Page 2 of Doors & Windows
It had been eight months since everything changed. The recovery wasn’t so cut-and-dry; the things that Jonah had been subjected to couldn’t be undone, and the scars he was left with wouldn’t suddenly disappear with a change of scenery. But slowly, gradually, Liam had watched the heaviness recede from Jonah’s features, new life creeping in from the edges.
The spring and early summer had seen a shift between them. In their nightly calls, their conversations began to take the occasional turn into something flirtatious, something more. In one particular instance, the slow sizzle had built to a peak, both of their voices breathy and thick as Liam’s fingers dipped below the waistband of his sweatpants.
(That was not something he needed to be thinking about right now).
Liam cleared his throat at the same time Jonah found something interesting to look at out the window.
With either the best or worst timing, a man roughly Liam’s own age appeared in the bedroom doorway—tall and lean, wearing a Fordham Athletics shirt with a duffle bag thrown over one shoulder.
“Oh, hey.” The hint of a valley accent made Liam picture him on a surfboard somewhere in California. “You must be Liam.”
A sense of unease crept in before he could quash it, dampening the edges of his good mood even more than the humidity. It was unfair of Liam to make a personal judgment at a glance, but he couldn’t helpreacting to the fact that his new roommate looked like he could have been the evil triplet of his shitty ex-friends, Nathan and Ben.
Rooming with strangers from an online student forum had been a gamble, but one that came with an appealing price tag and at least the potential for common ground with his roommates. But if this guy’s first impression was true to form, Liam didn’t know if he could take another year of mean-spirited jokes and sports references and casual homophobia.
He forced a smile up at him anyway. “Yep, that’s me. You’re… Tucker?”
“Hell yeah. Nice to meet you, dude.” Tucker stepped into the room, dropping his bag at the door and bounding toward him with an outstretched hand. Liam stared at it a moment too long before he realized that he was offering a hand up. He tentatively took it and nearly toppled over from the strength of the grip that pulled him up.
“Bring it in, man!”
Before Liam could process that, he was scooped into an enthusiastic hug that took his feet off the ground. His eyes widened over Tucker’s shoulder and found Jonah watching the exchange, brows lifted.
Maybe Liam was the only asshole here.
“Welcome to the penthouse!” Tucker released him with a final clap to his shoulder. “Sorry I wasn’t here to help you haul stuff up—Izzy already staked a claim on my muscle this morning.”
Isabel, the second roommate in question, trailed in behind him. She was the visual ideal of every New York art student: two long braids tucked back under abandana, a silver ring through her septum, and sporadic tattoos up the length of both arms. She wore a pair of paint-splattered overalls and the kind of easy confidence Liam could never pull off.
He desperately wanted her to like him.
She shot Tucker a withering look, then turned a smile on Liam. “Hey there. Glad you got in okay with the spare key,” she said. “Bad timing—I had Tucker booked this morning before I knew you’d be moving in. It occasionally boosts his ego to model for my summer acrylic class. It’s Liam, right?” Her hand, when she reached out to bump his fist, was smudged with flecks of dried paint. “I’m Izzy.”
“Yeah, hi.” Liam tapped his knuckles against hers. “No worries. It was quick work between the two of us. Mostly him.” He gestured back to Jonah, who stood from his perch. “This is my…” He stopped, voice sticking in his throat. “Um, this is Jonah.”
Real smooth, Cassidy.
If Jonah noticed his flub, he took mercy on him and ignored it, nodding a polite greeting at Liam’s new roommates. For a moment, Liam worried that Tucker would try to repeat his bear hug on Jonah, who still struggled with strangers in his personal space on the best of days, but Tucker kept it to a polite wave.
Izzy glanced between them, appraising. “Will we be seeing a lot of you around here, Jonah?” she asked. “Or are you hired muscle as well?”
Liam stiffened, but Jonah just let out a quiet huff, glancing at Liam and raising a brow. “As long as Liam decides to keep me around,” he said.
Liam was disproportionately happy with that answer. He smiled and added with absolute certainty, “That’s a yes.”
Five stories of distance did little to dampen the noise of Amsterdam Avenue, but the ambience was a comfort. It cradled Liam and Jonah where they nestled together on the fire escape, two cartons of lo mein and orange chicken propped on the oversized book they were using as a table. The sky was an endless golden-pink at the close of sunset, and Liam wished he hadn’t left his phone inside.He wanted to capture the image of a perfect evening and see if he could do justice to the scene in paint later.
“Thank you,” Liam said after a stretch of comfortable, exhausted quiet. “It means a lot that you took the day off to help me move.”
It had been a bit of a back-and-forth with his parents, the decision to drive to New York on his own. The belongings he brought with him were just enough to fill a midsize rental car (he had sold his own before moving to give himself a nest egg of cash), but it meant there was no room for passengers. His mom had offered to fly in and meet him to help get him settled, but Liam had finally succeeded in assuring her that he and Jonah could handle it.
Aside from the logistics just making more sense, the solo road trip had also been appropriately commemorative of his journey into independence. He’d gotten through an entire audiobook, plus part of a playlist he had curated specifically for the drive. Andnow, exhausted and sweaty but stupidly content, Liam was glad that it was just the two of them here to bask in the afterglow.
“I wouldn’t have missed it,” Jonah said.
Liam tamped down on the rollercoaster-drop in his stomach and bumped his shoulder. “Were you excited to see me or something?”
“Nah.” Jonah bumped him back. “It’s not like we had a running countdown or anything.”
