Page 109 of Should Our Hearts Catch Fire

Ellis opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He thought he’s gotten used to Gabriel blurting out random stuff that makes him momentarily speechless, but it’s as if Gabriel’s been upping his game, coming up with more and more brain cell-popping statements each time.

Ellis forces a laugh, grateful Gabriel can’t see his face. “I’m sure your mum is a beautiful woman, but I can control myself.”

“Funny,” Gabriel deadpans. “It’s just… Fuck, a part of me wishes I could lock you up and keep you to myself.”

Ellis can feel more brain cells popping and dying. Except the ones that operate the function of his nether regions. Those seem to be on top of their game. “Um…”

Gabriel lets out a groan that sounds both frustrated and aroused. “God, you’re adorable. I’d give anything to take you home right now and have my way with you. Ellis?”

“Shit.” Ellis scrambles to fish his phone out from under the desk, managing to bang his head on it in the process.

“Did you—Did you just drop your phone?” Gabriel presses out, barely containing his laughter.

“…No.”

“Oh my god, you so did!” Gabriel squawks. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me, Ellis?”

“Gabe!” Ellis hears from the other side, vaguely recognizing Zeke’s voice. “Stop having phone sex and make yourself useful.”

“I’m not! And you’re not the boss of me!”

“I should be! You need one!”

“For the love of—Ellis?”

“Yes?”

“Sorry. I gotta run. Talk later?”

“Right. Make yourself useful in the meantime.”

“Hey—!”

Ellis hangs up, smiling to himself. A moment later, the screen lights up with a text.

Gabriel:Traitor :(

Laughing, Ellis brings up the document he was working on before he called Gabriel, hardly doing any work on it. He’s got more important things to think about. Like how to make his boyfriend’s mum like him.

No pressure.

Ellis gets to the airport twenty minutes before the plane is due to land. It’s not because he’s nervous to meet Gabriel’s mum or anything. He just wasn’t sure about the midday traffic and wanted to avoid being late. That’s all.

He plants himself near the main exit where he promised he would wait, but it seems twenty other people had the same idea. Maybe he should’ve bitten the bullet and brought a banner. Too late for that.

While waiting, he goes through his emails and answers Jordan’s invasive questions, which he’s been bombarded with every day since his first date with Gabriel. There are a lot, some of them so outrageous he goes on a rampage in the replies and doesn’t notice someone has approached him.

“I bet you’re Ellis,” a female voice says.

Ellis unglues his eyes from his phone only to come face to face with a spitting image of Gabriel. In a woman’s body. A couple of decades older. The same pair of sharp cheekbones and pronounced cupid’s bow and eyes shining with the same mischief despite being a different color; green to Gabriel’s amber ones.

“Carrie?”

Carrie answers with a toothy grin that is so much like Gabriel’s that Ellis feels a familiar tug in his chest. She throws herself at him, her deceptively thin arms squeezing the air out of his lungs.

“Oh, it’s so good to meet you.”

“Likewise,” he chokes out, hugging back awkwardly. “How did you know it’s me?” Far as he knows, Gabriel doesn’t have his picture.