A wistful smile breaks out across Ezra’s face before he squares his shoulders, ready to go off to battle.
Shawn is waiting for us in the kitchen, a glass of sparkling water on the table in front of him. His laptop is out, as well as his phone and a tablet, all open to various articles that have popped up in the past few days we’ve been gone. I’m surprised there’s no whiteboard with ominous red string connecting the lot.
Without preamble, Shawn begins. “Here’s where we’re at. There are photos of Grayson coming here with increasing frequency over the past couple weeks, ever since he moved in. There are pictures of you two from over the years, questioninghow much of your bromance was a lie. There are articles about Grayson and Camilla, detailing the recent divorce. And there’s a shit-ton of buzz about what this means for Hollywood, two of its prominent stars being queer.”
Ezra offers our agent a beer he grabbed from the fridge. “Shawn. Book me an interview.”
Shawn looks from the beer to Ezra’s face.
Ezra waves the bottle enticingly. “Low-calorie.”
With ahumph, Shawn grabs it, twisting off the top. “You’re serious?”
“Deadly.” Ezra sprawls out on the couch. I take my own seat in the living room, Shawn joining us and sitting delicately on a wingback chair Ezra and I found years ago that he had reupholstered. “Set me up with one of the talk show hosts we like, and I promise you won’t have to do a thing. I’ll set the record straight.”
“The record.” Shawn’s eyes ping slowly between us. “Being that you two are just friends and there’s nothing whatsoever else happening here?”
Ezra heaves a sigh, but there’s a smile on his face when his head lolls my way. “The record being… The two of us are wildly, irrevocably, and madly in love.”
Shawn takes a big gulp from his beer. “Well, shit.”
Ezra’s lips turn up at the corner, his eyes full of mischief as he sends me a wink.
Shit, indeed.
“Wine?” Harper asks, a bottle and two glasses in her hand as she joins me on the couch. She pours without waiting for an answer.
My attention is locked on the TV.
I offered to go with Ezra to his interview, but he politely declined, telling me it’d only stress me out more to be there in the wings doing nothing. He wasn’t wrong.
But I’m still stressed. Not about what Ezra will say or how this will impact us. I’m nervous forhim. That he’s doing this on his own. But he was adamant about that, too, knowing my preference for such things.
Sometimes, the force of Ezra’s love nearly knocks me on my ass. I know people in our life don’t get it. Madison. Camilla. Shawn. Even Harper, who merely winked and nodded when I told her the truth of Ezra and me. No one believes us, that we could possibly want to spend our lives together—share years and create memories—without a sexual or romantic component.
But why can’t we? Ezra is my person. And I’m his. I’ve never questioned it, not once in the last twenty years. I found him, and I knew.
I love that man more than I’ll ever love anybody, my own daughter withstanding. Why can’t love, in any form, be enough? People want to shape us into something we’re not because they can’t see the beauty there. They don’t understand it, and I ache with that knowledge.
Because don’t they realize?
Love is boundless. It’s immeasurable and immense. Beauty on its own. It’s the reason a person’s eyes soften. It’s why we go to great lengths just to make someone smile.
Romance, sex, friendship, even, are all secondary to what love is at its core. It’s the very makeup of our being. It’s ouressence, reaching out to another and finding our reflection in kind.
Love is who we are. What we have to give.
And having that returned to us? It’s an affirmation of our very being. That we’re understood. Accepted. That we’re real.
Why try to place limits on that? All love is to be treasured.
And Ezra’s love is a treasure I won’t ever part with willingly.
Harper nudges my arm, passing over the wine I didn’t ask for but am grateful to have. “Are you freaking out?”
I shake my head, setting my prior thoughts loose as I accept the glass. “No. I’m fine.”
“No offense, but you don’t exactly look it.”
