Page 2 of Doors & Windows (Liam & Jonah’s Story)

Izzy glanced between them, appraising. “Will we be seeing a lot of you around here, Jonah?” she asked. “Or are you hired muscle as well?”

Liam stiffened, but Jonah just let out a quiet huff, glancing at Liam and raising a brow. “As long as Liam decides to keep me around,” he said .

Liam was disproportionately happy with that answer. He smiled and added with absolute certainty, “That’s a yes.”

Five stories of distance did little to dampen the noise of Amsterdam Avenue, but the ambience was a comfort.

It cradled Liam and Jonah where they nestled together on the fire escape, two cartons of lo mein and orange chicken propped on the oversized book they were using as a table.

The sky was an endless golden-pink at the close of sunset, and Liam wished he hadn’t left his phone inside .

He wanted to capture the image of a perfect evening and see if he could do justice to the scene in paint later.

“Thank you,” Liam said after a stretch of comfortable, exhausted quiet. “It means a lot that you took the day off to help me move.”

It had been a bit of a back-and-forth with his parents, the decision to drive to New York on his own.

The belongings he brought with him were just enough to fill a midsize rental car (he had sold his own before moving to give himself a nest egg of cash), but it meant there was no room for passengers.

His mom had offered to fly in and meet him to help get him settled, but Liam had finally succeeded in assuring her that he and Jonah could handle it.

Aside from the logistics just making more sense, the solo road trip had also been appropriately commemorative of his journey into independence.

He’d gotten through an entire audiobook, plus part of a playlist he had curated specifically for the drive.

And now, exhausted and sweaty but stupidly content, Liam was glad that it was just the two of them here to bask in the afterglow.

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” Jonah said.

Liam tamped down on the rollercoaster-drop in his stomach and bumped his shoulder. “Were you excited to see me or something?”

“Nah.” Jonah bumped him back. “It’s not like we had a running countdown or anything.”

He was so beautiful in this light. Jonah was beautiful in every light—rooftop moonlight, hotel lamplight, hospital fluorescents—but in the golden hour, he glowed.

Liam openly watched him, Jonah dutifully pretending he didn’t notice as he busied himself with another bite of noodles from the carton.

He couldn’t believe he was here with him.

He couldn’t believe that his luck had unfolded so uncharacteristically, giving him the two things he wanted more than anything: New York and Jonah, tied together with a ribbon.

He had to squeeze his fingers around the pocked iron rung of the fire escape to keep himself from reaching out and touching his hair.

It was such a new part of Jonah; one that represented freedom and autonomy and a fresh start.

Liam counted himself lucky for the chance to fall in love with his image all over again.

“I’m still not used to seeing it like this,” Liam said, letting his eyes graze over the growth.

Jonah combed his nail-bitten fingers through a tuft at his temple, a self-conscious gesture. “It still catches me off guard sometimes when I look in the mirror,” he admitted.

Liam had seen photos of a teenage Jonah—one of the many nights they stayed up texting had involved an exchange of embarrassing high school pictures—so he knew that he had worn his hair long before.

Jonah had been that version of himself for longer than he had been the buzzcut kid barely scraping by in Chicago.

Liam thought it spoke to just how formative the trauma of that time had been, that Jonah still looked for that suffering boy in every passing reflection.

“I like it on you,” he said at last.

Jonah hid his smile with another bite of food. “Your roommates are nice,” he said. “I’ve known them for less than a day, but they’re already an improvement on your last friends.”

Liam couldn’t help the sour curl of guilt at any allusion to his former friends.

They hadn’t spent much time talking about Nathan Scott and the twisted role he played in their relationship to each other, nor the specific way in which he had hurt Jonah.

It still sat wrong and undigested in his stomach that Nathan had walked away unscathed.

He understood Jonah’s reasons for not pressing charges against him: how could he expect him to have any faith in a legal system that had failed him so spectacularly?

Still, Liam thought he might live the rest of his life shouldering the rage that Jonah was too tired to carry around on his own anymore.

“Yeah,” Liam agreed. “Too bad the bar was in hell. ”

“I’m proud of you, you know,” Jonah said. “I always knew you would make it here. How does it feel to be actually living the dream?”

Liam’s eyes scanned over the view from the fire escape, his own small piece of this place where so many came to find something greater, but they came to rest on the person sitting next to him.

Jonah was a piece of the puzzle that he never accounted for in all his years of dreaming about life in the city, but one that clicked into place like it was always meant to be there. The two of them here, at the start of everything, forging their futures side by side.

“It’s even better than I imagined.”