Heartbeat Repeating - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,12
like a hundred feet of snow.
He doesn’t really mind though. Now that he knows spending the holidays on his own isn’t as lonely as he thought it might be, it’s easier to relax. He misses his parents, but the movies by himself was nice, and the take-out was good. New Years wouldn’t be some big to-do in Times Square, anyway. It would be sitting in his parents’ living room watching the ball drop on TV and listening to his mother tell his father that his resolution needs to be giving up his damn cigars.
And the reality is, this thing with Alejandro isn’t going to last, so what’s one more year of sitting on his sofa and hoping his phone might buzz?
“I know you basically shit hundred-dollar bills,” he goes on, shuffling from one foot to the other because in spite of his jacket, he’s cold, “but a couple pieces of pizza won’t kill you.”
Alejandro glances at him out of his periphery then hands the ticket to the man at the valet stand.
“I mean, I know you’re allergic to fun, but…”
He’s cut off as the car pulls up, and he sighs internally as he slides into the back next to Alejandro and buckles up. He regrets falling in love with this impossible asshole, but he doesn’t entirely regret this life. It’s nice not needing to worry about surviving off the Taco Stand thirty-five cent shift meals after bills eat up his paychecks. It’s nice to have three watches worth more than his first car—because god forbid he ever needs to, he can sell them. And it’s oddly nice to feel like someone important when strangers look at him getting into an absurdly expensive car next to Alejandro—even if that’s not necessarily who he is.
“Happy anniversary,” he says, very softly into the silence. He hears the creak of leather and he knows it’s Alejandro gripping his gloved hands because he hates when Avery gets all sentimental and shit. “Don’t be mad if I regift this watch. My dad loves shit like this, and I use my phone to tell time.”
He’s saying it to be a little mean, because he can’t remember if Alejandro took the stupid fucking orca off the table before they left, and he knows the answer is probably not. It’ll end up in some filthy bus-tub pretending to be a lost and found department full of shit people will never come back for.
He’s worked in places like that restaurant. He knows all about after work shots and server auctions. That was how he got his first iPhone. Now he has the latest and best—actual gold plating, with a big fat rubber case so you can’t see any of the bells and whistles—but he knows they’re there. And it’s stupid because if he drops it, Alejandro will just send over another one like it means nothing.
Because it does.
Nothing he has means anything to him, because none of it meant a damn thing to Alejandro when he was having someone pick it out for Avery.
He saw a sign a few weeks before that said eat the rich—and he gets it. Maybe it’s money that makes Alejandro such an emotionless void shaped like a human man with abs that are just fucking unfair on a man of his age.
The car pulls up to the curb, and Alejandro glances up with the edge of his lip curled into something like a sneer. He hates the building Avery lives in, but it’s close to the university, and Avery hates parking his car on campus so it made sense. And even if the place is kind of shitty compared to what Alejandro’s used to, the inside is the nicest place he’s ever lived in, and having it makes him super popular with all his friends because all of them are stuck in the dorms or with roommates and he’s the only one with any privacy.
All thanks to Alejandro, of course, who won’t even look at him as he unbuckles his seatbelt and climbs out.
“Same time next week?” he asks.
Alejandro grunts, but just before Avery walks off, he hears the gruff rumble of his voice, and he freezes because it’s been at least twenty-five minutes of total silence. “I won’t be in town next week. I’m leaving.” It’s the first words he’s said directly to Avery in months, and Avery feels them like a punch to the sternum because they’re something like a goodbye.
Turning slowly, Avery leans his arm on the roof of the car and