The two of them teamed up to try to solve the mystery of what was happening to them, learning the lighthouse was the central point from which all their manipulated universes converged, and with effort they could choose which one to leap to next. But when they found the one they were fairly sure led back to their own timeline and dimension, Adam panicked, not wanting to go back to the world where he wasn’t with Milo. His reluctance destroyed their jump and sent them into alternate worlds where they weren’t together, and the only way to make it back to the lighthouse was to admit to the void how he felt about Milo, for Milo to shout it back. When they arrived at the lighthouse again, they were awkward around each other for a few seconds, then gave up, kissed passionately, and fell from the ledge into a universe of softness and wonder.
Rasul had written sex in his other novels, but it had been just that, a manipulation of bodies or a descent into pleasure. It had never been a union like this, a personal, meaningful connection, an exploration of each other. It touched Jacob, made him nostalgic, and aroused him.
Eventually, the boys acknowledged they should go back to their world. Though they vowed to stay together, Milo worried aloud that perhaps none of this was real either. That Adam was a figment of his imagination. That Adam, or he, would forget upon reentry. Adam tried to dismiss this playfully, but it worried him too. What would happen if they went back and nothing had changed?
They make love one last time, not exactly a goodbye but something like it, a grounding in case the worst happened. In case they got lost in other dimensions this time and couldn’t find each other again. In case they both forgot. As they leapt through the veil for the last time, they held hands until the pressure tugged them apart.
As Adam fell, he felt the magic that had pulled him into this universe twist and fade away, rendering him a normal seventeen-year-old boy. He started to doubt his adventures had happened. He doubted if Milo had ever been there at all. When he woke, he was in his bed, his mother fussing about him having a fever.
He anguished as his memories of the veil begin to fade, but he held on to the memory of the stars, insisting they remained even only as a vague, distant field inside his mind. When he finally went back to school, his stomach churning with nerves, he did his best to prepare for the fact that Milo might not recognize him, might not care. He held tight to the feeling, real or imagined, that they’d had a connection, and told himself even if he was the only one who still possessed it, it would be enough. He acknowledged he was the one who put himself behind the veil, that even if he had to build it all over again, he could do it, that even if he could never connect with Milo in this reality, he could connect with someone else this way. That no matter who he found or who he lost, he could always find a way to be okay, starting with loving himself.
Jacob had to stop and blow his nose and hold tissues to his eyes.
Then he read to the end of the story. He read how Adam walked through the crush of people, pushed aside the veil, went straight up to Milo, and said hello.
Milo turned, smiled, and Adam felt the rush of the universes surrounding them, lifting them up, carrying them forward into new adventures.
In the margins of the last page, filling every available inch of space, was Rasul’s handwriting, the same thing over and over and over.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
The paper crinkled in Jacob’s hand as his vision blurred, until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Putting the page down in his lap, he covered his eyes with his palms and sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Still wiping his eyes, he displaced the cats from his legs and stumbled through the apartment, but he couldn’t find Rasul anywhere. For a second he felt a flare of despair and betrayal—he’d said he wouldn’t leave—but then Jacob remembered there was another floor to the building.
Trembling, he crept down the stairs and into the bookstore.
It was full of stars.
The netting and lights from Rasul’s apartment were here now, making a tunnel through the stacks to an open area in the back, where Rasul sat in an easy chair, wearing his glasses and reading. He glanced up as Jacob approached.
He looked hopeful, but mostly terrified.
Jacob froze, too many competing emotions inside him to allow a reaction. He wanted to be cool like Milo and smile, to mirror the end of the novel. He wanted to sob and ask Rasul how he dared to do such a thing, to reach all the way inside him and pull him inside out, to mimic I Capture the Castle in subtle and overt ways. He wanted to thank him. He wanted to drag him into his arms and make love to him.
He wanted to tug him into their own magical universe and never, ever leave.
In the end, all he could do was whisper a ragged “Rasul,” and sag against the nearest bookshelf, draped in acres of tulle and dotted with lights.
Putting aside his book, Rasul rose, crossed to Jacob, and pulled him into an embrace.
Their kiss was wild, drugging, a desperate attempt to convey emotions that would not fit into words. At some point one of them tugged at the tulle, they slipped, and then they were rolling around on the floor, literally wrapped in a veil of stars.
“I love you,” Rasul whispered in the nook beneath Jacob’s ear, along his jaw. “I love you more than anyone or anything.”
“I love you more.” Jacob curled into him, the lasts walls of resistance, futile as they were, crumbling inside him. “Your book is wonderful. Perfect. I never wanted it to end.”
“It’s for you. Every word. I don’t care if anyone else likes it or not. Only that you do. It’s yours.”
“Everyone will love it. It’s your best work by leaps and bounds.” He clutched at Rasul’s shoulder, the back of his head. “If I could have found a book like that when I was seventeen….”
“I know. I know.” He kissed Jacob’s cheek, his chin, sucked on his bottom lip. “I want to make love to you. Right here in the middle of your bookstore, surrounded by lights and tulle with my book still burning your brain.”
Jacob wrapped his arms, his legs, his soul around Rasul. “Yes.”
Their kiss was full of fire and passion, but it was a conflagration springing from months of stoked kindling and well-tended embers. Not a flash but a crest, an unstoppable force that ignited something deep within Jacob. It cracked open the part of him he’d kept shuttered away, the part of him that had decided years ago to draw him to the side, to keep him quiet, to create a veneer of safety out of the fact that he was only partially living. Freed, Jacob unfurled, a sail catching the wind from their joined blaze, lifting him out of the shadows, sending him directly into the flames.
Gripping Rasul’s hair, he kissed him hard and deep, as if he could take the marrow from him. Tongues and teeth clashed, hands grabbed and tugged as they tried to climb inside one another. Clothes came away, skin scraped against skin. Jacob shivered as his fingers brushed Rasul’s nipple, delighted as, when he made another pass to stroke it, Rasul was the one trembling.
He’d never dared to dream of something like this. Not with Rasul, not with anyone.
He wouldn’t ever stop dreaming again.
Rasul practically purred as Jacob pushed him onto his back and straddled him. “I knew you had this in you. This fire. I saw it at the gala. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”