“Which is ludicrous, Macsen. You’re a stranger. A new guy in town renting my room.”
“You know I’m not a stranger, Ell. Don’t lie to yourself when deep down, you know, and you have done since the moment you laid eyes on me.”
“How, Macs? How do I know?” Even I can hear the frustration in my tone. “Explain it to me. If you’re so sure that all this”—my hand waves angrily between us— “is real. Tell me how.”
He sets down his fork, pushes back his chair and gets to his feet. Seconds later he’s standing over me, his hand reaching for mine, tugging me up out of my seat, bringing us face-to-face, not letting me hide or avoid.
“I know this is… intense.” His eyes move from my face to where our fingers entwine. Skin to skin, even if only our hands, calms my rolling emotions. “But try to sort through everything you feel. Sift through the things you think to be impossible until you find the heart of it. It’s inside you, Ell. I know you feel it.”
“I—I can’t.”
His hand squeezes mine.
“Try.” A one-word plea thick with desperation.
With a quiet sigh, I tilt my head until he’s out of view. My mind is desperate to look at anything other than him, needing clarity to sort through my tumultuous thoughts. My eyes land on the only photograph I have on display anywhere in the flat—a picture of me with my mum and my dad. In it, I think I’m about eight or nine, and I’m holding up a fish on the end of my rod, pride bursting out of me like the sun. While they both look at me like that’s exactly what I am to them—the sun.
“I feel like I’m going fucking mad.”
“You’re not.”
My laugh is humourless.
“So you keep saying, but maybe you’re crazy, too.”
I let my gaze drift from the photo until once more Macsen is all I can see.
“You’re in front of me, I can see you, but not only with my eyes. Your voice, the way you speak to me, I hear it, but not only with my ears. My body knows yours, Macs.” I rub a hand over my abdomen. "It knows you in here.” I tap my temple with my finger. “It knows you in here.” And finally, I place a palm on my chest over my heart. “And in here, in here it’s hollow, empty, waiting, always waiting.”
“For what?” His words are a mere whisper of air.
“For you.”
Chapter 9
Macsen
It’s never easy.
Each time I find him, it’s this that tears me apart.
Watching him wage war with his feelings, fighting to make the impossible make sense. Seeing Ellis battle with his inner turmoil hurts me in unimaginable ways.
The unfairness of it all. The injustice. Why do I carry all the answers? Sometimes the burden feels too much for one soul to bear, especially when we’re apart.
“I don’t like it.” Four words sharper than any knife. “Nobody has ever had this impact on me. It’s out of control. It’s too much, Macsen. I’ve never felt as powerless as I do when I’m with you.”
Christ, I need to hold him. To spill my guts and take away all the chaos and confusion. But I can’t. He has to see it through.
“Would you believe me if I said you have that same power over me?”
“But why? Why you? Why us? Why now?”
He tugs his hand from mine, and steps back, creating a distance I can hardly stand. I want to counteract it, step even closer to him, eliminate every inch. But it wouldn’t be fair to do so, not when he’s still so confused and uncertain.
Instead, I try to breach the distance with my words.
“When I was a boy, not long after my mother passed away, I asked my father why. Over and over again, I’d plead with him to explain it to me. It didn’t make sense. Why her? Why was she taken from us? From me? Why was she taken from love?”
I swallow thickly, remembering how I knew the answer, possibly more so than my dad, but I needed him to put a voice to it. I needed him to tell my young and immature heart what it already knew but wished not to be true.
“And what did he tell you?” Ellis’s eyes shine full of empathy.
“He told me about the planets and the stars. He told me how they get pulled together to create galaxies and solar systems.” I blink, hearing the words I’m about to say in my father’s voice. “He explained about the sun, how it shines down upon us and gives life. How the earth spins, the rivers flow and the plants grow. How two people with so much love to spare created a life, a physical manifestation of their hearts and souls. He said that he believed all these things were bound together by the divine order of life. That this order, this essence, is within each and every one of us. It never goes out, never dims or fades; it’s eternal. My mother could never be gone because she lives within us.”
“That’s a very long and abstract answer to give a kid.”
I’m surprised when a laugh escapes my lips because it’s true.
“I wasn’t like a typical kid.” Also true. I shrug it off, unable to explain why right now.
“No,” Ellis agrees, voice soft and containing something a little like wonder. “I don’t expect you were.”
“Anyway,” I continue, or else I’ll lapse into a world where I can do no more than stare at the look in his eyes—that look that’s mine and mine alone. “What he was telling me, in a long-winded and epically fantastical way, was that everything happens for a reason. We might not like it, but what’s meant to be will always be.”
“He sounds like my mother.” He huffs, but it’s filled with affection for someone he loves and has lost. “Que será, será, and all that. She used to drive me and my dad potty.”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?”
At this, he laughs.
“You sure you never met her? I swear she’d give one of us that line on the daily.”
“Sounds like a wise woman to me.”
Smile slowly fading, he shakes his head, eyes pinning me in place.
“So I’m just supposed to trust that all this weirdness between us is meant to be?”
“Is that so hard to do?”
Another incredulous laugh, this one accompanied by his hand running through the dark strands of his hair, making it look like he’s just got out of bed, all tousled and relaxed. Although, he’s still anything but.
Taking a tentative step forward, I extend my hand. He looks at it then back to my face, an unspoken question on his lips.
“How about we see how the rest of the night goes? This amazing chef I know made enough food to feed the entire town, and it’s a shame to see it go to waste.”
A beat of silence where he watches me, his eyes flickering over my features before searching deep into my gaze as if he can see right into my soul.
“You’re right,” he says at length. “He is pretty amazing, and I’ve heard he doesn’t cook in private for just anyone.”
“Good thing I’m not just anyone.”
“No,” he all but whispers as I lead him, hand in hand, back to the table. “You’re not.”