Page 3 of Doors & Windows
He was so beautiful in this light. Jonah was beautiful in every light—rooftop moonlight, hotel lamplight, hospital fluorescents—but in the golden hour, he glowed. Liam openly watched him, Jonah dutifully pretending he didn’t notice as he busied himself with another bite of noodles from the carton. He couldn’t believe he was here with him. He couldn’t believe that his luck had unfolded so uncharacteristically, giving him the two things he wanted more than anything: New York and Jonah, tied together with a ribbon.
He had to squeeze his fingers around the pocked iron rung of the fire escape to keep himself from reaching out and touching his hair. It was such a new part of Jonah; one that represented freedom and autonomy and a fresh start. Liam counted himself lucky for the chance to fall in love with his image all over again.
“I’m still not used to seeing it like this,” Liam said, letting his eyes graze over the growth.
Jonah combed his nail-bitten fingers through a tuft at his temple, a self-conscious gesture. “It still catchesme off guard sometimes when I look in the mirror,” he admitted.
Liam had seen photos of a teenage Jonah—one of the many nights they stayed up texting had involved an exchange of embarrassing high school pictures—so he knew that he had worn his hair long before. Jonah had beenthatversion of himself for longer than he had been the buzzcut kid barely scraping by in Chicago. Liam thought it spoke to just how formative the trauma of that time had been, that Jonah still looked for that suffering boy in every passing reflection.
“I like it on you,” he said at last.
Jonah hid his smile with another bite of food. “Your roommates are nice,” he said. “I’ve known them for less than a day, but they’re already an improvement on your last friends.”
Liam couldn’t help the sour curl of guilt at any allusion to his former friends. They hadn’t spent much time talking about Nathan Scott and the twisted role he played in their relationship to each other, nor the specific way in which he had hurt Jonah. It still sat wrong and undigested in his stomach that Nathan had walked away unscathed. He understood Jonah’s reasons for not pressing charges against him: how could he expect him to have any faith in a legal system that had failed him so spectacularly?
Still, Liam thought he might live the rest of his life shouldering the rage that Jonah was too tired to carry around on his own anymore.
“Yeah,” Liam agreed. “Too bad the bar was in hell.”
“I’m proud of you, you know,” Jonah said. “I always knew you would make it here. How does it feel to be actually living the dream?”
Liam’s eyes scanned over the view from the fire escape, his own small piece of this place where so many came to find something greater, but they came to rest on the person sitting next to him.
Jonah was a piece of the puzzle that he never accounted for in all his years of dreaming about life in the city, but one that clicked into place like it was always meant to be there. The two of them here, at the start of everything, forging their futures side by side.
“It’s even better than I imagined.”
CHAPTER 2
Jonah
Jonah hoisted himself onto the lip of the truck bed, wincing at the flare of pain in his upper arms. Despite Liam’s praise at his feats of athleticism yesterday, Jonah very much felt the aftereffects of the move in his body.
Not that he minded. If there was ever a cause worth aching for, it was Liam Cassidy.
Today’s job site was just outside the city limits: a wealthy neighborhood on Long Island, nestled right up against the water. The Great Neck McMansion was under a long-haul renovation his crew had been on for the last few weeks and would likely extend into the fall. Jonah appreciated the job security, and he enjoyed getting to see a side of New York he likely wouldn’t have otherwise.
He unwrapped the parchment around his sandwich. His crewmate Beatriz brought lunch from her girlfriend’s deli, and she always made sure to grab Jonah something when she went, remembering his quiet delight the first time he ever tried one. He used to think all sandwiches tasted the same until he moved here, but he was quickly corrected on the facts of life.
Tearing off a bite, he swiped at the oil and vinegar that dripped down his chin. He wasn’t used to thechange in topography on his own hands, the roughness of calluses still an unexpected scrape against his skin. As he chewed, he studied his hands in his lap, turning them over to see the blisters on his palms—some newly formed from the morning of work behind him, some healing in peels of dead skin from the weeks before.
A working man’s hands,his father’s voice surfaced uninvited. The echo was accompanied by a memory of the two of them in the garage,Jonah’s tiny, child’s fingers dwarfed as he pressed their palms together.
Back then, Jonah had wanted nothing more than to be just like his dad. The strongest man in the world. As he took stock of himself now, he could see the physical payoff of his work this summer. His skin had reclaimed its warm, bronze tone, months of direct sunlight chasing away the last of the gaunt paleness that had stolen his color. There was an obvious change in his musculature, too. Jonah was never going to bebuff, but he was no longer a collection of skinny limbs and sunken, hollow places.
When he took another bite of his sandwich, he watched the muscles in his forearm move beneath his skin and felt something like pride. This was tangible proof of the effort he had put into his new life. There was a strange, bitter irony in realizing he now so closely reflected the type of man his father always pushed him to be.
Your son is a regular blue-collar, hands-on construction worker,he thought.And a gay one, at that.
Smiling despite himself, Jonah reached for his phone. It had been a busy morning, leaving him without a chance to check his notifications since hearrived on site. He was pleased to find an unread message from Liam waiting for him now.
That thrill of pleasure stopped short, however, when he opened the text:
I want to ask you about something.
Jonah paused mid-chew and set his sandwich on the paper in his lap. The tiny spike of adrenaline, the sudden dampness of his palms, was ridiculous. He knew that, but it did little to temper his body’s reaction.He wiped his oily fingers on his work pants and typed a message in return, hoping it came across lighter than he felt.
Has anyone ever told you that’s a terrible way to start a conversation?
