Page 44 of Inevitable

“It’s just dinner,” he said before he walked out of the room. “It’s no big deal.”

But it was. It so was, because Drew looked like Bas had kicked him.

Soon after, they could hear the front door closing behind Bas.

Drew stared at the doorway for long moments after Bas had left.

“Should have figured,” he eventually muttered.

The mood was strained for the rest of the evening.

14

Ezra glanced at the address Drew had sent him. The redbrick building had been renovated at one point, and most of the place seemed to be occupied by various offices and small shops. He found Bas’s door on the side of the building. There was no sign or anything, but he’d followed Drew’s instructions to a tee, so he had no doubt he was in the right place.

He hesitated for a second. The whole way here, he’d tried to come up with what to say.

He’d been vacillating between a casual “Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a while” and a more truthful “I haven’t seen you in a week, and I don’t like it. Please tell me what’s going on because everything feels empty without you, and Drew has this crease between his eyebrows that doesn’t seem to go away.”

That last one was probably overkill. He took a deep breath and knocked. Fuck. He hadn’t been this nervous since… Actually, he didn’t know if he’d ever been this nervous before. Maybe he shouldn’t have come. It wasn’t like he knew how to fix anything. Maybe it wasn’t even his place. Maybe he was fooling himself by thinking he had the right to come to Bas and ask… for what, he wasn’t even sure right then.

For the longest time, there was no answer, but Drew had given Ezra a key, saying Bas might be sleeping and to just go in if nobody answered the door.

Ezra went inside and quietly closed the door behind him. He took a cursory glance at his surroundings, eyes landing on the couch and Bas almost immediately. At first he thought Bas was sleeping, but then he heard the faint music coming out of Bas’s earphones and saw the man’s foot moving with the rhythm.

Ezra moved to Bas’s side. He wasn’t sure Bas had even noticed he was there, but if Bas was surprised to find Ezra in front of him, he didn’t let it show.

He didn’t smile or crack a joke. He just looked up at Ezra from where he was lying on the couch, saying nothing.

Words died on Ezra’s tongue, so instead of speaking, he toed off his boots and shrugged out of his jacket, and slowly, so slowly that Bas would have time to protest if he wanted, squeezed himself in next to Bas.

The couch was narrow, so they were pressed against each other, but Bas didn’t say anything or try to leave. Instead, he closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. He pulled out one earbud and maneuvered it into Ezra’s ear before he pressed the side of his head against Ezra’s, blocking out all other sounds.

Ezra’s ear was filled with music. He’d never heard anything like it before. A lone piano was playing a melody that seemed to be torn from somebody’s soul. It twisted Ezra’s insides. Made him feel uncomfortable and raw. There was loneliness, aching, bone-deep loneliness in the notes that lingered between him and Bas.

It wasn’t beautiful. Haunting, yes. Because whoever wrote that piece of music was lost, feeling invisible and insignificant, and they were making that pain known loud and clear. Ezra suddenly felt like he was drowning under the heaviness of the notes that kept pouring into his ear, filling him up with the weight of somebody else’s pain, dragging him under.

He couldn’t take it anymore. The earbud came out the moment he pushed himself to a sitting position. He rubbed at the back of his neck, not daring to take a glance at Bas. Too afraid of what he might see.

“It’s yours?” he finally asked.

He glanced behind him when there was no answer and saw Bas studying him.

“It’s new. You don’t like it?”

“No.” Ezra shook his head adamantly. “No. Because if this is what’s inside you, then we must be doing something wrong.”

“That’s a strange way to look at things. You are not accountable for what I’m feeling.”

“No? Even if it’s my sudden presence in your life that makes your music sound like that?”

Bas stared at the ceiling.

“It’s not you.”

“I don’t think you can even convince yourself of that one.”

“You’d be surprised at what I can tell myself.”