That would have been embarrassing were it true, but thankfully it wasn’t. “You’re the one who makes the food. I just buy shit from commissary. And you’re still not sleeping enough. Also, I haven’t protectedshitif that bruise on your ribs is anything to go by, and as for the rest, well, when I’m not pissing you off, I’m making you cry.”
Someone launched something in their direction. A balled-up pair of socks from the looks of it. It hit the corner of the bunk with a neighborly, “Shut up!”
He flipped a rude hand gesture in the general direction of the socks and said, “Fuck you, I’m on my honeymoon.”
Eli tried to school his features into disapproval but ended up laughing instead. “You see? This is what I’m talking about.” He brushed the hair off his face. Samuel had been meaning to cut it, but once Eli had started touching it, he’d changed his mind. “I think about you being in this place, fighting all alone for so many years, and it’s so lonely I can’t stand it. I don’t know what I would have done without you, Samuel.”
He hoped the room was dark enough to hide his expression. He was glad he himself couldn’t see it. “Just go to sleep, old man.”
Chapter Nine
Pretty in Pink
Eli did fall asleep, nodding off during Samuel's “bedtime” story. He’d always liked making up stories, especially children’s stories. He’d written some to Hailey already, and with every letter she demanded another one. The stories were an escape for him, a way to organize worlds that didn’t follow prison rules and that (usually) had happy endings. He was constructing the next one in his head as he fell asleep and didn’t wake until something was being dangled in his face. He reached up to bat it away and got a handful of pink synthetic fabric. It was the prison thong.
He flung it away with a horror bordering on psychosis. “What the fuck, Thompson!”
Eli exploded into laughter, doubling over with the glee of a much younger man. One younger than Samuel, that was for sure.
“It’s not funny! That thing’s probably riddled with aids. Burn it.”
“It gives me nostalgia.”
“Your ex-wife?”
“My underwear drawer back at home.”
He choked—an impressive feat, considering he wasn’t even eating anything. One of the more ignoble ways to die, definitely. “Your own?”
“Don’t look at me like that. Nathaniel’s the pervert, notme.” Eli pulled off his shirt and stuffed it into the laundry bag. The bruise was gone. “Every Halloween I have to dress up as one of those “sexy” versions of some normally honorable profession. You know the ones. Sexy firefighter. Sexy police officer. Last year I was a sexy garbage man who came to ‘take out the trash.’” Eli was wearing that bittersweet smile he used when talking about his old life. “It’s too bad I can’t do it for Than this year. It’s his favorite holiday.”
Worse than Eli’s anger, it was the man’s disappointment he couldn’t stand. He sighed and used his penlight to scoop up the diseased-looking G-string. “I assume Nat hasn’t seen ‘sexy prisoner’ yet?”
Eli’s face lit up. Samuel tried not to look directly at it. From the corner of his eye, he saw Forest Chuck (named for his lumberjack beard) shoot him a wink. That too, he wished he hadn’t seen.
“Come on,” he said with all the enthusiasm of a kid forced to go to school on a snow day. “We’ve got a lot of sanitizing to do.”
He wouldn't admit it, but the result was worth it. Nathaniel’s face after Eli bent over and exposed his pinkly framed ass, was one for the ages. The white of the bow looked particularly good against his dark skin.
“Eli Marcus Thompson how on earth did you get your hands on such a thing?”
Samuel wasn’t sure who was enjoying the scene more. Nathaniel, the audience, or Eli, who gave his husband an exaggerated wink and said, “Trade secret.”
The pair smiled at each other, and Samuel thought he’d done well, but then Nathaniel’s smile cracked at the edges. “I miss you.” The man tried to say the words conversationally and failed. His lips were pinched together, forced to look down at the dinged-up table.
Eli moved his hand forward until theirfingers were only just brushing. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His eyes were full of apology. Samuel looked at Jenny who was just returning with their coffee. He always looked at her to fix things, but there wasn’t much she could do this time. Or so he thought. But then she slid his coffee in front of him—and something else. A twist-tie, the sort they put on cheap bags of bread, but it had been wrapped into a circular band.
She didn’t need to say anything to explain it. He understood. If he couldn’t fix the situation, he could, at least, distract from it. He palmed her gift and tapped Eli on the shoulder.
“Yes, Puppy?”
He sank down to one knee. He knew it was only an act, and worse, a joke, but his heart was hammering so loudly he was sure everyone in the room could hear it. He forced some spit into his desert-of-a-mouth and spoke.
“Doctor Thompson, I know we haven’t known each other long, but I can safely say no one has ever been to me what you’ve become. Would you do me the greatest and ever-cherished honor of consenting to be my unlawfully married prison husband?”
He looked up into Eli’s face and held up the “ring.”
There was a sudden whoop, and not from Eli, who had more or less experienced the proposal already, but from Nathaniel, who hadn’t yet been told the news. “What the hell! You guys! Oh my god.” He was laughing. Thank Godhe was laughing. Eli was laughing too, the heartbreak in their eyes put away. Mission accomplished. But the laughter stung, and not because Eli or Nathaniel were being mean, but because he was an idiot loser for getting nervous over a joke, taking the game of make-believe too seriously.
