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“You’re my person,” I tell him.
“You’re my person too.”
I kiss his cheeks and we do our side-lying sixty-nine, and after that, we get a bath together.
He winks as he sinks down into the tub, in the back.
“That thing is roomy.”
“For athletes.”
I get between his legs, and we use shampoo to make bubbles.
“You need real bubble bath,” I murmur.
“Or bath bombs.” Ezra laughs.
“Fuck yeah. Bath bombs.”
It feels so good to be here with him. Ez washes my hair, soaping it up and grinning at me when I look over my shoulder, making my throat catch.
He looks happier than I’ve ever seen him. Such an improbable outcome to losing a few months of one’s memory.
“I really can’t believe you ever remembered me,” I tell him, as we tuck into his bed, having polished off a large delivery Hawaiian pizza. Ezra pulled the blinds up, so we can see a swatch of campus down below us. It’s the only light in the room.
“It wasn’t that hard, since I wrote ‘Miller’ on my arm. But I think I always would have. Shit seems like it’s shifting in my head now. That memory at your place was weird…the one where I had that déjà vu moment and said the thing about Aristotle.”
“Did it kind of scare you?” I feel hesitant to ask, but he seems okay answering.
“Yeah. It’s…I don’t know. I guess disorienting. Honestly, it felt just like strong déjà vu.”
“That makes sense, I think.”
We watch some Tiny House Hunters, and Ezra falls asleep with his arm around me and his cheek on my chest. When my phone buzzes at 5 a.m. to get me up so I can drive his Jeep to Auburn, he sits up, too, smiling.
“Go back to sleep, angel.” I kiss him, and Ez kisses me back. “There’s no way I’m not walking you out, dude.”
“What if someone sees you?”
He shrugs. “Just don’t really give a fuck.”
We brush our teeth together, and it feels like old times.
We smile in the mirror, and Ezra arches a brow. “Did we do this before?”
“A time or two.”
He hugs me, taking me by surprise. “Thank you, Miller.”
“For what?” I laugh.
His hand strokes back through my hair. “For being you.”
I send him snaps as I head back to Auburn—one of the road, one of a pack of donuts I get at the gas station, one of me smiling, and another one of me leaning against his Jeep in my apartment’s parking lot. I think he might be napping, but during my first class, he snaps me back. Ezra needing a shave, giving his phone’s cam a sleepy smile from his bed. I send him one after class, and then he calls.
“Hey. Is it okay that I called?”
“It’s the most okay thing I can think of. Some might even say amazing.”
I can hear his smile as he says, “Good. I wasn’t sure.”
“Always be sure.”
“I miss you,” he says, quiet.
“I miss you too. So damn much. What are you doing?”
He tells me he’s outside his calculus class, and I realize I haven’t even asked about his major.
“Can you guess?” he asks. “You know me, right?” I think he’s teasing.
“Shit. You were good at physics. And kissing. You used to be a lifeguard. You loved sitting on the roof and looking at the stars. And books. You love books.” He laughs, and my pulse picks up a little. “Something with books?”
“Would that be weird?” he murmurs. “To go to college just to do something with books?”
“Fuck no. Books are awesome, dude. What do you wanna do with books?”
“My major’s English right now. Also business. But I sort of want to drop the business and just be an English major. I know you can’t do much with just English. It might be more pragmatic to be a book editor or like an agent. But if I added education as a major…”
I grin. “You would be an English teacher.”
“Yeah. An English teacher. And maybe a coach.”
“You’d be great at both of those things.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yeah, for sure, dude. You were always reading back in Fairplay. At the kitchen table. Physics; I’d come in and you’d be reading.”
“It’s an escape. As they say.” He sounds hoarse.
“You’d be the sexiest English teacher. When you get old, you could wear some spectacles.”
He laughs. “Some spectacles. Is that your fantasy, Mills? Me in old man glasses?”
“Any glasses,” I tell him. “Or no glasses. Maybe just you.”
“Thank you,” he whispers.
“For what, angel?”
“I don’t know. You make me feel good.”
I think about the way he used to cling to me when I would wake him up from nightmares, and about how comfortable he seemed with me there at the end, right before he left. And I feel a little spark of loss—that we both lost that. But I also feel a huge amount of gratitude that I still have him. It’s still good. Maybe in some ways, even better.
