Page 17 of Boyfriend on Parole: The Care of Broken Things Extended Epilogue

This time, Samuel was the one to say it. “Pull over.”

They did not pull over, but he did have all that amazing food piled into his lap—food that had to be taken away from him when he realized after the first bite that if he didn’t have his portions controlled, he would inhale everything at once and vomit. He hadn’t thought anything could distract him from Nathaniel and it was true that he kept one of the man’s hands in his like a connecting talisman, but the food was so good, the taste so nice, he didn’t understand how it could be real.

“How is it?” Eli asked, as if there could be any doubt.

He had spent the last nine months missing the meals Eli used to doctor for him in the prison, and fresh food was at least ten times better. “I’m so glad we’re married,” he said into the bowl of mac and cheese. “I’ll buy you a house.”

“Is he talking to the pasta or to me?” Eli asked.

He was in heaven. In a place beyond heaven. “What do I do?” he begged Nathanial. He was growing full but couldn’t stand the thought of having his mouth empty. “What if he leaves me?”

“He can’t leave you,” Nathaniel said. “If he did, I’d break up with him, and no one can suck his cock like I can.”

Eli had told him to chew each bite twenty times, but he found he’d swallowed after seven again. “Can you teach me? So I can do it well too?”

“Of course. Consider yourself my apprentice.”

The strangest part was both how normal and abnormal it all seemed. He couldn’t say he was used to it. How could he be used to it when every minute, every breath, brought him fresh discoveries. So new, and so easy, more and more becoming the only thing that made sense. It was the six years alone, he realized, that had been the aberration.

“Alright, Sam?” Nathaniel asked him, pushing the hair from his face. “Did eating make you sleepy? You can close your eyes if you’re tired.”

He couldn’t imagine sleeping, but his partner was already pulling a blanket up out of the trunk. “Let’s be cozy,” Nathaniel said. That was all it took.

The tears spilled over onto his face without any warning. Or maybe the whole morning had been a warning. Every moment and every prayer since meeting them a warning for this.

Nathaniel panicked, seizing hold of his face as if he might push the tears back into his eyes. “What is it? Did you eat too much? I think we have Pepto. Eli, do we have—”

Samuel hugged him. Tight, tight, having to make do with just the one body, though even as he thought it, he realized his hand was also clenching in Eli’s shirt. “How do I earn this? How do I make myself everything to you the way you are to me?”

“And we earned it, did we?” Nathaniel asked, kissing into the wet parts on his face. “Earned you.”

“Yes.” Wasn’t it obvious? Every day, and more than they ever had to. “I’d have stayed in prison forever if it meant you would keep visiting me. I was so happy, Nathaniel. With you. With him. I was happy.”

But Nathaniel wanted him happier. Even happier. The happiest person in the world, probably. “Be greedy, Sam. As greedy as you can. You have no idea how much I could give to a boy like you.”

He sobbed. It hurt to have his heart this wide, this open. It had so little practice. “I wasn’t even going to talk to him. When he came, when I saw him—I was so frightened, Nat. I thought he would ruin everything.”

“It was the same for me. It still is. I can’t wait for you to wake up with him. That’s when it will really hit, I think. Or maybe not. Maybe the thing that makes it real will be different for you. Or maybe it will be like it was for me, all those little moments, the ones you start to take for granted just because they pile up so high. But you never really do since he never becomes ordinary. I was so sure he was the only one who could make me feel that way, Sam. So sure I didn’t even try defending myself against you. Do you know when I first fell for you? It was the phone call after the first night. I hadn’t slept for one minute, so dizzy with panic, my resting heart rate something like a hundred and forty. Nothing was helping, and I knew Darren was back and forth with the psychiatrist trying desperately to pull a fix out of the air that didn’t exist. But it did exist. It was you. Eli called me and said—I still remember the exact words—he said, ‘there’s a boy here looking out for me. I think he’s an angel.’ And you were. You are. Sam, I don’t know where you got this idea that you’re in our debt. Because we visited you? Because we sent you a few letters? You saved my life. You saved Eli’s life. Our whole family is intact because of you. I fell for you before I ever knew your name.”

It was just their breath there in the air as the car slowed, finally approaching that first red light.

“I want to make love.” He had read, somewhere, that a caterpillar had to completely liquify itself in the cocoon before making its transformation into a butterfly. He didn’t know if he was being liquified. But it felt like it. He felt like it. “I want to make love to you.”

Nathaniel took in another breath, and he seemed to grow with it. He was always growing to whatever size he needed to be. He turned toward his husband. “You heard the boy. Can’t you drive any faster?”