And clearly, he’s nowhere near that point. I’m not even sure what it will take.
He drank so much that his eyes glaze over. He’s still present—he’s still here—but I see the hunger to drink more, to lie down and just sleep with the drift and ease that liquor offers him.
“You probably sprained it,” Lo says, his gaze falling to my foot again.
“I can limp there,” I tell him. We should call Nola to pick us up. We hate cabs enough to risk being seen by a cop, but we still have my family’s driver. And Lo’s. But Anderson would be a last resort. For some reason, neither of us suggests our drivers as an option. It’s late, and I really don’t want to wake Nola to save us.
“That sounds like a stupid idea,” he says.
I look over my shoulder, the red and blue lights flashing in the distance. “Just go without me. I’ll catch up.”
And then his cheeks sharpen as they always do. “That sounds even shittier.”
“I haven’t had any alcohol,” I tell him. “If the cops catch me, then I’ll be fine. They catch you, and you’ll be in trouble with your dad.”
“Thanks for reminding me.” He lets out a deep sigh, and then spins around—back facing me. Just when I think he’s going to take off running, actually listening to my request, he does something quite different. He bends down, lifts up my legs and hoists me on his back. “Grab tight, love.”
My hands wrap around his neck, and he speeds off.
The wind whips my brown hair, and I listen to his easy breath as he carries me away from the chaos and towards the city where we live. I’ve ridden on his back before. When we were kids. When I couldn’t make it up the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. When I forgot to wear closed-toed shoes in the Costa Rican rain forest. When I just needed a lift. He was always there.
Minutes pass and then those turn into hours, and Lo has slowed to a walk, the Philadelphia streets alive and glittering in the middle of the night. We head to the Drake—to our new apartment that we share together.
Lo has spun me around, and he holds me in a front-piggyback while I rest my head on the crook of his neck and shoulder, my eyes fluttering closed.
My desires have already been satiated for the night. The only person that crosses my mind is the man carrying me. “If you were an X-Men, I think you would be Quicksilver,” I say with a small yawn. He has superhuman speed, able to run as fast as lightening. He’s also the son of Magneto, who expects too much of him at times, their father-son relationship one of the rockiest among mutant kind.
He mulls this over and then whispers, “I’d rather be Hellion.”
I know. I’d rather be Veil most of the time and escape my most embarrassing moments by whisking into nothingness, but the truth is, I’m probably not even worthy of being compared to an X-Men. At least Lo is like someone. At least he can relate.
He glances down at me as I begin to fall asleep. “How’s your ankle?”
“Wonderful,” I whisper, “because I’m not standing on it.”
“I think we have an ice pack in the fridge.”
My eyes shut fully. “Mmm, sounds nice.”
He kisses the top of my head and then whispers, “I love you, Lil.”
We say the words all the time, but the power has not been lost. They mean more to me than he’ll know. Because at the end of the day, this type of love is different than a first-sight encounter with a man at a bar, a crush in prep school or a bubbling, new romance. Our I love yous encompass years of heartache, of hurt, of laughter and pain.
And every time we say the words, I feel the rush of our childhood. I couldn’t imagine ever losing that.
*
After a full night of icing the muscle, I’m so chilly in the morning that I crave warmth. At ten a.m., I fill up a bubble bath and lie in the soapy suds, letting my injury soak in the soothing waters. Bliss doesn’t even define this feeling. That is…until Lo opens the bathroom door and sluggishly walks in. I sink further down into the water and gather some foamy bubbles to hide my naked body.
“You have your own bathroom,” I remind him as he runs water under his toothbrush. A blue Spider-Man one that he carried in here.
He turns around, supporting himself against the edge of my counter. Only drawstring pants on that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. But I keep my eyes firmly planted on his.
“I wanted to see how your ankle was doing,” he admits before putting his toothbrush in his mouth. One week into college, and I still haven’t fully adjusted to living with him. We were comfortable before, but sharing space has blurred even more lines that really didn’t need any more blurring.