Page 31 of Margins

“Nope,” Alex agrees. “But Peter took it as some kind of sign to stop being so afraid, all the restraint from before apparently gone once they were able to meet up again. How did Edgar respond?”

P, waiting for that first kiss was torture for my body and soul, but waiting now for all the others we might share is so much worse. I have nothing else to give but everything you already know is yours, but I’ll be ready to try whenever you come to me, tonight or for the rest of our lives.

Alex glances up at Elijah as he finishes, then turns to the next entry in his book, another one he’s already read, but not one he’s shared yet.

E, I have so many sleepless nights now, most of them when I haven’t been able to see you and cannot know how safe you are, but every one of them is worth it when we’re together again and I can steal enough time to make myself believe you’re still mine. I can’t stop worrying about what could happen if we’re ever caught, and how violently people could react to this love they don’t understand, but I will continue to be there with you because it’s the only place I can rest while wide awake.

“Yeah, maybe the restraint was gone, but I can’t imagine that ongoing fear for my great grandfather,” Elijah says. “Being apart for what we’re assuming are long stretches in between, and not having any way to know if something happens. Just waiting any time there’s a delivery and hoping Uncle Edgar would be there.”

“Edgar would’ve been able to relax a little more, if relaxing were a thing anybody could do under these circumstances. I mean, Peter technically had more to lose, but he had a lot more to protect him, too.”

“A wealthy widower with broad shoulders and a solid build was definitely less of a target. Not the kind of guy most people would've targeted for being gay the same way they had done to Edgar.”

“But I’m guessing Edgar’s about to reassure him that he’s fine,” Alex says.

“And you’re right. Here it is: P, I know I’ll never be able to stop you from worrying after what happened to me, and maybe it would have been impossible long before that, but please know every day of my life is worth the fight if it means tomorrow could bring you back to me. And while it may feel like the shadow of the warehouse is the only place I can be yours, I ask you to remember that I am always yours, everywhere you go.”

“Edgar was smoother in hidden messages than I’ve ever been a day in my life,” Alex mutters.

“Eh, I don’t know. Showing up at my garage sale two days in a row was pretty hot.”

He laughs and elbows Elijah. “Hey, I just went out for some fresh air. Didn’t know you were gonna sell me a love story.”

“Is that what I did?”

“Certainly seems like it,” Alex answers, but then he remembers something else and tilts his head. “That night you invited me to the bar, when you’d already figured out that they were gay, what happened right after I read those messages on your phone? Why did it seem like you were suddenly sorry I was there?”

For a second, Alex thinks maybe Elijah will deny there was anything wrong then, but after another moment or two, Elijah nods. “You want to know why I went from being so eager to share what I’d found to walking away from you.”

“You walked away a couple of times, yeah. And you wouldn’t tell me if you were okay, but you said you might have an answer if I was willing to wait a while.”

“We’re probably past a while by now.”

“I think so,” Alex agrees.

“I don’t want to take anything away from their story. It’s about them, it’s—none of what we’re reading is actually about me,” Elijah says, scratching at an invisible spot on his jeans until Alex slides his hand under Elijah’s and gives him something to hold. “But when I read those, I felt like it loosened something in my chest. Made it easier to breathe, just knowing maybe it wasn’t just me. That I wasn’t the only one in my family.”

“I don’t think it’s ever wrong to connect with the things other people write—I mean, my entire career sort of relies upon it—and it’s especially not wrong when those words were written by a great grandfather you actually met.”

“Yeah, maybe. But I also already knew I liked you—a lot—and I didn’t know if I was imagining that you might feel the same way. I couldn’t tell whether I was just caught up in the story. So, I wanted you there, and I wanted to show you what I found, and I wanted it to make it easier for you to breathe, too.”

Alex thinks back to that night, sitting next to the wall, the hard stool and the crispy fries and the cold beer and the sudden awareness of what they’d been reading, all of it colliding with what he’d already started to feel. He’d frozen there, he knows he had, and Elijah had left him to figure out the rest alone.

“I couldn’t breathe at all.”

“I noticed,” Elijah says, an admission more than an accusation. “And then neither could I. I got worried that you were disappointed in what we'd read, like maybe a story about two gay men wasn’t one you still wanted to follow.”

“And you thought that if I was disappointed in what we'd read, then that might mean I’d also be disappointed in you. And uninterested in us.”

“Which wasn’t fair. I knew that even then,” Elijah sighs. “But I think I’d built up a moment in my head where you’d read those messages and then look up at me and we’d just know, and instead you went cold, and I thought maybe I was so, so wrong.”

“You kept coming back to me, though.”

“I did, yeah. You didn’t leave and I couldn’t stay away.”

Alex cocks his head. “The other night, when I stopped by after my retreat, I pulled you close to me, and you said something about me being the one still in the dark—that you didn’t care who saw us. Does that mean you’re out at work?”

“Mmmm, I wouldn’t say I’m out out, but I don’t really hide, and anyone paying attention probably made assumptions a while ago. Tyler knows for sure. He’s stood too close to me too many nights to think I have any sort of preference about who I might want to take home.”

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