Page 30 of Margins

“I don’t know. That slow enough for you?”

Elijah takes a step closer, then another and another, pressing Alex back against the door and nipping at his bottom lip before he soothes it with a kiss. “It’s perfect.”

Chapter Eight

If anyone were to ask Alex what he did the rest of that night, there’s no way he’d be able to tell them, those hours passing in such a blissful haze. He makes dinner and eats in front of the TV, a movie on even if he’s paying no attention to it at all, and he stalls for as long as he can before he heads upstairs. There’s no real need for it, but he takes a shower anyway, just to waste a little more time, then Alex turns to his crossword puzzles in lieu of any book that might have him staring at empty margins.

Elijah texts him to say goodnight.

Alex’s sleep is mostly dreamless, and he doesn’t know how that’s possible.

The first thing he notices when he looks outside the next morning is the fog, such a normal thing here, but reminiscent of the day he met Elijah all the same. Alex goes for a run—his first in a while—and it feels so good, his body hungry and begging to be satiated.

He’s ready to feed it at least a little more when he picks up lunch on the way to Elijah’s a few hours later, his heartbeat far from under control when he knocks at the door.

“So much better than yesterday’s pizza guy,” Elijah teases as he lets Alex in.

He smiles. He exhales. He walks through the door and keeps moving. But the thing is, Alex doesn’t know how to do this any more than he knows how to want, or how to slow down the wanting once he’s started, or whatever other step comes next in a dance he never properly learned. He took a pretty girl to the movies when he was a dumb teenager, tripped over himself for a while after that to make himself fit into a role that maybe never really belonged to him, and now he’s here, with no idea what to do when his second forever might have started last night.

“You sure? There’s probably still time for me to get out of your way.”

Elijah snags the hem of Alex’s shirt and pulls him closer. “Don’t want anyone else.”

Their kiss is careful, intent enough to mean something but just light enough that they can let go, Alex easily getting settled on the patio again while Elijah grabs a couple of drinks. They talk just as they had the day before, so much to still find out about each other, both of them more eager now and holding nothing back while Poe looks up at them every now and then, like maybe he’s absorbing some of it too. And when they’re done eating, they trace yesterday’s footsteps and land on the couch, ready to move on to the second pair of books.

“The first books covered what—a year and a half or so?” Alex asks.

“Yeah, something like that. So, we’re probably in the late 1940s.”

“And you think you saw Peter and Edgar together in the mid-90s?”

“On our trip to San Diego,” Elijah says. “Yeah.”

“Then even if these books somehow carry us through a few years—”

“There will still be about four decades of the story we won’t know,” Elijah finishes. “How they end up together all those years later, and why they never let anyone know how much they loved each other.”

Something knocks at the back of Alex’s head, a question or answer he can’t quite hear, but he only fights with it for a moment before he offers something of a counterargument.

“I’m not sure there’s that much mystery to be solved about why they never let anyone know,” he says. “Two gay men, from entirely separate classes, only able to communicate through messages scribbled into the margins of books passed back and forth between them, and only able to touch in the middle of the night while they hid in the shadows of some shabby warehouses? And then Edgar being attacked, plus whatever other hell we don’t even know about? Even as times changed, that’s a lot of very quiet trauma to overcome.”

“So, you think at a certain point they kept the secret because it’s all they’d known?”

“I can’t be sure, obviously, but it makes sense. Feral animals don’t just become tame the moment you let them into a home.”

Elijah nods, thoughtful. “And my grandpa knew at some point, so they weren’t totally alone, but yeah, I—it just hurts knowing how much it hurt them. We look back and celebrate all the brave people in the communities that fought for a better life—for their chance to love out loud—but maybe we forget that the quiet ones weren’t cowards.”

“Nah, just victims who were already sacrificing their safety to have any moment of honesty at all.”

“Okay,” Elijah sighs, taking a deep breath to regroup. “Then we read on to see if we can learn more about how they get away from the late-night visits. And depending on how much is still unknown when we’re done, I could always try talking to my mom again.”

“You think that would go over okay?” Alex asks. “I don’t want this to be any harder for you than it already is.”

“She didn’t seem all that bothered when I asked questions at the beginning of all this. She just kinda paused and then answered. Not sure she cares enough to worry about why I’m asking, and I wouldn’t tell her about the books anyway.”

“Didn’t figure you would.” Alex smiles, though it feels sad. “Okay, here was Peter’s message about their first kiss, the one I read when I found the book that first weekend: E, it feels rather perfect to start a new book today, with the ghost of your lips still on mine. I don’t believe I have all the words to express the hunger I felt after indulging in that first taste, but I dream of the impossible world in which I could be truly satisfied.”

“Definitely no way to know how long Uncle Edgar’s recovery took, other than the ‘weeks’ mentioned at the end of the last book. We don’t even know exactly what happened in the first place.”

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