Page 33 of Margins

“You understand why they stayed quiet, but it hurts you, too.”

“I think it ended up hurting everyone.”

Alex swallows against all the layers of that, the knowledge that Peter and Edgar’s decision to keep their relationship a secret, even a while after they really would’ve had to, affected Elijah’s grandpa and his mother and then him, an accidental domino tipped over decades ago. He closes his eyes, opens them again, and reads.

E, we meet more often now and exchange these books far less, eager to be with each other more than we need to document the same. And I truly cannot write about tonight, with no words to describe a touch I’ve never known and the respect to avoid trying to describe it at all. I’ll only thank you for letting every sound I made land gently on your tongue, and for letting me taste more moments later.

“Well,” Alex starts, clearing his throat. “That was—something.”

“You don’t think they—”

“No, not there. Not like that. But still, they—”

“Yeah,” Elijah says. “But it wasn’t sudden. I mean, even taking into account the broader timeline, this message makes it sound like they’ve been able to signal meetings without having to rely on the books. Probably could’ve for a while, but just hadn’t broken the habit.”

“Now the books are just for the occasional thoughts they want to share,” Alex notes. “And the physical relationship is growing.”

“Which means these two books might carry us further than we’d guessed.”

So, they continue to read, and while it had taken them nearly a month to stumble through the beautiful beginning of another couple’s love story, Alex and Elijah continue to race through the middle of it in a single afternoon, their pace reckless when they should be terrified of where it all ends. The tone of Peter and Edgar’s messages certainly tips toward risqué for a while, far from explicit, but just enough for it to be clear that they wanted more than they could have, even as they started to have far more than they were allowed. And as months went by, maybe another year or two passing in the pages they turn, Alex and Elijah begin to sense that Peter and Edgar’s lingering reluctance had become stirred with newfound hope. James would be moving away in the next few years, even if they suspected he already knew more than he’d ever said, and there was still danger everywhere, even if there were the first hints of fights to be won. There were the early rumblings of places to go and communities to join and precautions to take, but Peter and Edgar kept a tight hold on the sliver of safety they already knew, pushing the boundaries of it until it seemed like they were finally ready to leave it behind, a new chapter beckoning them forward.

By the time Alex closes his book, Elijah taking another several seconds to do the same, he aches with the realization that Peter and Edgar were so close to something that might have become everything, but that there’s nothing more of their story left to read. They both set their books down, Alex giving his back to Elijah now that they’re done.

“The end?” Alex whispers.

“I don’t want it to be.”

“You have to go to work soon,” Alex says, standing and holding out his hand for Elijah to take.

He does exactly that, and then lets go once he can cradle Alex’s face instead, his kiss devastating. “Don’t want to go anywhere. Don’t know how to go anywhere. And I want you to stay.”

Alex’s fingers catch in the material of Elijah’s shirt. “I want to stay, too. But Elena will be back tonight.”

They stumble toward the front door, an entire afternoon spent in the past leaving them only with a few minutes of the present, and Elijah wraps his arms around Alex there.

“Are you gonna tell them?”

Alex’s first instinct is to ask Elijah what he means, except that they both already know exactly what he means, and pretending otherwise might be one of the worst things Alex could do. Unfortunately, what he says instead isn’t any better.

“I don’t know.”

It’s a lie, bitter on his tongue and left to dissolve there when Elijah stopped kissing him before the words were fully formed. The answer is no—it was the answer before Elijah asked and still is now—because Alex spent the last two decades failing his best friend and he’s terrified of screwing up again, and for as long as he can feel all of Peter and Edgar’s mistakes living in between his own heartbeats, he thinks mimicking their silence might be the only thing keeping him from denying himself entirely. Alex has only just learned what it’s like to want, and it twists him up to imagine anyone else watching closely enough to catch the moment that goes wrong too, and whatever dishonesty Alex can taste inside his own mouth, Elijah eventually leans back in to steal a little bit of it for himself, as if he really needs confirmation that it exists at all.

“Okay,” Elijah says when he pulls away.

Alex doesn’t think it is.

Chapter Nine

Cassidy doesn’t go any further than the curb while she watches Elena roll her little suitcase through the front door, and while there’s nothing wrong with her staying behind, the decision leaves Alex without his breath for an extra heartbeat or two. It’s representative of too many things at once—Cassidy’s new relationship with Michael and the boundaries she’s drawn, the achingly empty house Alex lives in now when he wants to be anywhere with Elijah instead, Elena’s ability to transition between them with no need for anything more than a smile and a hug on either side. So many things have changed these past several months, but Alex has become someone different just in the last four weeks, and he’s not sure he fits here in his doorway or anywhere else.

Elena helps just by being there, of course, because Alex refuses to let any of this rain down on her little world any more than it already has. They have a good night and a good week and however much he is still trapped by the tendrils of a love story he’s barely finished, and another he’s barely started, his daughter never fails to make him smile. And Alex doesn’t think too hard about what it means that he’s bitten his tongue a hundred times, or that Elena might have noticed how close he came to bleeding when she asked how Elijah was doing, but one way or another, he's able to keep his worlds separate until Friday night. He and Elijah have texted a handful of times, almost distantly flirty about it, but that’s been enough until Elena is in the restroom at the pizza parlor, and Alex’s beer has tipped him toward needy, and he doesn’t have to worry about an immediate reaction to that because Elijah’s already at work anyway.

Come over tonight after work? Just for a little while

There’s no response, which is fine. It’s good. Elena comes back and they finish up dessert and they go home to blankets and stuffies and a movie. And then his phone makes a noise and his heart thumps in his chest, a reaction wholly disproportionate to the two words Alex reads.

You sure?

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