Page 32 of Swipe My Alpha
"It's a trashy app and a lucky swipe," Shay says. "Don't romanticize it."
"I'm absolutely going to romanticize it," Soren says.
Jude tilts his head up and looks at me. His eyes are bright from the beer and his cheeks are flushed and the bite on his neck is visible above his collar and he's not hiding it. Neither am I. We're in a booth in a dive bar surrounded by the people who matter most to him and there's nowhere else I'd rather be.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
"Thanks for being here."
"I'm done being anywhere else."
He grins. Settles deeper against my shoulder. Steals a sip of my beer. Around us, his friends argue about something I'vealready lost track of, their voices overlapping and loud and completely at home. The jukebox plays something from the early 2000s. The bar smells like beer and old wood and too many people and underneath all of it, underneath everything, it smells like us.
Epilogue - Jude
Rhys is grading papers at the kitchen table and I'm lying upside down on the couch criticizing his handwriting.
"You write your Gs like a serial killer," I say.
"You can't even see my Gs from there."
"I have excellent eyesight and your Gs look like they belong on a ransom note."
He doesn't look up from the paper he's marking, but the corner of his mouth twitches. He's wearing his glasses and one of my t-shirts, which is slightly too tight across his shoulders, and his hair is doing the thing where it sticks up on one side because he keeps running his hand through it while he reads. The ink on his forearm moves when he writes. I've been watching it for twenty minutes. I'm not bored. I could do this all day.
The apartment doesn't look the way it did when he gave me the key. My stuff is everywhere now. My boots by the door, my jacket over the back of his chair, three of my hoodies absorbed into the nest along with his flannels and the blanket I stole from the Swipe Squad apartment that Shay still hasn't forgiven me for. My playlists run through the speaker on the bookshelfmost mornings. There's a mug in the cabinet that says "World's Okayest Omega" that Benji got me as a housewarming gift. The fridge has Milo's empanadas in a Tupperware and a six-pack from Byrne's that Declan sent home with us last weekend.
It smells like us. Not like his place that I visit. Like ours. Like home.
The semester ended three weeks ago. Rhys isn't my TA anymore. The reprimand in his file turned out to be exactly as boring as Albright's email promised — a note, a signature, a reminder about disclosure timelines. His advisor didn't care. His cohort friends gave him shit for about a week and then got bored. The world did not end. The rules bent and everyone moved on and now Rhys is grading papers for next semester's section and I'm lying on his couch — our couch — and the only thing that's different from before is that everything is easier.
"Are you going to help me grade or just provide commentary?" he says.
"Commentary. I'm a Media Studies major, Rhys. Critical analysis is literally my skill set."
"You could critically analyze whether the second paragraph of this response makes any sense."
"I could. I won't. But I could."
He shakes his head and keeps writing. I watch him for another minute and then roll off the couch and pad over and drape myself across his back, my chin on his shoulder, my arms around his chest. He leans into me without pausing his pen.
"They'll be here in an hour," he says. "Should I order food or is Milo bringing something?"
"Milo's bringing three kinds of dip and Soren's bringing wine he got from the campus market that probably cost four dollars. I told Benji to bring nothing because last time he brought those weird chips that tasted like punishment."
"They weren't that bad."
"You ate one and made a face like you'd been betrayed."
"I was being polite."
"You spit it into a napkin."
"Politely."
I kiss the side of his neck, right over his pulse, and he turns his head and catches my mouth. A slow kiss, unhurried, tasting like the coffee he's been drinking all morning. His hand comes up to cup the back of my head and I lean into it and for a second the grading and the friends and the evening ahead all dissolve into just this. His mouth. His hand. The quiet apartment and the nest waiting in the next room and the knowledge that he's mine and I'm his and neither of us is going anywhere.
