think you might like smiles at you—you can always smile back.”

Elijah stares at Alex like there might be a right or wrong answer to his question, and Alex doesn’t want his stomach to turn the way it does while he waits, everything made better enough when Elijah’s response is hardly more than a whisper.

“Is it that easy to start falling for someone? Or to get them to fall for you? Is smiling back all it takes?”

“I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask,” Alex argues. “But you’ll let me know if you find out?”

“I can try.”

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