#my 2 fave cuties dodging each other’s questions!!! romantic!!!!

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

“I know,” and other Valentine’s Day gems <3

The closest thing I'll get to normal romance in this book (Feeding Habits 2021/2022)!

The first image is an earlier scene where Harrison asks Lonan a question and the last three is in the final chapter where Lonan (sort of) answers it! <3

Happy Valentine's Day from these unromantic losers (who I love very much ❤️)!

Text transcript under the cut!

Excerpt 1:

“I’ve been trying to figure you out,” Harrison says. He should do as he’s been told to, or at the very least, hold the fork, but his arms remain dulled at his sides. “What’s so different—wrong—about you.”

Lonan arches a brow mid-bite, stares ahead at the night table. “Oh?”

“It’s funny because I can’t even remember what I thought of. But I swear so many things are wrong.” Take the fork, he tells himself. Just pick up the fork.

“You’re different, too,” Lonan says. “Change is natural.”

“But what if it isn’t?” Harrison urges his hand toward the fork, almost gets it to the handle. “Have you ever thought of it—what our lives would have looked like if everything had stayed the exact same?”

Lonan swallows, reaches for his coffee cup. “No.”

Harrison nearly deflates at this answer, whatever progress he made sliding straight back to the floor. And Lonan must notice this because he scoots closer, places a hand atop Harrison’s and guides it to the fork. This close, Harrison can hear, and nearly feel, Lonan’s heartbeat. Steady in his chest, so strange for this man he’s known so well to be hollow.

“It won’t work.” Lonan’s voice is hardly a whisper. “Whatever solution you’re trying to orient by reassessing the past. You’re here now. There’s no alternate way out.”

Excerpt 2:

He doesn’t even know where it goes. Even though he follows its descent into the dead branches of a cedar, at some point, the stone just disappears. He throws another, and the same thing happens. Following its path so attentively, so carefully, and still losing it.

“I thought about something you said.”

The sound of Lonan’s voice spooks Harrison enough to toss another stone. He turns his chin slightly over his shoulder, not enough to even look at him. These are the first words he’s spoken since the haircut, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Oh?” he says, tosses another stone. He’s certain he can follow this one, aims for a plane of driftwood near the shoreline. Still, he loses the path.

He feels the breeze shift as Lonan sits next to him. A shuffle of rocks, and a second later, Lonan tosses one down, too. “You asked me if I ever wondered what our lives would’ve looked like if everything had stayed the same.”

Harrison stiffens. He’d said no, of course. Harrison thinks of that word as he tosses another rock. No. The air has started to smell metallic. Any minute now, it could start to pour.

“Yeah?” Harrison says. He doesn’t really want to hear more. Or maybe he does. This would be the perfect moment for Lonan to reach toward him, his hands firm and not tentative, brave, not scared, and confess his love. A man who looks just like him in a European romcom might do exactly this under twinkling Parisian lights. But in all truths, Harrison doesn’t know if Lonan has love to confess to him, if he himself could do the same.

The waves below simmer against the sand. Harrison clutches a handful of rocks so they indent his skin, then throws them right in. Perhaps Suzanna was right about Lonan’s motives to come back to the east. Perhaps he really was only looking for his sister. And perhaps, she was also wrong. That his return was not about an either or but about a yearning for both. Breeze, strangely warm, laces Harrison’s jaw. Above, a single drop of rain hits his crown. When he reaches into the ground, picks up another clump of stones, and cranes his wrist back to the throw, Lonan touches him. So light that he barely feels it.

At first, he stares at their hands skin to skin, and is distracted by how one’s vein seems to momentarily leap into the other’s. Then he looks up. In that moment, the air open, the birds fleeing south, the trees swimming along the clouds, nothing matters but Lonan. Harrison watches him, his guarded, but gentler face, how he inhales, like he’s on the brink of confession. If their lives had stayed the same as they were a year ago, if they hadn’t strayed onto an uncharted path like a gazelle losing its flock, if they’d gripped each other so surely that one or both disappeared. Harrison looks into Lonan’s eyes, blue as forget-me-nots and replenishing like the waves below. When the wind picks up, circles around their shoulders in a seeming connection, Harrison parts his lips for air, and without hesitation says, “I know.”