You think I’m insane. You’re standing in my kitchen holding a bottle of vitamin gummies and you think I’m insane and you’re almost laughing about it.
I love you so much.
46
Unskippable
Paulbroughtnoodles—two kinds, because he wasn’t sure which Levi preferred, and asked about Levi’s recovery without asking about the game. He’d laughed at something Levi said about Animal Crossing and the laugh was real — surprised, warm, the laugh of a man who hadn’t expected to laugh tonight.
Halfway through dinner, Paul set his fork down and cleared his throat, but when he spoke, it was to his plate. “Marianne’s estate is entering probate, and her will specified that half of it be donated to a charity of your choos—”
“Who signed the death certificate?” Asher asked without looking up. “Did we get an NDA?”
“I um…I called my brother to complete it,” Paul said softly. “You know how he is, so you don’t have to worry.”
“How he is?” Levi asked. He had stopped eating as well.
“Uncle Bob is the concierge doctor you don’t like. Paul got all the empathy, Bob got the ambition. If you combine the Henley brothers, they probably would have been TV doctors ,” Ashersaid. He held out his fork with some noodles twirled around it. “Eat.”
It’s hard to eat when we’re discussing the cover up of the murder you did.That’s what he wanted to say, but this whole evening was already so bizarre, he decided to just open his mouth and accept the food.
“Did she leave you anything?” Asher asked Paul, still smiling at Levi as he chewed.
“I got the house,” Paul said. “My income covers it. I’m fine.”
“I’ll sign papers to leave half of my share to you.” Asher said this without looking up from his noodles. “I’m going to be busy with Levi, and I don’t want to have to take care of you. You’ll get checks and you go to work and you don’t bother me about it when you’re older and need nursing care.”
The words sounded harsh to Levi, borderline cruel, but Paul’s eyes were huge, as if he translated what Asher said intoI want to make sure you’re okay.“Thank you,” Paul rasped, reaching for a napkin to dab at his face. Asher just shrugged.
Am I going insane? That wasn’t a nice reason to…half? Half of how much? Does he really not care?
“What charity?” Paul asked after a moment.
“You were doing a charity stream,” Asher said to Levi. “When you went in. What charity?”
“NAMI.” The name came out of Levi’s mouth with a weight Asher probably couldn’t feel, but Paul probably could. “The National Alliance on Mental Illness. The local chapter. They were the ones I called after Ethan... They had a hotline and the person who answered talked to me for forty-five minutes and then helped me find a counselor. The counselor is the reason I started streaming and the streaming is the reason I’m —” He stopped.The reason I’m here.The sentence had too many meanings to finish. “They were underfunded. That was the whole point of the stream.”
“Donate all of it to them,” Asher said to Paul.
“Wait —” Levi looked at his own hands on the table, searching for words in a place that was embarrassing and specific and real. “Can you split it? Can some go to organizations that help, um, gay kids? Like the Trevor Project? There are people out there who don’t have support and might be sitting in their rooms at night thinking they’re —” His voice caught on the rawness of it — he was asking a man who had never once questioned his own identity to fund something for kids who were drowning in theirs. “They save lives. Those hotlines.”
Asher stopped eating.
“Both,” he said softly to Paul, but his eyes stayed on Levi. “Split it. Half to NAMI. Half to the Trevor Project.”
Then he grabbed Levi’s chin, tugged him closer, and kissed him on the cheek. Then his mouth. Then his forehead. Then his mouth again. Then his nose.
“You’re —”Kiss on the cheek.“The most —”Kiss on the mouth.“Ridiculous —”Kiss on the forehead.“Beautiful —”Kiss on the nose.“Person I have ever —”
Levi tried to smack Asher’s hand away from his face, just so he could pull back, but Asher’s grip strength had returned and suddenly Levi wished he was still abitweaker. He felt like he was going to catch on fire with how hard he was blushing. “Stop, Paul isright there,“ he snapped, slapping at Asher’s wrist.
“I don’t care.” Another kiss landed on the corner of his mouth. “You always do such strange things that are for other people, and I think it’s cute. I want to kiss you. Paul can cope.”
Paul stared at them like he was watching a nature documentary about a species he’d been told was dangerous, but now that species was exhibiting a behavior no one had ever seen before.
Paul left early after that. The taillights disappeared down the gravel driveway and the house settled back into its quiet and Asher pulled Levi against him on the couch.
“That went well,” Asher said.