And Call Me in the Morning (27 page)

“I should say so.” Eli thought he could hear Kazaran drumming his fingers. “Is there anything else you'd wanted to make clear before we arrange an interview?”

“There is.” No going back now. Eli didn't want to. “I'm honored by the offer, Dr. Kazaran, but I must respectfully decline. I have too much to stay here for.”

* * * * *

“You son of a bitch,” Zane said over the
snap
! of Eli closing his phone. He wasn't blinking. The cat was backed into a corner and hissing with his claws out, but there was no getting out of this and they both knew it. Eli knew Zane wanted it. Knew him as friend and lover, could see the alarm fighting with relief, and so he let Zane vent his ire without offense. “You fucking idiot. What did you just do?”

“What I should have done a long time ago. Ending what I shouldn't have started.” Eli saw the path clear to Zane and started on that trek. Zane didn't move. “I'm taking what I really want instead.”

“You just—” Zane finally moved, shoving his hand through his hair to leave it sticking up in manic directions. “You torpedoed your career, Eli.”

“Maybe. Probably not. Either way, I'm not sorry.”

Zane took a step back, and another, as Eli got too close. “Call him back.”

“No. I'm done with that. You heard what I said. Where you go, I go. Not the other way around. But here's the difference.”

Eli moved forward without breaking stride, breaching the gap between them. Backing Zane into a corner, literally, and not sorry about that either. He didn't stop until Zane was pressed into the kitty-corner of two walls, his back to them and his face to Eli.

This close, he could see the fine shakes in Zane's hands. The hope that warred with doubt and fear. Enough of both, and to hell with hiding. Eli laid his hands as gently as he could on Zane, bracketing his face and lifting his head. He knew his way to Zane's lips and kissed them. He didn't know for how long, only that it was enough time for everyone, inside and out, to fall utterly silent.

He could hear nothing but their breathing when he let Zane go. “I'm going to talk. You're going to listen. Understand?”

There
. There was the hitch in Zane's throat and the expansion of his pupils. The strong man's fantasy of being controlled, fulfilled, and Eli had control. Zane nodded once, jerkily.

“We belong together. Always have. Always will. It took us a while to see that. You talk about me wasting my life? It'd be a hell of a waste if I lost you. You talk about you wasting your life? What would you be if you cut yourself up for me?”

That, Zane didn't want to hear. He looked sharply away.

Eli didn't let him stay there, guiding Zane back to meet him eye to eye, as they always should. “I'm not done yet.”

“You never are,” Zane murmured. Wasn't much, on the surface, but it was almost the final crack in the stone and the one Eli had been waiting for. He dove in.

“I love you.”

“Eli…” He didn't know if Zane was aware he'd taken Eli by the wrists and squeezed. “Don't go here if you don't mean it.”

“But I do, and you damn well know it. I love you. I'll say it until my lips go numb if I have to.”

“People can hear you.”

“No, really?” Eli kissed him again, quick and hard. “They can see me too. Let 'em watch.” He eased his grip and lowered his voice, only because this was the most important part and he wanted all Zane's focus on
him
, not the hospital.

Zane swallowed hard. He wanted to believe. So much. Eli could see that in him.

Finally something he could give. “What we have between us,” he started, “I don't guess it'll ever be
easy
, but it's worth it because I. Love. You. And it's never too late to start fresh.”

Zane looked at his hands as if in truth realizing for the first time where they were. His eyes darted back and forth. Eli could see his mind working, pieces clicking back into place and jumping ahead. “You son of a bitch,” he said once more, but not as he had. Eli heard awe. Admiration.

“Beat you at your own game for once.”

Love.

The tension in Zane eased, fraction by fraction. “Do you have any idea where we're heading?”

“Not a clue. And I don't care. We're off-road, and I'm fine with that. So there are bumps along the way, but not dead ends. Not with us. We've been headed here all along, and we can dig our way out of the ditches
if we stick together
.”

Zane began to grin. Goddamn, Eli loved that impish side of him. “Are you sure you're not from Detroit? Or did you eat a car magazine for breakfast?”

“Shut up.” Eli kissed him again, third time being the charm and so on. He hoped. So he saw was true. “You're never too old to try something new. I'm
young
enough to enjoy the drive for the sake of the journey. We'll figure it out together. You and me. What d'you say?”

Zane didn't respond in words but in the uncoiling of the tension that kept him taut and in a kiss that melted the rest of him in Eli's arms. Eli could work with that. He held Zane upright and kissed him deep, and long, and forever, and let the rest of the world disappear.

“About time you two showed up.” Eli pulled back the house door to let Diana and Holly in. On second thought, he lingered, enjoying the sight of them on his doorstep. His and Zane's. A tiny house, so far in the 'burbs as to only be called Chicago by second cousinship, but theirs.

“You going to let us in or what?” Diana hitched a cooler higher on her hip. “C'mon. I want to get a look around. Plus you promised us an honest-to-Christ backyard barbecue, and I'm starving.”

“So impatient,” Holly chided. “We're late because we stopped to pick up a passenger.” She nudged Diana aside to reveal Richie standing behind them, his arms overloaded with a heavy grocery box from which peeked homemade potato chips, sharply piquant relish, and pungent cheese.

Eli eyed Richie, who by now knew Eli well enough to grin cheekily at him. “Too small. Throw this one back.”

“Eli, be nice.”

“I'm an angel of light. Oh, look at that, Diana's flipping me off. So cute. Why'd you bring him?” Eli knew, of course, but he wanted to hear the answer.

“Because he's been at school all day,” Holly said, a tolerant twinkle in her eye. “He deserves a treat.”

Eli savored it. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same, and if you asked him, that wasn't so much a bad thing. “Lucky him, I've already got the big fish out in the backyard trying to light the charcoal.”

“Holy shit, he'll burn the house down.” Richie shoved the box at Eli and elbowed past. “Taye!”

Eli laughed until his ribs hurt. He waved Diana and Holly past. “Go, go. Hey, Zane!” he called. “Get out of the john already. You're pretty enough, and we've got company.”

“You're not telling me anything I didn't already know.” Zane strode out of the hallway and straight to Holly, then Diana, wrapping them up in firm hugs. “Don't get jealous.”

“Me? Please. I know your type.” Eli couldn't seem to stop grinning these days, especially not when Zane radiated happiness like summer sunshine. “I'm not threatened.”

“Alas, he's right. You have no chance with me.” Zane put a staged arm's length between himself and Diana. “Consider yourself shunned.”

“Damn,” Diana said, poker-faced. “There go my plans for a threesome.”

Not even she could resist chortling at the face Zane pulled. “How anyone ever could have thought you were straight,” she said, poking him in the side. “Or, well, straight since Eli came on the scene.”

“Fucking amen to that. Get over here.” Eli reeled Zane in to stand behind him so he could rest his chin on Zane's shoulder and wrap his arms around Zane's waist.

“My God. That is so cute I think I'm going into diabetic shock.”

“Liar. You're melting on the inside.”

“Melting on the fucking outside too.” Diana fanned herself one-handed. “Are you two just cheap bastards, or doesn't this shack have central air?”

“All the amenities present and accounted for. We just wanted to torment you. Backyard.” Eli waved her on. “That's where the action is. Go, go.” Shouts from outside made him wince. “Then again, you might want to wait until either the fire's out or Taye and Richie have finished saying hello, whichever all the ruckus is about.”

Holly covered her face with one hand and giggled.
Giggled
.

“What're you laughing at?” Zane asked, comfortable against Eli.

“Life in general.” She tipped her head to one side, her smile calm again but not cooled. “Zane. You have a little…” she said, pointing at her cheek. And her neck. And her collarbones.

“This bastard likes to mark me. What can I say?”

“That it's about time?” Diana jostled her cooler. “Screw it. I'm interrupting young love out there before my arms break hauling around an ungodly amount of beer.”

Zane perked up. Eli pushed him around to the side, all the better to enjoy the sight of his mussed hair, the pink beard burn on his cheeks, and the swollen redness of his lips. He was indeed as marked as Diana had claimed, and then some.

Diana squeezed her eyes shut. “Christ, tell me those aren't BJ lips. That's why the AC's off. Airing out the house.”

“You don't ask, I won't answer,” Zane sassed. He pulled Eli down for a quick kiss, slapped his ass, and whispered for him alone, “To tide you over until tonight.”

Eli went back for seconds. “Back at you,” he breathed in Zane's ear because he could. He sent Zane on his way with a spring in his step the likes of which Eli hadn't seen before, not even the first time they'd met, but which he wasn't without these days.

And they were good days, these. A house, a place to call their own. Eli still worked at Immaculate Grace. Zane was right—he loved it, every minute of it. Zane? A couple months volunteering, and his job search had borne fruit. Part-time lecturing at U of Chicago, premed. Some would call that a hell of a come-down in the world. Not Zane. Not Eli. Not when it made Zane that happy.

“Get 'em while they're young,” he'd told Eli once, over a cup of coffee drunk companionably together at the counter in their new kitchen. “Imprint the hell out of those impressionable young minds and teach 'em how to care. Maybe then they won't wait until they're closer to fifty than forty to—”

“Fifty, my ass,” Eli had growled.

After that, the conversation devolved somewhat. Not that either of them had minded.

“Go make sure Taye doesn't torch the place. Clinical psychologist-in-training he might be, but chef he sure as hell isn't. Tell him to leave that to Richie and sit the fuck down.”

Zane tipped his head back and laughed. “Your wish, my command.”

“Damn right it is,” Eli rumbled, just for the pleasure of watching the shudder of reaction wash through Zane. “I've got plans.”

“I'll hold you to those,” Zane said. He blew Eli a saucy kiss not precisely aimed at his face and turned to jog out to meet their group.

Plans? Yeah, Eli had a few.
They
did. One year here was what they'd agreed on. Summer after that, Taye and Richie would house-sit—rent argued over and wrangled down to enough of a token to satisfy pride—and he and Zane would be in Africa probably. Kenya. A summer of Doctors Without Borders.

Their life could—would—fall into a pattern. That didn't mean it'd get predictable. Or that it would ever get old. Zane? Zane kept Eli young. He got that now.

“Hey, slowpoke.” Zane popped his head around the corner, his grin blazing bright and his T-shirt already sticking to his skin with the heat of a Chicago summer. Looking good enough to eat and eager as a kid. “Hurry it up or you're going to miss the party.”

“No way is that happening.” Eli pushed himself off the wall and toward Zane, pointed home. “Lead me to it.” He kissed Zane behind the ear. “Lead me anywhere, and that's where I'll go.” Forty-three years young, and he had the rest of his life to grow old with his best friend, his lover.

So maybe there was something to be said for pushy friends after all. And nothing at all to be said for setting the story straight.