I hated him a little. The tender hatred of being loved in a way you haven’t earned.
He paid the bill that afternoon. I paid him back on December 3rd, the day the first holiday party deposit cleared. He tried to refuse the Venmo. I sent it three times until he accepted.
We never talked about it again. But the feeling lingered. The awareness of an imbalance I couldn’t fix with work ethic or charm. The knowledge that our lives weren’t built on the same foundation, and that love, however real, couldn’t make the ground level.
Chapter twenty-four
The doubt started in December, when things were supposed to get better.
Ellis’ project stabilized. The client didn’t cancel. The deployment went out on time. Marcus sent a company-wide email calling him a “rock star,” which Ellis hated because “I’m an engineer, not a guitarist.” My holiday season kicked in hard—three events in two weeks, money flowing again, the electric bill a distant memory. His parents had invited him for Christmas, which felt like progress. My mom had sent me a text on Thanksgiving that said “Happy Thanksgiving, mijo” with no follow-up, which I’d stared at for twenty minutes trying to decode.
On the surface, we were healing. Underneath, something was rotting.
It came in pieces. The way Ellis would catch himself mid-sentence, mid-laugh, like he’d hit an unfamiliar wall in his own mouth. The way he’d been redoing things he’d already done. Washing the same pan twice. Alphabetizing the spice rack a second time the night I’d alphabetized it the first. The way he kept opening his laptop and not opening anything on it. Restless. Static.
I wrote it off as work. Three months of project crunch ending all at once leaves you with energy you don’t know what to do with. That’s what I told myself, watching him pace the apartment looking for tasks that didn’t need doing. He’d decompress. Holiday season would help. We’d settle.
Then he went to brunch with Megan.
It started on a Sunday. Ellis had come back from brunch with a college friend. Megan, someone he’d known since freshman orientation, one of the few people from his pre-me life he’d told about us. He’d been excited about seeing her. Came home quiet.
He didn’t take off his coat. Came in. Closed the door. Stood in the entry like a man who’d brought something home he didn’t want to set down. I was at the kitchen counter, slicing a tomato.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“Brunch was good.”
The “good” had no weight behind it. “Good” was the word you used when “fine” would give too much away.
“Yeah?” I kept my voice neutral. Set the knife down. “How was Megan?”
“Fine.”
“That’s my line. You’re stealing my avoidance tactics.”
He sat down on the couch and stared at his hands. “She asked how I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That I was gay. How I knew for sure.” He looked at me. “And I didn’t have an answer.”
Cold hit my chest. “What do you mean you didn’t have an answer?”
“I mean she asked, ‘How did you know?’ and I sat there with my mouth open because I don’t know, Jett. I know I love you. I know I’m attracted to you. I know being with you feels right in a way Hannah never did. But if she’d asked me a year ago if I was gay, I would have said no. Confidently. Without hesitation.”
“A year ago you hadn’t met me.”
“Exactly. So what if this is…” He stopped. Picked up a throw pillow and held it against his chest like a shield. A move I’d seen Sierra make numerous times. He’d been spending too much time with my friends. “What if it’s not that I’m gay? What if it’s just you?”
“That’s still gay, Ellis.”
“Is it? Or is it just… specific?”
I wanted to be patient. I really did. I’d run through the mental list of what partners are supposed to do when their boyfriend questions himself out loud. You affirm, you reassure, you remind him that doubt and certainty can coexist; you don’t take it personally. I had the playbook. I’d read the same articles his mom was sending him.
And it was all noise the second the words landed. Because hearing the man who’d told his parents, who’d said “boyfriend” to Hannah without flinching, who’d pinned me against a wall with a certainty that left no room for doubt. Hearing that man question whether any of it was real made the floor tilt under me.
