I wonder how relaxed he is with Bren and Marcel. How much he still feels like the new guy. I think about his ears going red when Dad talked to him. It doesn’t seem like him to be uncomfortable with praise, but I guess I don’t know him.
“I’ve gotta go downstairs and grab a few things,” I say. “Lie down, Grammar Lord, so I won’t worry that you’re snooping through my shit. Also—” I just remembered I’ve got a little bottle of scotch that Dad and Kaye bought me when they went to Scotland. Never figured I would open it—more like a keepsake—but I grab it off a bookshelf and hand it to him.
“Lie down and try some of this Scottish glacier water shit.”
I don’t look behind me till I’m almost to the loft stairs. When I do, he’s scooting toward the headboard. I find him in that same place almost fifteen minutes later—leaning back against the pillows with his eyes barely open.
I smile—because that’s who I am. It’s my default. He gives me a sort-of glare.
“Did you drink my scotch?”
He holds up the bottle: full. I wait for him to tell me why, but when he doesn’t, I just take the thing and set it back on the shelf.
“Ready to go?” I ask as I do. By the time I turn around, he’s already on his feet. He looks unhappy.
“Sorry I left you up here for a second.”
“Sorry for fixing my hand, too?”
I quirk a brow up at him. “I don’t get it.”
He gives me an eyeroll and waves at the stairs, like he’s telling me to go down. We leave the house quietly, and I don’t realize till we’re both in my car that I didn’t offer him water or Advil.
“Hang on.” I hop out of the car to grab a water from the garage fridge, while calling dad on my cell phone to let him know we’re leaving.
I hand AA the water, admitting to myself as I put the car in reverse that he’s not weird looking like I thought when I first saw him. Not really. He’s not even just striking. He’s the most beautiful guy I’ve ever seen in real life, and I hate it.
I hate that I feel uncomfortable around him. How my heart pounds and my hands sweat. And I hate it all the more because he’s him. Because he’s a rude, irreverent prick who’s probably a homophobe. Because he seems to think I’m lame. Because he lives at my house. I can never get away from this. What I hate the most is that I care. I don’t even know why.
It feels like forever that I’m driving back toward Mom’s house with his bloodstained left knee in the blur of my periphery. Trying to keep my damn eyes on the road and off of him. I’m not sure if he moves or how he breathes or anything, because it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to worry over him. He’s not my brother.
Finally we’re almost home, and his low, rough voice breaks the silence. “Ever get called Millsy?”
“What?”
He’s smirking, looking loose and somewhat leery, somehow even drunker than before.
“Why would I?”
“Miller is wrong.” He leans his head against his headrest, shuts his eyes. He’s frowning thoughtfully, and then he peeks one eye open to look at me. “Millsy is more a fit.”
“Am I supposed to take this as an insult?”
His lips curl before he reverts to his smug and smirky standard. “No.” Then he adds, “Maybe.”
Now he’s definitely smirking. Fuck—why do I hate it so much? I feel like he’s mocking me.
“No one’s gonna call me Millsy.”
I pull into the driveway, and he opens his eyes. His smirk blooms into a grin, and he sits up in his seat. “I am.”
Nine
Ezra
I shut my eyes and blow the smoke out slowly. With the heat of the roof, the way my body’s tilted downward like I'm falling through some floor—with everything that's in my blood—I feel somewhere else.
Closing my eyes is a danger, but I don't see anything red. Just the pale gray of the moonlight bleeding through my eyelids.
I'm outside. I can feel the breeze tickle my hair. It feels soft.
No shirt tonight. No one's gonna see me, so it doesn't matter.
Behind my head, a few steps up from where I'm lying on the shingles, there's a window, and I want to push it open. Blow some smoke into the slit of dark between the white sill and window frame.
I want to wake him up and bring him out so I can call him Millsy. So much football lately, I barely even got to do it. Once, when he was pulling clothes out of the dryer, I walked by.
"Millsy…"
Then again a few mornings ago when he was in the bathroom.
"MILLSY!" I knocked a few times, hard, and he said, "Fuck, dude. Coming!"