It felt like a home because it wasn’t just Ezra here, it was Jesse, too. His presence was here, from the picture of them at the beach at Christmas—and freezing their nuts off, but it had been a great day out anyway, especially warming up afterwards in the living room—that Ezra kept on his bedside table, to the spare clothes in the wardrobe, right down to the mat by the kitchen door where Ezra put his boots and a tin of black boot polish. Ezra didn’t wear black boots. Even his work shoes were more of the spit-and-buff-quality leather than properly polished. And yet he had a tin of boot polish for Jesse’s uniform boots.
“When’s our anniversary?”
“What?” Ezra asked from the washing machine, where he was stuffing a load of dirty clothes to wash while they had dinner.
“When’s our anniversary? The day we met, or our first date, or what?”
Ezra blinked up at him. “Does it matter?”
“Well—” Jesse hedged. “Yeah? We should have one. It’s coming up soon.”
“In, like, three months,” Ezra said, and cocked his head. “Honestly, I can’t even remember the date of our first date.”
“What about the night we met?”
“Eighteenth of October,” Ezra said, eyes rolling towards the ceiling as he thought about it. “It was Lizzie’s hen do, that’s why I was there.”
“Lizzie?”
“Used to work at our place. Silly woman, but it was easier to go than try and give her excuses,” Ezra said, and grinned up at him. “Worked out all right, didn’t it?”
Jesse abandoned the pan to briefly crouch down on the tiles and kiss him lightly.
“You’re very affectionate this evening,” Ezra murmured, running a hand through Jesse’s hair. “Anyway, the first date must have been around the twenty-fifth. It was about a week later, and it was a Saturday.”
“Twenty-fifth of October,” Jesse recited, and beamed. “I’m going to plan something, then.”
“Oh, God,” Ezra groaned, and pushed him away. Jesse returned to the simmering chilli, grinning. He was going to plan something and knock Ezra off his feet. Just because he couldn’t say all the romantic guff didn’t mean he didn’t know how to be romantic if he wanted, and their first anniversary had to be special.
“Did you and Liam celebrate anniversaries?” he asked before he could help himself, and Ezra gave him a look. “I’m just curious!”
“No,” Ezra said flatly. “We always forgot. And it was hard to tell when we got together, because we were friends first and I kept running away screaming from the raging homosexuality of it all.”
Jesse laughed.
“Trust me, I’m still not up for some of the gay staples.”
“Like?”
“Rimming.”
“Well, okay, it is a bit—”
“And to be honest, it took me almost full two years to get used to the idea of fingering,” Ezra added, hefting the empty laundry basket into his arms and marching off into the hall with it. “You better never decide you want to switch positions, because you’ll be bloody disappointed!” he yelled over his shoulder, and Jesse snorted.
“As if,” he said. “Too much fun from my point of view already.”
He caught Ezra by the waist as he came back in and reeled him in for a half-hug. Ezra moulded himself contentedly against Jesse’s shoulder, kissing his ear and smiling lightly there before settling his head down and sighing heavily.
“Tired?”
“Headache.”
“I—”
“You know, I love you second-best like this,” Ezra murmured.
Jesse stilled. “What?”
“You like this. This is my second favourite…way you are. I can’t explain it. I just—I love you the most, the absolute most, when we’re messing about and being stupid and it’s just fun, and you like this, this is the second favourite. Get it?”
“I think so,” Jesse said slowly. “But—me like what?”
Ezra shrugged, head still on Jesse’s shoulder. “Relaxed. Happy. You, I suppose. No jealous fits about Liam, no tension, just you and me and my cats.”
“I could do without the cats.”
“You are also a liar,” Ezra said loftily. “How long before that’s done?”
“Twenty minutes. Twenty-five if you’re going to be a freak about having your rice overcooked.”
“It’s better soft!”
“Riiight,” Jesse drawled.
“Fuck you, I’m going for a shower,” Ezra said, before kissing his cheek and escaping. Kitsa, lingering hopefully by her food dish in case any of the chilli might be coming her way, meowed plaintively.
“Yeah,” Jesse agreed. “He’s a bastard, isn’t he?”
* * * *
They ended up on the sofa, entirely as Jesse had intended—him in the middle, facing the TV, and Ezra with his back to the armrest, bare toes jammed under Jesse’s thigh and knees close enough to let Jesse wrap his arm around them and hug Ezra’s legs in lieu of the rest of him. Jesse loved evenings like this, quiet and peaceful, all the walls down, with the potential for anything. Maybe he’d go home later. Maybe he wouldn’t. Ezra had returned from the shower in sweatpants and nothing else, so maybe Jesse would peel them off later, and maybe he wouldn’t. They were all there, every option, and he stroked a thumb over the hard edge of Ezra’s kneecap and considered them all.
“You’re quiet,” Ezra said when the ad break flicked on, and Jesse shrugged.
“Feeling lucky,” he said, squeezing Ezra’s knee. It was the healing wrist, and his grip was almost back up to par already. He’d spent all day with that stupid stress ball the physiotherapist had given him. Tomorrow he’d start on the bolt cutters.
“Why’s that, then?” Ezra asked, finishing off his chilli and putting the bowl on the floor. Kitsa instantly came running to shove her face in it.
Jesse shrugged. “I like my job, I have my health, and I have you. I’m doing pretty good at the minute.”
Ezra snorted. “Right, yes. You’re lucky.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Consider my position,” Ezra said, and wiggled his toes. “I have a boyfriend who cooks, lifts heavy things, kills spiders in a very heroic fashion when required and is happy to cuddle after sex. And when I want him to go away, he goes home. What exactly do I bring to the table here?”
Jesse blinked. He was meant to joke back, but the humour died, and he leaned forward to put his bowl on the floor before freeing Ezra’s feet and dragging him bodily towards the centre of the sofa.
“Jess, what—”
“C’mere,” Jesse said, and pressed Ezra flat into the cushions, spreading himself out over him like a living blanket. Ezra laughed, scratching Jesse’s scalp and wriggling until they settled more comfortably, Ezra’s right leg dropping off the sofa, and his left pressed up against the back to let Jesse’s lower body fit between them comfortably.
“Sap,” Ezra murmured, and Jesse burrowed his head down until he could kiss his neck. “Mm. Kind of a nice sap, though.”
“This okay?” Jesse asked, nosing at the warm skin just under Ezra’s ear. He didn’t often get to do this. Ezra hated tight spaces.
“For now,” Ezra hummed, eyes closing. He stretched his neck back, a little like a cat wanting attention, and Jesse obliged, kissing his throat lightly before shifting his weight onto his elbow and moving up to find his mouth.
“You bring loads to the table,” he said simply, and Ezra smiled, sliding his hands around Jesse’s waist. Under the shirt, but not yet exploring. “You promised me a story,” Jesse added, taking advantage of the calm.
“When?”
“In Norwich. You said one day you’d tell me how you dumped Liam.”
Ezra laughed. “Well played, Dorks. Well played.”
“So?” Jesse coaxed, settling against the back of the sofa and stretching out luxuriously over Ezra’s left side, stroking patterns into his bare ribs with one hand.
“Mm. You want to hear the story?”
“Well, you did say it was on your graduation day and it was kind of funny.”
“You want to hear Liam’s suffering.”
“Yes,” Jesse said decidedly. Kind of bad for Liam meant kind of good for him. And maybe if he knew what Liam had done to fuck up, he wouldn’t make the same mistake.
“Okay.”
Ezra eyed the ceiling speculatively. Jesse stroked his arm and waited.
“July the seventeenth. Liam had graduated the day before, and on the seventeenth, it was my turn. And I’m in my suit, and my stupid robe and the mortar board, and the ceremony is over, but—they separate you, you know? All the graduates sit together and all the parents sit elsewhere, so—well, Mum and Nana came. Nana wasn’t quite so batty back then.”
Jesse smiled.
“I was waiting outside for them and Liam found me first,” Ezra said. “He’d come to have lunch with my family and me, actually. He’d introduced himself that morning when they arrived and it had been a bit awkward so I was trying to find some nice way of telling him to sod off.”
“Yeah, right,” Jesse said.
“I was actually a nicer person back then.” Ezra rolled his eyes.
“I belieeeeve,” Jesse mocked.
“Do you want this story or not?”
“Sorry, sorry. Go on.”
“Well—some context? I’d been thinking about breaking up for a while, actually. Once our exams were over, Liam had been making all these plans, you see. How he was going to get a job with the law firm that had him on internship, and that meant he’d be living in London, so it only made sense for me to get a job with one of the research groups that were in North London at the time, and we could commute in from Cambridgeshire easily enough, blah-blah-blah.”
“You weren’t impressed?”
“No. I wanted to be a teacher. Liam knew that, but he didn’t really listen, you know? And I had my own plans, and if Liam didn’t want those plans, then tough shit. I did.”
“Harsh.”
“But true,” Ezra shrugged. “I prioritised my career plans over Liam. Kind of rams the final nail in the coffin, you know?”
Jesse hummed and rubbed a hand over Ezra’s shoulder. “So what happened?”
“Well, he came and found me, and it was all the usual ‘you look amazing’ shit—and trust me, Dorks, you don’t look good in a graduation gown. You look like a total prat, actually, and I was no exception, but it’s the done thing. Then he said, you know, why don’t we meet your family in the union bar and get a quick drink before we have to play nice at lunch? And I figured sure, so down we went. And it was about a five-minute walk to the bar through a little square—one of those fenced, green squares that London has, you know, stick four trees and a bench in it and call it a park?”
“Uh-huh…”
“So he stops me at the obligatory bench and is all, ‘Sit down with me a sec,’ and launches into this massive speech he’s obviously written about how amazing it’s been with me and how uni was always going to be awesome but I made it special, but we’re adults now and we have to find our own way in the world—and I had this crazy moment of, ‘Oh my God, he’s dumping me!’”
“But you said—”
“Oh yeah, he didn’t. He actually got out a ring box and went down on one knee,” Ezra said, and shut up.
Wait.
What?
Jesse’s brain hiccupped. For a long second, there were no thoughts whatsoever in his head. It was like shock-induced meditation.
Then he unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth and offered a paltry, “Holy shit.”
“Mm.”
“Wait, wait—he proposed to you? As in—as in, you know, marriage, a white picket fence, babies?”
“Well…marriage at least. I’m sure the babies bit would have come later.”
“He proposed?” Jesse repeated incredulously, pushing himself up until he was straddling Ezra’s thighs. Ezra grinned up at him.
“Yes!”
“He asked you to marry him?”
“Yes!” Ezra said, and laughed suddenly. “He actually thought I would marry him!”
“Talk about being on different pages—”
“Mm.”
“So—what did you say? I mean—”
“I said no, what do you think?”
“No, but I mean—”
“No, really, I just blurted it out. Like—seriously, like if he’d asked me to join in a gang-rape with him or something. I was horrified. And when I recovered from the shock, I said no again, and I was like, ‘How in the hell do you think we’re supposed to get married when we’re going in completely different directions?’”
“And?”
“And I dumped him. I just—I dumped him, then and there. I said we were never going to last after uni because neither of us was going to give up our dreams for the other, and we were over. And he’s still on one knee, Jess! He hasn’t moved!”
“Jeeeeesus,” Jesse breathed.
“So I—I just got up and walked away,” Ezra finished. “I didn’t know what to do, so I just—I walked off. And he never followed me.”
“Wow,” Jesse said, and tried to wrap his head around it all.
“Actually—” Ezra blew out his breath in a low whistle. “That night in Norwich was the first time I’ve seen Liam since.”
“Really?”
“Mm. I was startled. He just came up and started chatting like we’d parted on good terms instead of me…well, running away from his marriage proposal.”
Jesse bit his lip. “Grace said he offered commitment and you ran.”
“Yeah, but I ran because he offered commitment to someone I didn’t want to be committed to,” Ezra retorted. “I’m not against the idea of getting married someday. I kind of want to, in an abstract kind of way. But I’m not marrying someone I’m not totally convinced I want to spend the rest of my life with, sappy as it sounds, and Liam was never that guy, not to me.”
Jesse squeezed his hip. “Good,” he said. “Otherwise you’d not be here, not be with me—”
Ezra laughed and bent himself up to kiss him lightly.
“It would have been a huge mistake,” he agreed. “I feel kind of bad about the fact he went and bought a ring, but, Jesus. It came out of nowhere, too. I had no idea he’d been thinking like that.”
“Well, I’ll make sure to wait ten years, then drop loads of hints if I ever want to marry you,” Jesse said, and Ezra stuck out his tongue.
“What do you mean if?” he demanded tartly and pushed. “Get off me.”
“Why, where’re you going?” Jesse demanded, even as he obeyed.
Ezra disappeared into the kitchen briefly, before returning with ice-cold beer. He tossed one to Jesse, followed by the bottle opener. “You’d marry me in a heartbeat, just to get to play with my hair for the rest of our lives.”
“Not just the hair—”
Ezra grinned, and straddled Jesse’s thighs to kiss him thoroughly. By the time he let go, Jesse had to gather his wits to remember what they’d been talking about.
“What else?” Ezra whispered in his ear.
“Oh, your arse, definitely,” Jesse said, and Ezra bit his earlobe. “Um, your legs. Your bendiness in general really. I’d divorce you again if you quit yoga,” he added, and Ezra pushed his hands up under Jesse’s T-shirt. “Your, um, your mouth because—fuck, again, do that again—because yes, that. And your hands, same reason. And oh fuck—”
The rest of the reasons were lost to those hands and that mouth, and when Jesse finally pulled himself back together, cuddled shirtless and boneless on the sofa with Ezra’s shuddering breathing evening out against his chest, he couldn’t help but think Liam had made the best damn mistake in the universe.
Chapter Eight
I need you tonight, Ezra texted at half past nine in the morning, just as Jesse got out of the morning briefing—which had mostly consisted of them gossiping and eating cake that Iggy had brought in to celebrate Jesse’s
return to full shifts as of the following morning.
Me: That’s what I like to hear ;)
You wish, Romeo, came the acerbic reply. I need you dressed nice to go out to dinner. Your favourite underwear model just Facebooked me an invite. Apparently he’s in town and would love to get together.
Liam? Liam was in town? And wanted to have dinner with Ezra? Because Jesse somehow doubted he was actually part of that invite.
But then, Ezra was obviously a little irritated himself, and that worked wonders for the flare-up of temper that bloomed in the front of Jesse’s brain. Ezra wasn’t pleased to see him. The prick’s agenda wasn’t going to work very well if Ezra didn’t want him there in the first place, was it? And if Jesse was going to be there too, he could keep Ezra distracted from how ridiculously perfect his ex-boyfriend was, and maybe Liam was too polite to accuse him of being—being a bastard to his face.
Then again, he was a lawyer, so Jesse decided not to count on that.
Me: Do we have to? :(
Worth a shot, right?
Ezra <3: Unfortunately, yes. Liam gets worse and more persistent if you ignore him. Anyway I’m back at work next week so he can’t pester me anymore :) xx
As am I :D Back tomorrow! Jesse replied, deciding to think of the positive. Ezra said he was pestering. Ezra was annoyed. Ergo, surely, Ezra wasn’t open to being convinced that Jesse was what Liam said he was, right? Ezra wasn’t going to turn round and decide his ex really was better after all, right?
Ezra <3: My hero ;) Have a good day, babe—love you! Xxx
Ezra had never lied. Jesse pocketed the phone and tried to forget about it.
* * * *
They’d never really gone out to dinner much. Jesse felt uncomfortable in formal gear—he went home to change into dark jeans and a dress shirt, because he couldn’t bring himself to wear an actual suit—and Ezra preferred his food to err on the side of simple. And he hated small portions. Jesse had no idea where Ezra put the amount of food he ate. Their dates, even early on, had tended to be days out at the weekends, or Jesse’s home cooking and a film on Ezra’s widescreen TV.
Enough Page 10
