Page 18 of Doors & Windows
But what he said was, “The atmosphere is melancholic. These two, they are in pain?”
His perception made Liam blink. He tried to pull himself out of the painting, to look at it from the perspective of fresh eyes and see which details told the unspoken story. Was it the body language? The way one of the boys in the painting folded in on himself like a protective cage, the other tense and rigid, spine straight with the pressure of performance? Was it the color palette, painting the light inside the room dim and murky like a bad dream?
They are in pain?
Liam nodded again.
Another considering pause. “They are lovers?”
A thickness formed in Liam’s throat, barely allowing him to get the words out.
“They will be,” he said. “They just don’t know it yet.”
CHAPTER 6
Jonah
The house felt alive despite the quiet when Jonah crept down the staircase a little after midnight. The hum of static from a muted television, the kind you felt more than heard, told him he wasn’t the only one awake.
It wasn’t the first time he had fled his room in the late hours in search of space to breathe, only to find Antonio Ellis already one step ahead of him, sprawled out and awake on the living room sofa. Unlike the times before, though, Jonah didn’t retreat at the flicker of blue television light on the wall. He was too restless tonight to confine himself to the walls of his bedroom.
He had never been under any illusion that his previous abandoned trips downstairs had gone unnoticed—the house was too old and creaky for that kind of stealth—but Ellis had been generous enough never to call him on it, always keeping his eyes toward the TV and letting Jonah slink back upstairs without comment. That was probably why he waited this time, not turning his head to acknowledge Jonah’s appearance until long after the groaning floorboards had given him away.
Their eyes met, and Jonah held his gaze, almost as if in challenge. To test just how much weight his promise of Jonah’s free rein held.
“Hey.” Ellis was the first to break the silence. There was something cautious in his voice, as if he were just as aware of how precariously this dynamic of theirs balanced upon a treacherous mountain of history.
“Hey,” Jonah echoed. He scuffed his toes against the edge of the area rug, worn and frayed from years of use.
Some rerun of a 90s sitcom played almost silently on the TV, only the occasional murmur of a laugh track audible on the low volume. Ellis gestured to the bowl of food in his lap.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “There’s still some more chili in the fridge.”
It was, Jonah decided, an olive branch; one of many he’d extended in the little over three months Jonah had lived under his roof.
One of the first things Ellis did when Jonah arrived in New York at the end of spring was install a new knob on Jonah’s bedroom door. He’d let Jonah watch him open it, brand new from the box, and handed him the only two keys when he was finished. He was nearly religious about giving Jonah his space, even if Jonah had seldom left his bedroom for the entire first week. He’d paralyzed by fear that he had made the wrong choice, fear that the city outside these walls would be just as cruel to him as the last. That this shell of a person was all he would ever be, and that no amount of running would let him escape the past that bit at his heels.
Then one evening Ellis had caught him on a trip to the kitchen and asked, the words spilling like he’d been rehearsing them on a loop, if he wanted to go grab a slice of pizza. Jonah hadn’t particularly wanted that, but something in him—some desperate part of him that fought tooth and nail toward the idea of life—made him agree.
On the walk to Nona’s, a little shop a few streets away with only two tables inside, they passed a library. Jonah set a goal in his mind, a small and achievable task: tomorrow, he would leave the house on his own and sign up for a library card.
From there, the world began to open up around him. He had a full roster of library locations across the five boroughs, nice weather to walk in, and a new reason to get out of bed in the mornings.
Then, of course, Ellis’s most significant olive branch (aside from the house Jonah currently resided in, rent free): he had offered him a job.
Jonah was getting better at accepting these small offerings for what they were instead of hunting for the motivation behind them, settling into the knowledge that there was no tally being scored against him in secret.
In the grand scheme of things, midnight chili was easy enough to accept.
Jonah stood with his back against the kitchen counter, arms folded as he waited for his food to reheat. From the adjacent living room, the volume on the television rose a few notches, an exaggerated argument cut with audience laughter spilling in under the hum of the microwave. A lifetime away, he sawhimself in another midnight, standing in front of the coffee maker in a hotel he didn’t remember the name of. Liam sleepily half-watching the TV behind him, his attentive gaze on Jonah when he didn’t think he was looking. The comfort and terror of being seen. The camaraderie of being awake in the dark with someone else.
A shrill beep from the microwave had him blinking away the memory.
He used a paper towel to guard his hands from the heat of the bowl and carried his food into the doorway. He hesitated, deliberating whether to take the chili to his room or read the offer of food as an invitation to stay. Would he be encroaching on Ellis’s space? Did Jonah even want to?
Ellis pretended not to notice him hovering until Jonah took a step toward the stairs.
“You can stay,” he offered. “If you want some space for yourself, I can head upstairs.”
