Page 5 of Margins

“Elijah, actually. I prefer Elijah, but it’s—I don’t even know why I introduced myself that way. It’s been a while since anyone called me that.”

“Well, Elijah, thank you for accidentally telling me the truth.”

“Another occupational hazard for both of us, maybe,” Elijah huffs. “Too much honesty.”

“I don’t know. Sometimes it’s just the right amount,” Alex argues.

“Sometimes,” Elijah agrees. “And I assume Alex is short for something that you don’t like?”

“I don’t hate it, really, but yeah, it’s short for Alexander. Much to my grandmother’s eternal disappointment, I’m not an Alejandro, though it’s never stopped her from calling me that when she’s mad.”

“Does that happen often?”

“More in the past several months than the rest of my life combined, I think.”

Elijah’s face twists into a laugh and a frown all at once. “Interesting. Here I was convinced that you’re the kind of guy who’s never done anything wrong.”

It’s a joke and not—hence the laugh and frown, Alex supposes—and he brushes all of it off with a shrug. “Jury’s still out on whether returning to a stranger’s garage sale was the right thing to do.”

“Mmmm, maybe that means it’s time for you to tell me why you came back. I assume you don’t actually want a refund on the book?”

“Ha, no, I don’t. But I—can I ask you a few other questions first? I know that sounds weird, but I promise I’ll explain after.”

Elijah’s eyes narrow, though he doesn’t look all that bothered. “Is this gonna be off the record?”

“Off the—” Alex chokes a little and shakes his head. “No. I mean, yes, off the record. I’m not—this is personal, not a—I’m not writing about you or anything.”

“Hmmm, wait a second. You seem surprised by the very thought of that, and I don’t know whether I should be offended. Random garage sale dude who doesn’t own a record player isn’t enough of a story for you?”

“Random garage sale dude with a dog, even,” Alex says, nodding down at the dog who got bored with their conversation and dropped back down to sleep. “Maybe I’ll reconsider. Pets can be a hell of a hook.”

There’s another wave from someone looking for help, so Elijah just chuckles and walks away, Alex left to wonder if he’s being ridiculous about everything. He bought books at a garage sale, and sure, there are some interesting notes written onto some of the pages, but those messages are so old and may have nothing to do with Elijah, and either way, not everyone is going to be as caught up in someone else’s love story as Alex is amid the loneliness of his upcoming divorce. He can’t imagine Elijah will be mean about it—the guy seems easygoing and like the most he’ll do is poke a little fun at Alex for swooning over a few inked words. Still, maybe it was a mistake to show up here, and maybe there’s enough of a distraction right now that Alex can just grab his book and leave without it being a bigger deal than that.

He slips into the garage to pull the book down from the shelf, and only glances over to where Elijah is closing on the sale of a TV that Alex is surprised made it to day two. Then he spares a smile for the sleeping dog, makes his way down the driveway, and turns up the sidewalk to retrace his steps back home.

“Hey, no, Alex, wait,” Elijah calls from behind him a few seconds later. “What happened?”

Alex sighs and turns where he is, Elijah already several feet away from his own garage sale, his hood falling back from his head for the first time since they met. The sun is finally pushing past the morning clouds, and it helps make Elijah’s blond curls brighter, and Alex sort of wonders how many people reach for those curls without permission. He’s seen it so many times with his daughter, strangers drawn to natural curls and just wanting to touch, forgetting that they belong to someone else and aren’t there for their damn pleasure. And on the one hand, he has no doubt Elijah can stand up for himself, tall and broad and halfway between rock climber and surfer, but he wonders if he does, the Eli conversation enough to suggest there’s rarely a fight for what Elijah wants.

“No, it’s nothing,” he tells him, stepping a few feet closer so Elijah doesn’t have to leave the house any further behind. “I think maybe I was just making something out of nothing. My imagination or whatever. It’s probably pretty dumb.”

Elijah doesn’t move from where he’s standing, not for several seconds, but he slides his hands into his hoodie pocket and watches Alex for a while, like maybe he has a whole lot of questions of his own. Eventually he nods.

“I hear a lot of pretty dumb things every night at work, and I’m almost positive that whatever you came back here for isn’t one of them.” He looks over his shoulder to make sure nobody needs him, then he shrugs back at Alex. “And I’m obviously not gonna make a scene and drag you back, but I’d kinda like to tell you anything you want to know if it means you’d be willing to stick around.”

Alex looks behind him, like anyone might need him too, but there’s only a quiet street reminding him of his even quieter house.

“Anything I want to know, huh?”

Elijah shrugs again. “Guess we’ll find out.”

And something about that is already sending Alex down an interesting road, his chest tight with an awareness that Elijah might give too much of himself too easily, when that’s something Alex has never been good at. It’ll leave them with an uncomfortable imbalance of trust, questions certain to go one way and not the other, unless Alex makes it clear that he can offer a bit of himself too. Regardless of whether it comes naturally to him, he thinks it might be something he’ll need to work on soon.

“Okay, I—you’re gonna be busy all morning, but I can stay and help if you want, and we can talk in between?”

Elijah’s smile is too much for such a small offer, but when he turns around to get back to the garage sale, Alex follows and finds a second folding chair to put behind the card table, the dog coming over to lie next to him and resting just out of reach if he’s hoping to be scratched again. The book is in front of Alex now, and he resists the temptation to look for more messages before they have time to talk about it, so he watches Elijah straighten up some of the displays while he greets newcomers, everything getting a little busier as the neighborhood begins to wake up.

“His name’s Poe,” Elijah says when he returns to the table and gestures to the dog at their feet.

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