Page 24 of Margins

“Careful,” Elijah smiles.

Alex throws the second one down just as smoothly and presses the glass back into Elijah’s waiting hand. “She told me she loved me, and that she knew I loved her, but that we’d both been lying to ourselves for too long, even if we hadn’t meant for it to be that way.”

“Lying how?”

“I asked her that,” Alex says, pulling the beer closer and taking the longest possible sip while Elijah clings to the two empty shot glasses in his hand. The temptation of the third remains on the table between them. “She said she’d spent the past several years trying to convince herself that having a family with her best friend was enough.”

“Mmmm,” Elijah hums. “So, what was your lie?”

The question stings even when Alex knew it was coming, and he thinks back to that day Cass had stood in the middle of their bedroom, tears streaming down her face, and so gently accused him of something he hadn’t been able to deny and has tried so hard to ignore ever since. And now he could easily keep it going by telling Elijah he’d only convinced himself of the same thing she had, but the look on Elijah’s face suggests he already knows better, and Alex doesn’t want to keep lying anyway.

“That I had ever loved her as anything more than a friend,” he says, his voice threatening to break. “Or that it was possible I ever could have.”

Elijah gives Alex time to distract himself with the beer, and he steps back just enough to give Alex some space too, but Alex doesn’t want it, not with alcohol and honesty coursing through his veins, so thick and slow. He finishes the last shot instead, then uses his free hand to reach forward and curl a finger through one of Elijah’s belt loops, tugging him closer, Elijah perfectly sober and moving easily in response, comfortable where he lands between Alex’s legs.

“Careful,” Elijah says again.

“Because people might see us?”

“Don’t care about them,” Elijah murmurs. “And I’m not the one who’s still sitting in the dark.”

“Just like they did.”

“Maybe.”

Alex nods, then feels the crease between his brows come and go. “That day at the café, when I said maybe I screwed up with Cassidy, you started to tell me something.”

“I remember.”

Even from where he’s sitting on the high stool, Alex has to look up at Elijah, a flash of dizziness leaving him with a smile. It’s funny because Alex has never considered himself to be all that small, at least as broad and tall as most people he knows, but Elijah has him beat and he’s grateful for it without understanding why.

“Tell me about it now?”

Elijah’s eyes fall closed, like maybe he’s trying to heed his own warnings, and Alex thinks he might close his too if he weren’t afraid the room could start to spin. Instead, he holds on to the belt loop, nowhere near brave enough to move his hand anywhere else, and he waits to see if Elijah will find somewhere better to be.

He doesn’t.

“You said she left you, and that it wouldn’t have happened if you’d done everything right.”

“I remember,” Alex echoes.

“And I guess I was just going to agree with what she had already said to you. The lie you just shared,” Elijah sighs. “That maybe your biggest mistake was the one you made at the very beginning. Thinking you were ever going to love her the way you so desperately wanted to.”

“Or that I was ever going to want her the way I so desperately would have loved to.”

Elijah smiles, impressed. “That was rather poetic for someone a few drinks in.”

“I've built my entire career around my ability to put words together,” Alex says. “Every now and then, I can do it off the clock.”

“Duly noted.” He’s gentle when he pries Alex’s finger away and nods toward the beer that had found its way back to the table when neither of them was paying attention. “Finish your beer. I’m gonna go make sure everyone else is still good over there.”

“Okay, can you bring me my check when you come back? I’ll take care of that and get a ride home.”

“No and no,” Elijah says. “Dinner’s on me, and I don’t live far from here. We can come back and pick up your car in the morning before you go to work.”

“What about the beer and tequila?”

“Dinner and drinks are on me, and I don’t live far from here,” he amends. “We can come back and pick up your car in the morning before you go to work.”

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