Page 84 of Inevitable

“We should go home.” Ezra’s voice was gentle.

Only Drew didn’t want gentle. He didn’t want sympathetic looks and kid gloves. He didn’t think he could take them coming from Bas and Ezra. That would break him, and he didn’t think there was much more to break anymore.

He shook his head.

“No. We were supposed to go to lunch, and I’m starving, so let’s do lunch.”

He ignored the look Bas and Ezra exchanged as he forced a smile on his face.

“What are you two in the mood for?”

“We don’t have to—” Bas started to say, but Drew spoke over him.

“That pub we went to a few months ago? They had good burgers.”

Taking advantage of the hesitation, Drew turned and started walking, trusting that Bas and Ezra would follow. He didn’t want to talk about what had happened, but he didn’t want to be alone either. He just wanted to go back fifteen minutes in time. Before everything turned complicated. Before his life had gone to hell yet again.

27

Drew was doing great.

He was doing exceptionally great. Work was going great. His mood was great. His life was great.

Everything was so great at all times that Ezra quickly learned to stop asking him how he was.

Because Drew was not doing great. He was trying so hard to make his perceived greatness a reality that he overdid everything.

His smiles were too wide. He talked too much. He cracked jokes that were forced. He was overexcited about everything. He made all sorts of plans for them.

They were going on a vacation. They were moving away from Boston. They were staying in Boston but buying a house.

He talked a lot. About everything.

Except for Ellie and his parents. He refused to even mention her name, and the few times Ezra had tried to get him to talk about his family, he’d ended up snapping at him to drop it.

Bas, on his part, turned quiet. The more chipper Drew turned, the quieter Bas got. He tried to act as if things were normal, but the jokes and the laughter were gone, and he looked at Drew like the man was a ticking time bomb.

And Ezra got it. Because he knew what Bas was feeling.

Guilt.

It was illogical to feel guilty about his own existence, but he did. And it didn’t matter that at the core, it was Drew’s family who were in the wrong. Being the catalyst who exposed the intolerance kept him up at night, and he knew Bas wasn’t sleeping either.

They were slowly drifting away from each other, and Ezra didn’t know how to stop it. Didn’t even know if he could or if he should because what-ifs were starting to creep in.

What if they’d been fooling themselves that their relationship could actually work? What if they’d been temporary all along? What if, what if, what if.

* * *

Bas stared at the wall, as was becoming customary already. He’d never spent so much time doing absolutely nothing.

There were flecks of dust on his piano for crying out loud, but he couldn’t play. Every time he sat down behind his piano, he froze. Music had always been his happy place, but escaping there now felt wrong. Not when Drew was heartbroken.

Not when it was his fault.

He slid his forefinger along the lid of the piano. Fuck. He just had to get over it. He opened the lid. Pressed his thumb down on C major. It sounded all wrong.

It felt like he was living on borrowed time. Sooner or later Drew and Ezra would figure out they’d be better off without him.