Heartbeat Repeating - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,26

money and he talks to me.”

Connor blinks, then he sits back and laughs so hard his breath turns into a wheeze, and the air around his mouth puffs white from the cold. “That’s…I want to say bloody ridiculous, but it’s so you. You used to love it. You loved the pillow talk more than you loved shagging.”

It wasn’t pillow talk, and he wants to argue that because it’s just a reminder that Connor never got it—never got him. His brain is just so loud and full of chaos. It’s full of those complicated mazes and puzzles, and he knows he can find calm if he can just get to the center, but it’s like trying to solve one with a room full of screeching cats yowling in his ears and clawing at his skin.

He can do it—he’s done it before—but it feels an impossible task most days.

And the talking shuts it off, even if it’s just for a short while.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t enjoy the shagging—he did. The words that came after, though, were white noise. He never paid attention to what Connor was saying, he just listened. The syllables, the accent, the rise and fall of his tone—it made everything settle.

The difference with Avery is that when he’s settled, he hears him. He can actually hear him.

“That’s new.”

Alejandro breaks out of his thoughts and looks at Connor properly for the first time since he got there. “What’s new?”

Connor laughs. “You in love. I didn’t think I’d ever see that look on your face.”

“I’m not,” he starts. Then he thinks about the figurine in his car. And the chocolate. And the relief he felt when his dad texted him as he was walking out of the shop, letting him know the orca was safe. And then he thinks about the guilt weighing on him for keeping Avery so far away from him for so long.

“It’s not going to kill you, you know,” Connor says. “Loving him.”

But the reality is—it might, but he doesn’t say that aloud, and Connor takes another breath to speak.

“I can already see it on your face, Andro. If you lose him now, you’ll only regret not loving him more.” Connor stands. The entire day has shifted into something entirely new, so Alejandro has no ability to call him back when he turns on his heel and walks away.

6

The Apology

Avery leans back in his chair and runs a hand over his stomach, feeling like a slob. If Alejandro were sitting across from him, he might get a passing glance, but no real reaction. Sharice, on the other hand, rolls her eyes and mutters under her breath, which makes him smile.

She’s probably his best friend in the entire world, and he he’s grateful that this thing with Alejandro hasn’t ruined anything between them. They bonded almost instantly about their love of the Ancient World in a Roman History lecture during his freshman year. There wasn’t a Classics club, so they petitioned to start one and were approved after convincing six other people who were Classics majors to join up. They got jack shit done, but she’s probably his favorite drinking buddy, and she likes all the same food as him, so they get to have lazy weekends in his new posh apartment while he tries and fails to stop staring at his phone.

She knows about him and Alejandro. Most of his classmates think he lucked into money from a dead uncle or whatever the current rumor is, but Sharice had been lurking one afternoon when Alejandro dropped him off after a lunch date and shoved a wad of cash at him because he’d been complaining about the textbook inflation. She’d come out of the shadows with a bottle of wine and a thousand questions, and he didn’t really find any reason to lie.

Day drunk solved a lot of problems and always made the best friends. She keeps his secret, he takes her shopping and throws money at her whenever she needs it, and he likes that it’s give and take because without her, he’s not sure he’d actually survive this whole mess with Alejandro and the way that his heart cracks a little bit more every day.

He feels a bit raw now, after telling her about the dinner—about the ignored gift, and how Alejandro had gone out of town on purpose for the holidays. “I feel like an ass,” he says, dragging his finger around the rim of his ice water. It’s too cold for it,