Page 25 of Doors & Windows
It didn’t feel likegivingwith Liam, though. It didn’t feel like he was ever losing anything, trading anything away. The transaction of it was a feeling Jonah was all too familiar with, so he could easily identify the absence of it now.
He lowered his grip on Liam, holding tight until his feet were on the floor. Liam kept his hands on Jonah’s shoulders, keeping him close.
“I think,” Liam said quietly, “this paint is still wet.”
Jonah tipped his head forward to touch Liam’s shoulder. “Oops,” he said, not at all sorry.
With trembling fingers, he traced the strap of Liam’s overalls, playing with the metal buckle at his chest. He pulled back to catch Liam’s eyes, watching his pupils liquify with understanding.
“Oh,”Liam breathed.
“Stop me if you don’t want this,” Jonah said.
It seemed impossible, the little thrill of excitement down his spine as he sank to his knees, that an act Jonah had performed more times than he cared to remember could feel brand new in this context. Withthis person. His fingers trembled with anticipation instead of fear as he tugged down Liam’s straps, letting the denim settle below his hips.
Liam was right. They would have to repaint this section of the wall before they left tonight, smoothing over the scuff marks left by their tryst, but Jonah didn’t regret it for a moment. Not when he thought about the prints of their hands, the fibers of their clothes, the beautiful messiness of this moment forever sealed into the walls of this house in Long Island. The landmark where they became something they could call by name.
CHAPTER 9
Liam
“They didn’t have any pre-decorated cakes at the store,” Tucker was telling him, “so we took it upon ourselves.”
That much went without saying, really.Liam was pretty sure any bakery employee would be fired for sending a product like this out the door. But Izzy and Tucker wore matching grins as they stood beside their pièce de résistance: a small, round cake with the wordsHAPPY BIRTHscrawled in messy pink icing, each successive letter growing smaller with theoh-shitrealization that they were running out of room.
It was, decidedly, the best birthday cake of Liam’s life.
“That sure is something,” Liam said, though he couldn’t keep the smile off his face. It was incongruously sentimental, the soft, warm thrum offriendshiphe felt at the gesture.Still, he tried to play it cool, turning to Izzy with a raised brow. “I thought you were supposed to be an artist.”
“I’ll give you one guess who was on icing duty.” She cut her eyes to Tucker, who raised a hand.
“It was me. I was on icing duty.”
“I thought that might be the case,” Liam said. Then, swallowing, he tried not to let his voice sound too earnest when he said, “Thank you. Both of you. It’s perfect.”
“Nailed it,” Tucker whispered, slipping Izzy a low-five.
The apartment was strung with fairy lights and gaudy, mix-matched tinsel they had found in a plastic bin at the back of a thrift store, which the cashier had pinched between her fingers and marked the price as“I don’t know, fifty cents?”The lights were low, because the lights were always low, because their apartment didn’t come with overhead lighting. But Izzy had found one of those color-changing bulbs and swapped it into the standing lamp, which washed the corner of the room in a gradient rainbow show. Liam’s Bluetooth speaker on the kitchen counter blasted an appropriately chosen song about being twenty-two from his birthday playlist.
The best gift of all was theon my waytextthatglowed with promise in his back pocket.
It was hard not to think of where he had been a year ago to the day, before the night had taken a hard left turn and sent Jonah Prince barreling into his life to stay.
Tonight, all it had taken was a single word from Liam that he wasn’t a fan of crowded bars, and his roommates—hisfriends—had altered their plans to a night in. That they had wanted to celebrate his birthday at all was big enough, but to take into account what Liam needed, to put his wants at the center ofattention, showed just how far he had come in terms of friendship in a year’s time.
Ben had sent him a happy birthday text that morning, evoking a whole range of emotions Liam wasn’t ready to address. He had just stared at it for a while. It was the first he had heard from him since he moved. Frankly, he was sort of surprised Ben remembered his birthday at all. Maybe a memory had popped up on social media. Maybe it was a photo he had taken at the bar last year, or maybe it was the photo Ben had taken the year prior, when Liam had worked a shift at the diner on his birthday and spent the night waiting on Ben and Nathan and their real friends.
His whole body revolted at the unwelcome reminder of Nathan’s existence. Sometimes the injustice of how things had been left was an unbearable weight on Liam’s chest. Nathan had been allowed to walk free as the bruises he’d left on Jonah took weeks to fade, and even longer for the wounds that didn’t show on the surface. Liam hoped, at least, that the scar Jonah had left on Nathan in the end never faded. That he always had to live with a visible reminder of what he’d done.
“No frowning on your birthday,” Izzy said, pushing a drink into his hand.
Liam accepted it gratefully, tapping the lip of his cup against hers.
By the time Jonah arrived, the apartment was swollen with bodies. Classmates, friends of friends, and Tucker’s various friends-with-benefits sprawled in groups over rugs and couches and the unwieldy bar stools Tucker had found on the sidewalk on trash day.The body heat was only slightly mitigated by the open windows, letting in the tepid breeze of early October.
Liam managed to pace himself despite his roommates’ encouragement to “get fucked up, birthday boy!”but he was pleasantly buzzed whena familiar face appeared in the doorway. He made an excited bleating noise that would have been embarrassing sober, clumsily toppling off Izzy’s lap. Adjusting his skewed party hat, Liam slid in his socks across the wooden floor to greet Jonah.
“You’re here!” he said. And maybe his alcohol tolerance wasn’t as high as he thought, because he nearly lost his balance when he saw what Jonah was wearing. He decided not to bring direct attention to it, but Liam couldn’t help but hook his finger in the familiar, tattered maroon sleeve at his wrist to pull him in.
