Heartbeat Repeating - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,77

reuniting with his ex will make the news somewhere.

And he’s just not ready for it.

His fingers tighten around the figurine, and he feels that same rush of anger as when he first saw it at the edge of the table at the holiday market. It felt like a sign, like God was trying to cruelly remind him of what he’d lost. He forced himself to keep walking, but it crawled under his skin until he went back and shoved a twenty at the little old lady who was manning the cash box. She offered him a little velvet gift bag, but he turned her down and kept the thing pressed against his palm the entire time.

His mother noticed, but she didn’t ask, and he loves her even more for it.

It isn’t even well done. It’s handmade by someone who clearly doesn’t spend a lot of time making things perfect. It’s not like the orca—it doesn’t have the same weight to it, and he doubts it has the same story behind it. And yet, it means even more, because it allows him to have a tangible reminder of the single moment he thought things were good.

His memories will always be worth more. The way Alejandro smiled at him—the way he laughed. The way he spun him on the ice, then crowded him back against the side of the rink and kissed him like it was the only way he could keep breathing.

His eyes get hot again as he runs his finger under the wooden blades, and then he presses it against his chest and closes his eyes. “How long before sunset?” he asks, raising his voice.

“About an hour,” his mom calls back.

He climbs to his feet and heads down the hall to his room. It smells a little more like him—which is to say a little bit more like Alejandro because he had the older man’s soap clinging to him when he arrived. It’ll fade soon. At some point, Avery will forget what he smells like until one day he passes someone in the street that uses the same expensive import shit.

And it’ll hurt—but maybe less than this, and he’s really looking forward to that day.

He falls on the bed face-first, letting the skates tumble from his hands and onto the blanket. His body hurts, and he’s so tired, but he hasn’t been able to get any real sleep. He knows people survive this all the time—and worse. He knows that it’ll pass, but it feels like he’s running uphill on wet sand, and he’s so tired of feeling tears hovering right under his closed eyelids.

He hates that the winter feels like a holiday, that he’s with his parents for the first time in a year, and that he can’t bring himself to be happy. He wants a guarantee that next year will be better, and the thought makes him laugh.

“Ridiculous,” Alejandro would say. He’d even smile a little and maybe roll his eyes. He’d touch Avery’s cheek with a tenderness that Avery didn’t think a man like him could possess, and his kiss would be soft, because he would have liked the fact that Avery was ridiculous.

Rolling onto his back, he stretches his arms up and closes his eyes, and his fatigue becomes enough that he starts to drift.

“Avery.” The way Alejandro says is name is like a dream. So are the hands touching him—so soft, so perfect. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows that Alejandro shouldn’t be there. But he’s standing in the fading sun and reaching for him. And Avery curls into his body like it’s everything. He breathes him in, he touches his face. His stubble is real against the pads of his fingers. “Come home.”

Avery tries to smile, tries to open his mouth and speak, but he can’t. The touch becomes faint, like a ghost passing through him. The distance between them widens, and Avery tries to scream but the breath is choked out of him.

He can’t… he can’t…

“Sweetheart.”

Avery gasps, filling his lungs with air as his mother’s hand brushes over his forehead. He blinks, his eyes gummy, and he scrubs them as he rolls onto his side. Sleeping during the day always makes him feel like death, but the last thing he needs is for his mother to see how badly his subconscious is exposing every one of his emotions.

“Sorry,” he croaks, and he tries to sit up.

She moves away, but there’s a look on her face that worries him, and he