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“You good?”
He doesn’t put the phone down, but he says, “Yeah. Just a second.”
A second turns out to be more like a minute or two. Then he’s back, holding me a little tighter than he did before.
“Love you,” he whispers.
“I love you.”
It’s the last moment everything feels okay. At 1:42, he wakes up screaming. I get him awake pretty fast, and he looks into my eyes like he knows me. Then he tucks his forehead to my chest, right there below my throat, and cries—for such a long time. I feel his body shake, feel his tears, but he’s so quiet. When he leans away to wipe his face, he whispers, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, angel.”
His lips brush over my cheek. Then he’s out of bed and moving toward the bathroom. A few seconds later, I hear the shower running. When I try the bathroom door, it’s locked. It strikes me as strange because he never locks me out. I tell myself I’m being codependent and he’s back in bed in twenty minutes, smelling like Dial soap and toothpaste, wrapping himself around me like normal and kissing my neck.
We jerk each other off and fall asleep curled up together, and the only thing I notice is that he can’t seem to take his eyes off of me.
Friday morning, we drive to these old Native American burial mounds in Cillin—just to have somewhere to go. Ezra’s quiet and seems distracted, but he holds my hand all day—he even kisses my cheek inside the mounds, where it’s shadowy and cool—and on the drive home, he talks again about what we’ll do together at college.
“Where do you see us, Millsy? Auburn? Bama? Somewhere else?”
“Wherever you end up, Ez.”
Someone from Auburn calls at 4:15, and Ezra beckons me onto the back porch with him. He keeps smiling at me as he talks. They’re clearly courting one another. He asks if he’d have to live in the dorms. He asks about the team’s values and how they treat players, and I can tell he’s trying to discern how they might treat a gay quarterback.
All he says when the call ends is, “Whew.” He shakes his head and laughs, and I say, “Stressful?”
“Sort of,” he says.
That night, we eat my mom’s spaghetti dinner, and I notice he doesn’t have much of it. He seems flat, a little tired, maybe, but it’s nothing standout. We watch a movie after, holding hands discreetly on the couch while Mom and Carl sit on the loveseat. Then Ez starts to fall asleep and ends up lying with his head in my lap. I stroke his hair the way he likes and feel a bolt of satisfaction when his body twitches. When I wake him and we go up to bed, he’s so zonked he doesn’t even brush his teeth.
“Can you get behind me,” he rasps, and I’m happy to hold sleepy Ezra.
He’s dreaming within the hour—shaking…panting. Moaning about Paul—a name I’ve heard before—and I wonder if I’m stupid for not pressing more about who that is.
When I run my hands through his hair, whispering “wake up, angel,” tears spill down his cheeks. He curls up close to me, and I wrap my arms and legs around him.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“Love you more,” he rasps back.
That happens twice more before sunup. I wonder why he’s so “off” right now, and I wish I could ask. I doze off at 6:20 and wake to donuts and a tired smile from him. Also, a little pen-scrawled note inside my wrist.
Thank you <3
Ez is sitting at the foot of the bed, wearing a black T-shirt, plaid sleep pants, and that strained smile he has when something’s bothering him.
I lift the covers up. “Come get in bed with me.”
He gets in and wraps his arms around me.
“What’s the matter?” I whisper to his hair.
“I don’t know.” His voice cracks as he says it.
Fuck.
“Did something happen?” I ask, leaning back a bit so I can see his face better.
He shakes his head, and I trace my finger along his hairline at the nape of his neck. Football season’s basically over. Maybe he’s sad that the season’s ending?
“You feeling depressed?” I murmur.
He shakes his head, curling into me more.
“Okay. It’s okay, angel.” I want so much to ask what’s in his nightmares, what’s stealing his smiles from me in the past few days. But I just…can’t. It feels invasive. This is still so new between us. All he needs right now is someone to hold him and make him feel good.
So that’s what I do. I hold him for almost an hour—an hour during which he barely moves—and then Bren calls and asks if we'd like to go water skiing in wetsuits.
"You wanna go?" he asks me. He's got this dazed look I've seen before—like when he wakes up from a nightmare.
