“Was this filmed during a supernova? What the actual fuck?” Marcus muttered, shielding his eyes with his flattened hand. “You can’t even see me ascend to immortality. It’s too damnbright.”
“Maybe they wanted you to look more godlike.” April squinteda bit. “But it’s kind of hard to tell whether you’re consuming ambrosia or a white-hot chunk of the sun.”
Sprawled once again on Lauren’s lap, Alex lifted his head and studied the scene thoughtfully. “Sorry you had to achieve immortality during a nuclear explosion, dude. Better luck next time.”
Summer patted Marcus’s arm consolingly, while Carah pointed at the screen and cackled. Asha and her boyfriend were making out, and Mackenzie had covered Whiskers’s eyes and angled the cat away from the too-bright footage.
Peter’s scenes with Maria had already come and gone, he could barely determine what was happening on-screen, and there would be plenty of time ahead to survey the wreckage of their godforsaken series finale, so he turned away from the television and ducked his head to speak directly into Maria’s ear.
“How would you feel about finding a house near here? In Beachwood Canyon?” he whispered. “Would you like that?”
She didn’t have to say a word. Her face lit to such an extent, the glare should have outshone whatever atrocities were occurring on the enormous television screen.
Her eyes searched his. “No gates,sötnos?”
“No gates.”
“No guards?”
“No guards.”
“No yoke?”
“No yoke.”
Just the people they loved nearby and within easy reach, equally supportive through success and failure, joy and sorrow. Equally appreciative of Maria’s and Peter’s own support through the unpredictable tumult of a Hollywood career.
Living so close to her dearest friends, Maria would bloom.
So would he, as he now understood.
“You’re sure?” Reaching up, she cupped his cheek. “You won’t miss your house?”
No, he wouldn’t. Because it was stillhishouse to her, after all these months, rather thantheirs. Her phrasing wasn’t intentional, but it was a telltale sign of a larger problem, and he’d intended to find a solution to that problem for a while.
Now he had.
He’d missed a lot of things in his pre-Maria life. Love. Family. Friendship.
Compared to that? A house was absolutely fucking nothing.
He tilted his head, resting his forehead against hers. “I’ll have you, won’t I?”
“Always,” she said. “Forever.”
“Then I won’t miss anything,” he said, and smiled at her.
“Next year, I think we should try to one-up last summer’s Con of the Gates. More surprises. More drama. More internationally televised references to pegging.”
Someone had paused the show, and Alex was speaking to Marcus, who surveyed his best friend with a complicated expression on his mobile face, a familiar mélange of horror, resignation, affection, and amusement.
All of them had seen Marcus aiming that particular expression at Alex before. Many, many times.
He spoke very slowly. “I... don’t think that’s possible, Alex.”
“Pessimist.” Alex waved that aside. “What’s the quote? ‘Life finds a way’?”
“That’s not life,” Carah said, then tossed back a handful of mini pretzels and kept speaking with her mouth full. “That’s you, our resident fucking chaos demon.Youfind a way.”