Page 23 of Together Again

Max

As we saton the subway train heading toward the airport, I thought about the time I spent together with Isaac. The rescue, although only just thirty-eight hours ago, felt like a lifetime in the past. That first time I looked at his face. How his eyes, piercing and deep, showed so much strength.

I didn’t know what kind of person Isaac was at home, but the way he threw himself heart and soul into all the things we did yesterday told me he had an adventurous spirit that probably didn’t come out much.

I had to come up with a plan to see Isaac again, and the only way to do it was to spend the night at Joel’s drowning my sorrows with ice cream and… fuck. I laughed, and Isaac looked at me with a raised brow. Even while considering the current state of my heart, my dick still got hard at the mere thought of cookie dough.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked.

“Kryptonite.”

“Say again?”

“Cookie dough is my Kryptonite,” I murmured, shifting in my seat so my bulge wasn’t noticeable. "Or maybe it's you that’s my Kryptonite." I grabbed his hand, lacing our fingers together and placing them on my lap.

Isaac chuckled next to me, his free hand on his mouth. Nope, he was downright laughing at me. For a moment we lost ourselves in that silly moment, and it was like we were just two commuters, like everybody else on the car, using the subway to get to our destination.

We made light conversation about his plans for Christmas with his brother, sister-in-law, and his baby niece. Isaac showed me a photo of Sofia, and I couldn’t deny she was adorable, and the resemblance to her uncle was undeniable. She had the same eyes and the same nose.

“What will you do for Christmas?” Isaac asked.

“I’ll spend it with my friend and his parents.”

Joel and his parents were the closest thing I had to family, so there wasn’t any question that I would be spending the holidays with them.

The train arrived at the airport too quickly. My hands were suddenly shaking, and every cell in my body was screaming against this. I didn’t want to say goodbye. I didn’t want to let go of Isaac.

It seemed ridiculous that spending such a short time with someone had had such a significant effect on me, but maybe it was because it had been such a short time that I felt it hadn’t been enough.

The line to check in at the counter also moved ridiculously fast. It was like the world just wanted us to be apart. We’d had our time together, and that was that.

Isaac would need to go through security, so I knew we didn’t have much time left to say goodbye.

We stood by the doors to the departure terminal facing each other. I held his hands and pulled them up to my mouth kissing his fingers one by one, and then his palms.

“This is...fuck! This is hard, Isaac,” I struggled to get my words out. “I don’t even know why. I can’t explain why I feel the way I do. Fuck.”

Isaac had tears streaming down his face. His eyes seemed bigger, but sadder, too. I held him with his head on my chest and his arms around my waist, while my arms went around him as tight as they could be.

“Thank you, Max,” Isaac said between deep breaths.

“Thank you for saving me,” he said as he kissed my left cheek.

“Thank you for showing me your New York.” And then he kissed my right cheek.

“Thank you for last night.” He kissed my lips briefly.

“And this morning.”

I grinned, hopelessly trying to make this better.

“Here,” I said, giving him the small bag I’d been carrying since yesterday. “I bought you a Christmas present.”

“Really? You didn’t have to,” he said, his face lighting up like a Christmas tree. “Can I open it now?”

“Of course you can. At least if you don’t like it, you can throw it at me.” I laughed.

I watched as Isaac opened the bag to uncover the carefully wrapped present. It looked like such an old-fashioned gift with the brown wrapping paper, string, and a label where I wrote,“Merry Christmas Isaac! Love, Max.”A simple message that conveyed so much of what I was feeling.