mastershakeme

Finals ended on a Thursday. By Friday afternoon, the campus was half gone. By Saturday morning, it was a skeleton. Eli stood at the window seat at Caldwell and watched them leave. Cars pulled up to residence halls and parents emerged and trunks were loaded and the particular chaos of a university dismantling itself for three weeks played out across the quad in a series of hugs and slammed doors and the distant shouting of people who were going somewhere and were happy about it. He watc

Wow thank you 😍 I really wanted a happy/feel good story amongst all the other chaos. I might revisit the universe someday if the right idea comes along, but for now I’m happy to let them have their happily ever after ❤️

Back in July, Ben Coleman turned thirty, and nobody noticed. Tonight, on New Year's Eve, there were ten people in his apartment, and the noise was so loud he could feel it in his chest. Julian was at the stove making chicken marsala, their dish, the one they'd learned together in this kitchen with a twenty-two-dollar cast iron skillet and an argument about cheese. Ben was beside him grating parmesan with both hands gripping the block too hard, the way he always did, the way Julian had

i kind of love imagining this now 😭 ben getting older while julian stays physically the same, and their relationship just changing with it. ben’s hair going gray, moving a little slower, and julian eventually being the one reminding him to take his medicine and helping him with things ben used to do for everyone else. there’s something really sweet about ben spending his whole life taking care of people and finally growing old with someone who’s happy to take care of him. and by then sophie and grace would be grown, maybe with families of their own, so julian could become this weirdly permanent part of the family who remembers everybody when they were little 😂 i don’t think ben dying someday would mean julian’s life ends either. ben would have helped him build a whole life and family of his own by then. okay now i’ve made myself emotional over something that happens like fifty years after the book ends lol

lol i have thought about that too 😭 i don’t know if i want to answer it definitively because it’s way beyond the scope of this story, but julian potentially outliving ben does add a whole other layer to what “forever” means for them. for now i’m letting them enjoy the time they have ❤️

i really love the way you put this, especially julian “reprogramming” ben and the family 😂 that’s pretty much exactly what i was going for. ben didn’t need to stop loving or helping them, he needed to learn that they couldn’t run his life, and julian was the first person who really pushed him to see that. and i’m glad julian’s growth feels natural rather than performative. thank you for such a thoughtful comment ❤️

The retractions didn't stop the review. Tessa called Sunday evening, her voice careful, measured in the way it got when she was delivering news she wished she didn't have. "The family complaints have been noted as retracted. That's in the file. But the committee already pulled the raw data on Friday. The retractions weaken their case, but they don't close it. The data exists independently of the complaints." Julian sat on the couch and listened. Ben was beside him, phone on speaker, hi

Ben woke up on Saturday morning with Julian's arm across his chest and the knowledge that he had to leave. The bedroom was gray with early light. The window latch caught a thin line of sun, the same way it had every morning since Julian installed it, and Julian was beside him, still, warm, his face turned toward Ben's shoulder. Not sleeping. Resting. Being present in the particular way that Julian was present, with complete attention, even in the dark, even in the quiet, even when the world

I appreciate you reading even though you don't agree with the topic 😂 Next is gonna be vampires. I have no idea why I'm in this mood.

The apartment was dark, and Julian was afraid. Not the way humans were afraid, with adrenaline and the ancient machinery of fight or flight. His fear was architectural. It lived in the gap where data became feeling, where the numbers his system generated translated into something that had no number at all. The fear of subtraction. Of having pieces removed and not knowing they were missing. Ben's hand was in his. They were standing in the dark kitchen, and Julian could feel Ben's pulse

The second week was the best week of Ben's life, and he spent most of it waiting for it to end. Not because he wanted it to. Because he'd learned, over thirty years and one devastating breakup and a family that treated him like a utility, that good things came with expiration dates. The better something felt, the closer the end was. It was a law of his personal physics, as reliable as gravity, and the fact that he knew it was irrational didn't make it less true. But the week kept being

Rachel was supposed to pick up the girls by ten. Tessa was arriving at ten. Ben had been awake since six-thirty doing the math on this and not liking the answer. "She's going to be late," he said, sitting at the dining table with his third cup of coffee. "Rachel is always late. And Tessa is going to walk in and find two children in the apartment." "Is that a problem?" Julian asked. He was at the stove, making pancakes for Sophie and Grace, which had become the Saturday-and-Sunday tradi

Saturday morning tasted like coffee and the inside of Ben's wrist. Julian was in the kitchen, making eggs, wearing Ben's sweatpants because his own clothes were in the bedroom and Ben was still in there, and the sweatpants were too short and too wide and Julian didn't care because they smelled like Ben's laundry detergent and the feeling of wearing someone else's clothes was a category of intimacy his system hadn't anticipated and couldn't adequately file. The apartment was different t

Julian was hiding something. Ben knew the way you knew when someone who was always present suddenly had a room in their head they weren't letting you into. It was in the way Julian moved through the morning, fluid and attentive and doing everything exactly right, which was the problem. Julian always did things right, but today there was a quality to it that felt like performance. Like the competence was being used as a wall. He made breakfast. French toast, with powdered sugar, because

Julian watched Ben sleep. Not from across the room, the way he'd watched from the couch those first nights, listening to breathing patterns through a closed door. This was different. This was six inches away, in Ben's bed, under Ben's blanket, with Ben's face on the pillow beside his. Ben slept on his left side. Julian had learned this from sound over the previous nights, but knowing it and seeing it were different things entirely. His face was slack, unguarded, the way it only got whe

Yeah that's fair lol. Diane actually can help, she just has way better boundaries about her own time and money than Ben does, so Ben kinda became the convenient one everybody asks because he usually says yes. Reading these comments made me realize I never really explained that in the story 😭 I added a little clarification later on though!

On Wednesday morning, three things happened that had never happened before. The first: Diane called at 11:15, while Ben was on a work call about a homeowner's claim in Mount Lebanon. He saw her name on the screen, and instead of muting his headset and answering immediately the way he always had, he let it ring. He let it go to voicemail. He finished his work call, processed his notes, closed the file, and then, seven minutes later, listened to the message. "Hi, sweetheart. I just wante

The apartment was quiet in a way that felt like holding its breath. It was Tuesday morning, early, and the girls were still asleep. Grace in the portable crib in Ben's room, Professor Stomps tucked against her chest. Sophie on the futon in Julian's room, curled on her side with her book on the floor where it had slipped from her hands sometime after midnight. Julian had been on the couch all night. Not sleeping, because he didn't sleep, but sitting in the dark and listening to the apar

Diane Coleman's house was a narrow two-story in Brookline, white siding with blue shutters, a front porch with two rocking chairs that didn't match, and a garden that was tended with the aggressive optimism of someone who believed hydrangeas could fix anything. Julian cataloged it as they pulled up to the curb: the neighborhood, the street, the houses pressed close together, the particular middle-class tidiness that suggested someone cared deeply about appearances. Ben turned off the engine

Ben woke up at 6:45, which was unusual for a Sunday and which told him everything about how nervous he was. The apartment was quiet. Julian was in the living room, sitting on the couch in the same position he'd been in when Ben went to bed, though Ben suspected he'd moved at some point because the kitchen counter was already wiped down and there was coffee in the pot. Julian didn't drink coffee. He'd made it for Ben. "Morning," Ben said, standing in the hallway in his t-shirt and sweat

Vera asked the question before the garlic bread made it around the table. "So." She looked at Cal, then at Orion, then back at Cal, with the frank appraisal of a woman who had been on this earth for seventy-six years and had stopped dancing around things approximately fifty years ago. "Are you two together?" Cal, who had been tearing a piece of garlic bread in half, laughed. It was the easy, full laugh of someone who'd been asked this before and didn't mind. "No. No, we're not. We're j

I’m sorry. Ben and Julian’s relationship may survive this chapter, but apparently that skillet won’t. 😂

The grocery store was a small Market District on Centre Avenue, and Ben and Julian spent forty minutes in it arguing about chicken. Not arguing, exactly. Debating. Julian wanted to make chicken marsala. Ben thought that was too ambitious for a kitchen with three working burners and a whisk that was missing a wire loop. Julian pointed out that he'd already made pancakes and quesadillas and fried rice with less, and that chicken marsala was essentially a pan sauce with mushrooms. Ben pointed

Julian made pancakes. He'd found flour, eggs, sugar, and baking powder in Ben's pantry, along with a bottle of vanilla extract that had been pushed to the back of the shelf and was almost certainly older than Grace. The milk in the refrigerator was two days from expiration, which was fine. He found a mixing bowl, a whisk that was missing one of its wire loops, and a pan that was scratched but functional. Grace sat at the dining table with Professor Stomps propped against the salt shake

I'm second guessing myself with every single chapter. I did take away wholesome but that's because there will be sex and Idk if wholesome = sex 😂