He’s sitting on a wall on a random street in Los Angeles, surrounded by Amir’s odds and ends from over the years, and he knows he’s going to stay.
He knows why Amir left him that crumpled paper bag; it’s his way of saying look, look at me. Tell me you’ll remember. A last ditch attempt at reminding Jake of why he’s stayed all these years, of hoping that maybe the nostalgia will be strong enough to get him to stay one more time. Jake isn’t much for nostalgia, really, but he feels it. The tug at his heart he always feels when Amir is away.
Amir says I love you so much, he says you’re the one bright spot in my otherwise dismal life, he leaves him a bag of memories sitting in the passenger seat of his RV and says you keep it. Jake has never been good at that. He’s not good at saying this is me, take it or leave it, and I want you to take it. He can’t lay his feelings out like Amir can, as easy as breathing, open and unyielding. He’s not good with words.
All he knows how to do is follow.
He’s the guy that comes back. When it comes to Amir, he’s always gonna be the guy that comes back; he moved from California to New York for him once, and now he’s going back again. It's instinctual, at this point, to follow where Amir goes, even if he'll never admit it; he wouldn't even know how to begin, but he doesn't have to. All he has to do is follow. All he has to do is chase the way Amir makes his stomach flutter with butterflies and his breath stick in his throat, even after all this time. There's a hole in his heart that he only feels when Amir isn't right here with him, smiling and laughing and causing problems on purpose. Even when he's mad, even when Amir makes him feel like tearing his hair out, it's worth it. The heart ache of him being gone is worse than anything he could do, and Jake's figured that out he hard way before.
Amir didn’t have to leave him a bag of trinkets. He knew from the second Amir pulled LA out of that hat that they were coming here together. It’s not a coincidence that he brought all his most important possessions; he knew he was never going back to New York. Not while Amir is here.
He can’t say it like Amir can, but he can follow, and he can rent an RV and he can drive them three thousand miles to keep them together as long as possible, even if he knew in his heart he was never going to leave him. He’s always gonna go where Amir goes. He told himself that a long time ago, the last time he held Amir in his arms and told him he’s his boy. It’s the closest he can ever get to saying something like how feels, but Amir knows. He knows more than anyone else in the world. The only person that can really understand him.
He leaves the bag on the wall and climbs back into the RV. He was always going to stay. He knows it’s something like an admission, but he chokes it down. Just because he can’t look Amir in the eyes and say I love you too, doesn’t mean he isn’t saying it in his own way.
The LA sun is falling below the horizon, and Jake smiles to himself, pulling away from the curb and towards their new office.