Page 50 of Wedge

“Take care of me, basically. There’s more to it than that, but bottom line, that’s it.”

“If that’s what it means, then yes. I want to take care of you. I need to.” He grits his teeth. “That part’s mine to carry, not yours. Please.”

Fucking hell. I’m melting onto the damned floor.

“Okay,” I whisper.

His face transforms. He was braced and tight-jawed, and suddenly he is blazing with delight. He is hiding none of it from me, and the assault is simply unfair.

He grabs my duffle and starts loading my clothes back into it. “You said there’s more to it. Then I want the full briefing.”

“I can make a list?”

Again with the blazing smile. “Perfect.”

“You already know about touching. But you can’t yell at me. Ever. Especially if you are mad.”

“Never.” He says it like a vow, leaning forward to kiss my forehead. He hefts the laundry basket into both arms, duffle on top. “Washer-dryer’s in my unit. We’ll run all of this tonight.” He looks around the sparsely furnished room. “What comes with us? Whatever it is, we’ll make room.”

I’m gaping again. Still a confused catfish. I gesture to my bookshelf where I have a small collection of model spacecraft from my favorite video game, Mass Effect. He walks to it and scrutinizes it. Then looks down at my old Xbox 360, eyebrows raised.

“This still work?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“I’ve got a Series X I barely touch. Bring your games. It’ll play most of the old ones.” He shrugs. “Play to your heart’s content, baby.”

A very ugly catfish.

21

STEPHEN

Moving Adrian in takes exactly one trip between our two trucks, which says everything about how little he actually owns. The afternoon is cold and bright, the kind of day where your breath fogs and the sun somehow doesn’t help. The tape gun shrieks, the tailgate rattles, and every trip down the stairwell smells like old carpet and somebody’s fried onions.

We load the mattress frame he insists on keeping for guests, though I already know it’s going in storage the moment I can talk him out of it, a couple boxes of clothes, a milk crate of golf gear, his first set of second hand clubs from his foster father, and the bookshelf, hauled down three flights between us. The spaceships I pack myself, one at a time, each gently encased in packing paper in a box of their own for the short drive across town, like we’re moving something explosive instead of plastic.

“You’re being weirdly gentle with that,” he says, watching me ease the box into the truck bed like it’s made of glass.

“These matter to you. That makes them matter.” I don’t look at him when I say it, mostly because I know exactly what my face is doing right now and I’m trying to keep some dignity intact for at least one more hour.

Manuel’s door opens as we’re shuttling the last load down the stairs. Beyond it, a TV screams in Spanish. He stares at me, and I resist the urge to flip him off as we lock the apartment door.

During the drive back downtown, I cannot stop grinning. Can’t help it. The heater ticks, the skyline grows back into the windshield, glass towers catching the low sun, and he’s following right behind me in his truck, with everything he owns in the world between us.

Every red light gives me another excuse to check the rearview and confirm this is actually happening, that I actually talked him into this, that some stubborn, independent, hasn’t-ever-let-anyone-take-care-of-him part of him looked at me in that stuffy apartment and said okay.

“You’re doing the thing,” he says over the speakerphone, catching me at a light on Colfax, a bus sighing to a stop beside us.

“What thing? Since when do I have things?”

“The smug thing. The ’I won’ thing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I absolutely am doing that thing.

“You’ve been doing it since yesterday afternoon.”

“I got you to move in with me after one summer. I’m allowed a victory lap.”