Chapter 11: Rory - Entities to Lovers

I have seen some of the worst crimes against home decor in boys’ apartments in Allston, so needless to say, I was nervous to be en route. Among other reasons.

I’m not sure what to expect out of Ezra’s apartment, especially knowing he shares it with his younger brother. I’m afraid it’s going to be some frat house nightmare where every surface is a petri dish. Instead, it’s a reasonably nice building and there’s even a Perception Check shoe mat in front of the door. He might actually have a bed frame.

“Is he home?” I ask nervously.

I can only imagine the horrible things Ezra’s spent the past several months saying about me, and being trapped with one man who thinks I’m a bitch is enough, thank you. And hell, maybe I am a bitch. We were on a good path last night, but I woke up this morning panicked about Ezra being in my apartment. I took one look at him draped on my couch, all handsome and peaceful, and the first response in my head was How pretty. But I quickly remembered what a fucking nightmare all of this is.

Then I procrastinated even getting out of bed. I did two meditations, which didn’t calm me down. I downloaded a new iPhone game where I cultivate a little aquarium of axolotls and promptly blew all my salamander coins to buy more decorations. All because I did not want to acknowledge the man sleeping on my couch.

To be fair to Ezra, he did not snore.

“No, he’s at work,” Ezra says, inviting me into the living room. It’s decently sized for the city, with a galley kitchen on one side and a small living room on the other. There’s a couch, a simple coffee table, and a fancy entertainment center with plenty of glowing lights and propped-up gaming consoles. The small bookshelf is stuffed with thick, broken-spine sci-fi and fantasy books, and several editions of the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

The living room walls are covered in framed art pieces of different otherworldly biomes and characters, all signed with a scribbly MB in the corner. There’s another framed photo of a short, middle-aged man with a headset mic and the caption It Just Works.

That’s when I notice the sword.

It’s hanging above the couch with Micah Blackwell, Concept Artist engraved on the blade. The hilt is elaborate and wrapped in embossed thorns.

“Could you actually kill someone with that?”

“I don’t think so,” Ezra says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t imagine a workplace would send people a real weapon for their one-year anniversary, but who knows?”

“Your brother’s an artist?”

“Yeah. He works at Subatomic Games—they make that game Spirestorm?”

“Haven’t played it.”

Come to think of it, I’ve never really played any video games. Except for my little axolotl one. We do, however, get lots of nerds who come into the store to buy things for Renaissance Faires and cosplays, and the idea of indulging in something nerdy and exciting kind of intrigues me.

“Me either. I just know there’s dragons.”

Ezra lingers in the doorway to a second bedroom. He’s seen my living space, now I’m about to see his. Part of me wants his bedroom to be a disaster—socks and underwear everywhere, old soda bottles growing creatures inside, an unidentifiable smell.

But if I know anything about Ezra, I know he’ll keep demolishing my expectations.

He’s quiet when I think he’ll be loud, neat when I think he’ll make a mess. Ezra Blackwell is fantastic at keeping me on my toes. I’m sure I’ll see a more intimate side of him, where he goes to grade his papers and read his books, where he gets ready, braves the cold, and heads to class.

“Come on in,” he says.

Ezra opens the door and tosses his backpack on the bed. Like all Boston apartments, his bedroom is small, with a double bed parked in the center of the room. The adjacent wall hosts his old wooden writing desk and a bookshelf on either side. His two degrees hang above the desk, framed and displayed with pride.

“So, this is where the magic happens?” I realize how that comes across and need to clarify. “I mean, like, grading tests and lesson plans and stuff…”

Ezra smiles and sheds the stained button-down and tosses it into a hamper—a hamper!—in the corner of his room. Once again, I look to his toned biceps and elegantly drawn tattoos. I need him to wear sleeves. As soon as possible. Fucking hell.

“It’s really not exciting,” he says, reaching for a duffel bag. “If by magic, you mean crushing students’ dreams, then yes.”

“You don’t do that,” I say, examining the bookshelves.

“How do you know?”

“You care too much about history to make kids dislike it.”

He pauses and thinks about it, sliding a hand into his back pocket. “Solid point.”

“When you have professors or teachers who make a subject miserable, you grow to loathe it, too.”

“And a good teacher can change the course of your life,” he says, with such fondness.

“You had one of those?”

He nods. “Ms. Drake. She was my tenth grade history teacher. She knew I really loved the subject, worked hard at it—she’d humor this little nerd, give me book recommendations, always made me feel like I mattered.”

As the girl who brought a haunted doll to show-and-tell, who knew way too many details about the Salem Witch Trials, who was constantly distracted by the spirits living in the halls, I hear him loud and clear. My mom always instilled in me that I mattered and was valid, even if the public school system disagreed. Important, just different. Maybe if I’d had someone like Ms. Drake—or even Ezra—I wouldn’t have felt so alone in school.

“That’s really nice,” I tell him, but in my chest, my heart’s sharp edges soften. Ezra, who loves history, who loves learning and is constantly thirsty for something he doesn’t know, wants to matter to his kids.

“You can sit down, you know.” He interrupts my thoughts, gesturing grandly to the bed.

“I don’t want to sit on your bed,” I spit out, but there is no human adult reason why I wouldn’t want to sit on what looks like a perfectly clean bed. “Um.”

“Don’t worry. The bed isn’t the thing in this room that would bite.”

My jaw drops and I clamp it shut, but he notices. Ezra’s not even remotely ashamed of what he’s said, and in fact, I think he’s proud of it. His grin is crooked, and for a second, I wonder if he’s thinking about me the way I’m now thinking about him. Fully messy hair, fang-like canines sinking into skin, tiny bruises left behind on my throat. I’ve never been able to gauge if Ezra has any level of attraction to me. Growing up, I was always told if a boy picks on you, it means he likes you, but we’re adults.

And even so, if he did like me, any relationship feels doomed from the start. The last guy I dated was a musician—Thatcher—who for some reason took seven years to graduate from Berklee College of Music. He liked “alternative girls” who made their own rules. He liked coming by the shop to buy random objects to play his sitar with like guitar picks. My mother did not like him, which I suppose was fair. I know I’m weird, but a twenty-something white man experimenting with the music of the Indian subcontinent is never good.

And yet, as strange as he was, I was the oddity dealbreaker between us. Mara predicted it when I was too young to even understand and continues to remind me at my lowest moments. Destined to be lonely and never enough for anyone.

I turn back to the bookshelves to change the subject, and I find the perfect opening. On one of the upper shelves, there’s a horrifying wooden figurine standing in front of a copy of Herodotus’s Histories.

“What is that?” I ask.

Ezra looks up from his duffel bag. His brown eyes fill with dread. “It’s supposed to be da Vinci.”

I scrub my brain for any memories of what Leonardo da Vinci was supposed to look like. I vaguely picture someone with long hair and a beard, and possibly a silly hat, but not…this. The figurine is lumpy, but its eyes are far too detailed. This wooden man is made almost entirely of facial hair and a saggy robe. A human wouldn’t have even been my first guess.

“It’s…nice.”

“It’s terrifying,” he declares. “My dad got really into wood carving a few years ago, and he makes us figures we’d like. I got da Vinci because I was always someone who wanted to ‘do it all.’ My mom got James Taylor a few years ago. She had to turn it away from her when she slept. He knows they’re scary, and now I think he might be trying to make them creepy on purpose.”

I suck my lip between my teeth and try to mask a laugh. “It’s nice your parents have an interest in what you do.”

This makes him pause. A few seconds later, he returns to packing his bag. “Yeah.”

I don’t read it as his parents not supporting what he does, but something else.

Ezra tosses the bag onto the bed. “Since we have time, I’m going to shower and get ready here.”

“Okay.”

“Behave,” he reprimands, pointing at me.

“What am I going to do?”

He shrugs. “If you have to ask?”

Ezra departs to the bathroom across the hall. I look a second long enough to see Ezra pull his shirt over his head from behind, revealing a hint of another tattoo on his right shoulder blade. A shiver runs up my spine and, like a freak, the visual of him unbuttoning the top of his jeans flashes into my head—

I can’t let my brain go there. I turn to Lumponardo da Vinci to stop the dirty thoughts.

He might be handsome, but he’s everything I should know better than to give a chance. All it’ll do is hurt me.

I dissociate for the ten minutes Ezra’s in the shower, not thinking about him wearing no clothing or the tempting tattoo on his shoulder, or the peek of one I caught along the waistline of his jeans. The superb news is my salamander coins have regenerated, so I soothe my horny mind by adding a castle to my digital axolotl tank. They love it and my Tank Joy score goes up ten points.

The bathroom door swings open and Ezra towel-dries his hair in the doorway. He’s changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt he’ll wear under his jacket at work tonight. His skin is red and flushed, but his already dark hair looks black when wet, like running his fingers through swirling ink.

“I behaved,” I stammer.

God, I sound so fucking dumb.

Ezra grins out of one side of his mouth and raises his shoulders. “It was mostly a joke. Come on. Let’s get to work.”