“Mom!” He throws up his empty hand, taking another hefty swig of his beer from the other. “I’ve been going to him my whole life. I can’tnotgo to him. It would break his heart.”
“I should have him court-martialed,” Lydia grumbles.
“Though Rayisa veteran,” Alex says, dropping onto the chair beside me, “I don’t think that’s a viable option.”
“It’ll grow back,” I tell Alex. I’m telling myself this, too.
His luscious curl-waves have been clipped so short, there’s barely enough left to even curl, which is a rather tragic shock. Even still, it’s the facial hair that’s the most startling.
Maybe striking?
I tip my head as I stare at him. “Bear with me,” I say to them both, “but IthinkI like the mustache.”
Lydia throws up her hands and storms off, leaving Alex and me alone in the kitchen, surrounded by fifty hot-pink balloons floating across the ceiling, seventeen left to go. One for every year of Lydia’s vibrant, hot-pink life.
Alex looks over at me wearily. “Hey, Ted.”
I suck in a mouthful of helium from the balloon I haven’t tied off, then say, in a truly perfect munchkin voice, “Hi, Alex.”
A belly laugh jumps out of him. My heart skips as I watch him throw back his head, smiling, all tan skin and bright white teeth, the sharp line of his jaw, his Adam’s apple. I haven’t seen any of that for almost a year, while the scruffy beard hung around. Maybe I love the mustache. Maybe I love that I can see his face again.
Maybe I just lovehim.
I push the thought away, buried where it belongs. I’m sitting in his parents’ house, my dog running around outside in the backyard with Mia, blowing up his mom’s birthday balloons, savoring the comfort and sweet-warm joy of belonging, and a huge part why I can savor it is because I know it’s secure. Because we aren’t in a wobbly romantic relationship, some unsure thing; we’re friends,bestfriends. And that’s the only way I know I get to keep this—a family I feel a part of, a friend to trust and rely on, who relies on and trusts me, a love that, for the first time in my life, feels safe.
Alex takes the balloon from me, sucks in a mouthful, then says in a similar, though slightly deeper, munchkin voice, “Happy Friendiversary, Ted. Aren’t you happy to be best friends with a guy who looks like Tom Selleck’s much-less-attractive Italian doppelgänger?”
My laugh wheezes out of me, high and ridiculous. “Tom Selleck!” I munchkin-shriek.
Alex belly laughs, sucking in more helium, then says in his munchkin voice, “Mia told me I looked like a bison.”
I snort, then burst into laughter so all-consuming, there’s nothing left do but slide down my chair onto the floor.
Alex follows me, sliding down his chair and landing beneath the table with a thump. We’re both so tall, we have to hunch not to hit our heads.
“This is the part,” he says in a less-munchkiny voice but still not fully his own, “where you tell me I’mhotterthan Tom Selleck and Idon’tlook like a bison.”
My laughter fades as I look at him, in our shadowy cave beneath the table. I lean in, cupping his cheeks with my hands, tracing the mustache with my thumbs.
My heart is pounding, each thud like a drum beating out the rhythm, the words, the truth.
I love him.
“Alex,” I tell him, in my almost-normal voice. “You arewayhotter than Tom Selleck. And you definitely don’t look like a bison. And I’m so, so glad you’re…” My voice catches.
Because it almost feels like I’m about to lie to him. And I told myself I’d never do that.
But as I sit there, staring at him, I realize what I was about to say isn’t a lie. Iamso, so glad he’s my best friend. That is true, even when, in weak moments, I wish he was more, that I could be brave enough to take that chance.
Mia shrieks outside, chased by Argos’s happy bark, then Lydia’s warm voice, her words indiscernible, only the joy and love woventhrough them reaching us. The sounds of a little girl I love, a woman I admire. It would break my heart to lose them.
The love that lets me keep them and never risks my losing them has to be enough.
“I’m so, so glad you’re my friend,” I say quietly, battling to keep the sadness from my voice.
Alex wraps his hands around mine, pinning them to his cheeks. “I love you, Ted.”
I bite my lip, holding back the longing that’s begging to be let out, to be named, to be known. “I love you, too, Alex.”