Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,77
the heart,” I said, clasping my hands over my chest and slumping sideways.
“Read,” Elien snapped, but when he didn’t think I was looking, he was doing an awful lot of smiling.
I googled the author of New Orleans and La Louisiane: Chorography, Ethnology, and the Native Episteme, whose name was William Lupton Whaley, and I found several more articles by him. I was just digging into the first one when Elien’s stomach rumbled.
When I looked up, he blushed and said, “I’m fine.”
“You sound hungry.”
“I normally don’t eat much breakfast or lunch. I think my stomach forgot.”
“I’ll order pizza.”
“No, Dag, I think I’ll just wait until dinner.”
“Oh,” I said.
He watched me.
“Because I’m still going to order the pizza,” I said.
Groaning, Elien dropped his head onto the laptop.
“You don’t have to have any,” I said.
“You’re so generous.”
When the pizza came, I paid the guy with cash, ignored my mom and dad, who were hissing questions at me, and carried the box back to my bedroom. I sat down on the bed, opened it up, and fanned the lid a few times.
“You’re the devil,” Elien said, his jaw rigid as he stared at the laptop.
“What?”
“You know exactly what.”
I grabbed a big slice of pizza and dangled it over my face, biting off the individual strands of cheese one by one. Then some sauce spattered my face.
“Ow,” I shouted.
“You deserved that.”
“I deserved to be blinded by some boiling hot pizza sauce because I was enjoying a piece of pizza.”
“You know exactly why you deserved it.”
After that, I ate two slices of pizza in silence. Well, without talking. I ate them very loudly.
Finally, Elien shut the laptop. “Fine.”
“Fine, what?”
“Fine, I’ll have a slice of pizza.”
“Oh, no. I don’t think you want any.”
He squinted at me; it was supposed to be a dirty look.
“I’m really, really, hungry, Dag. And I don’t know why I didn’t realize it earlier, but I am so grateful you ordered pizza. You’re so wise.”
“And generous,” I said.
“And generous. Now, may I please have a slice of pizza?”
“Sure,” I said. When he stood up, I added, “Better bring that laptop.”
“What?”
“Rules of the house: if you want to eat pizza, you have to eat it in bed.”
Elien ran a hand through his hair, which was looking decidedly less windswept and still achingly adorable. “Let me get this right: the rule of the house is that I have to eat pizza in bed.”
Around a mouthful of pizza, I said, “Mmmhmm.”
“I can live with that rule.”
So we ate pizza in bed. And Elien told me about growing up and going to Catholic school in Harahan, and I told him about Braxton Bragg Memorial High School. Elien told me about Gard building his first computer, and I told him about Mason and me tipping over a Port-a-Potty and getting community service. Elien told me about his mom giving him a bowl cut the night before first communion, and when I didn’t believe him, he showed me the pictures. I laughed until he tackled me, and then we wrestled around for a while until he gave up. We lay together on the bed.
“It’s no fair,” he said. “You’re strong.”
“Don’t be a sore loser,” I said, propping some pillows behind us. “You get a fifteen-minute break, and then it’s back to work.”
“Fifteen minutes?” he said, rolling into me and kissing me.
Twenty-five minutes later, I said, “We should really get back to work.”
Thirty minutes later, Elien came up for air from a serious, slightly-pizza-flavored make-out session, and he said, “Holy God.”
“You can call me Dag too.”
Slapping my belly, he said, “God, you’re awful when you’re confident.”
I brushed his crazy haystack hair.
“I never got to do stuff like this,” he said.
“Make out?”
“Not really. But the rest of it too. Be silly. Just spend time like this.”
“Researching monsters?”
He slapped my belly again. “You know what I mean. I was just hooking up before . . . before everything that happened with Gard and my parents, and after, I ended up with Richard. He liked to cuddle and kiss sometimes, but not like this.”
“It’s nice,” I said, still touching his hair. “Right?”
“Definitely nice.”
“You’re really beautiful,” I said.
“You don’t have to do that. Be nice to me like that.”
“You are. You’re beautiful.”
“Ok.” He shifted, sat up, and said, “Is there any pizza left, or—”
Hooking an arm around his waist, I held him in place. My face was buried in his side, but my words were still clear. “When we’re all done with this monster business, I’m going to pin you down and spend a