Chapter 18 Wes
Icut the limes before he gets here. Two glasses, two wedges, the knife rinsed and set on the towel.
The villa is the same villa we’ve come to the last two years.
White walls, blue shutters, the bougainvillea on the left side thicker than last year.
The lock still sticks. The water pressure is still poor.
The taxi pulls up and I hear the door. I hear his shoes on the tile walkway, the bag hitting his hip, the pause before the knock.
I open the door before he knocks.
"Hey," I say.
"Hey."
He’s wearing the t-shirt I bought him in Wynwood and it sits differently on his shoulders than it did a year ago, looser where it used to pull.
His face is the same face but the lines under his eyes are deeper and his jaw is sharper and I am noticing all of this in the time it takes him to set his bag inside the door.
"How was the flight?"
"Long. The layover in Charlotte was brutal." He picks up the glass I left on the counter. Sees the lime. Holds it up and tilts it toward the light. "Seven-two. Good skin, good juice ratio."
"You just got here and you're already rating the lime."
"The lime is the first impression." He drinks the sparkling water. Sets it down. Looks at the room the way you look at a room you are trying to recognize. "Water pressure still a six?"
"Still a six."
"Three years and nobody has addressed this."
"I mentioned it to the owner when I booked."
"Adequate is not a complaint, Wes. Adequate is a permission slip. You have to say it's a six or they think you're fine with it."
"I am fine with it."
"You have been fine with a six for three years and I have been suffering." He pauses like he might say something else, and then doesn’t.
"I'm glad you're here," I say.
"I'm glad I'm here too."
He puts his hand on my arm. His fingers are warm and his grip tightens once and I feel his body shift toward mine, the whole weight of five months leaning into the three inches between us.
I pull him in by the waist. His forehead presses against my shoulder and he breathes out and his ribs expand under my hands and I can feel them. Every one.
Later, in the bedroom with the fan turning and the balcony door cracked, I reach for him and he reaches back and the distance closes in the only way we know how to close it from here.
His body is against mine, my mouth against his.
It’s been almost two months since we were together, but our bodies move instinctively together, quick and urgent.
After, I clean us up. He rolls onto his side. His hand is on my chest and the distance is back, sitting between us like a third person in the bed. His breathing slows and I think he is asleep but he’s not.
"I needed that," he says.
"Me too."
"Wes."
"Yeah."
He is quiet for a long time. "Nothing. Let me get dressed. The fish place?"
"Yeah. Give me ten minutes."
We walk two blocks to the restaurant. Tile floors, ceiling fans, the outside table he picked the first year. The ceviche comes. He looks at it for a while before he eats.
"Seven-four," he says.
"That seems low."
"The acid is sharp. Last year it was rounder."
"Two years ago, you gave it an eight-one."
"That time the acid was rounder."
I look at him across the table. "Or you were in a better mood," I say.
He glares at me for a beat.
"That's not what I meant," I say, trying to repair whatever is between us.
"Okay."
"Luca, I didn't mean it like that."
"I know you didn't."
We eat. The ceiling fan turns. The server refills our water and neither of us reaches across the bread plate.
In the morning I wake before him. Six something.
The light through the shutters is pale and wrong, too early.
He is asleep with his mouth open and his hand curled against the pillow.
His hair is flat on one side and standing on the other and his chest is leaner than the last time I saw him without a shirt.
The softness over his ribs has thinned. I put my hand on his side last night and felt bone where there used to be give.
It can be hard to keep up with food and calories during the season. When Luca lived with me, I made sure he got enough food. I need to ask him if he has the team meal plan and if we should look into that.
I get up. Pull on shorts. Cut limes. Two glasses, two wedges, sparkling water. His on the counter where he will find it.
I sit on the balcony and watch the ocean, flat and silver. I think and wait. I think about all the little pieces Luca’s given me over the last few months about his life in Atlanta. The things he’s said and the things he hasn’t said.
He shuffles across the tile thirty minutes later. The balcony door opens.
"You're up," he says.
"Been up for a while."
He comes to the railing wearing my T-shirt, the gray one, too big on him now. The morning light catches the stubble he hasn’t shaved since he landed.
"Walk with me," I say.
"Now?"
"Before it gets hot."
The beach is empty. We walk near the waterline where the tide has left the sand hard and dark. He is a step ahead of me. I slow down. He adjusts without commenting.
"I forgot what this sounds like," he says.
"What?"
"The water. At home I don't hear water. Just the highway if the window's open."
"You can hear the highway from your apartment?"
"It's not close. Just constant. This hum that's always there."
"Do you like it there?"
He picks up a shell, turns it in his fingers. "I like the team. I like Marchetti."
"That's not what I asked."
"I know it's not what you asked."
"What do you do after practice?"
"I go home."
"And then what."
"I eat. I watch film. I go to bed."
"That's it?"
"What else would I do?"
"You used to have a list. You used to text me nine places you wanted to try before the end of the week."
"That was Miami."
"That was you."
"That was me in Miami. Me in Atlanta goes home and watches film."
"What about the guys? You don't go out?"
"Sometimes. Marchetti drags me to things. Team dinners. I go."
"Do you want to go?"
"It doesn't matter if I want to go. I go because that's what teammates do."
"Luca, that's not the same thing."
"It's fine. I'm fine. The routine works." He throws the shell. It does not skip. "You're looking at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like where you watch everything and say nothing and I can feel you filing it all away."
"I'm not building a file."
"You're always building a file. It's what makes you good at hockey and impossible to argue with."
I stop walking. He takes two more steps and turns. The water is behind him, flat, and his face is backlit and I can see the shadows under his eyes that were not there the first year. Not the second year.
"Come here," I say.
"I'm right here."
"Luca. Come here."
He comes. I put my hand on the back of his neck. His body settles against me and the performance goes and what is left is his weight, which is less than it should be, leaning into my chest. I hold the back of his head. His breath against my collarbone.
We walk back slower. I take his hand. He looks at our hands and then up at me and says nothing. His fingers tighten.
The villa is cool. The bed is unmade. He sits on the edge with my T-shirt hanging off one shoulder and I sit next to him. Not touching.
"Wes."
"Yeah?"
"I don't know how to ask for things."
"You don't have to ask."
"That's not how it should work."
"It's how it works with us."
"I want to be someone who can say it out loud. I want to be able to say I need you to be soft with me. I used to be able to say that."
"You just did."
He goes quiet. His hand finds mine on the mattress.
"Yeah," he says. "I guess I did."
He lies back. I lie next to him. His head on my shoulder, his hand over my heart. His breathing slows. His weight settles. He is asleep in a minute.
I hold him and look at the ceiling. The camera bag is on the dresser across the room.
I have been bringing the camera to this island for three years.
The first year I shot the ocean and his feet in the sand and the light on his back and set one of those photographs as my wallpaper.
The second year I shot the restaurant and the beach road and the bougainvillea and the balcony at dawn.
This year the pictures have been mostly of him.
I am looking at the ceiling and I am thinking about his face when he said the routine works. The face underneath. Not the face the locker room gets. Not the broadcaster. The face of a man describing a life he is surviving instead of living, and not hearing himself describe it.
His hand twitches against my chest. He sighs in his sleep. I press my mouth to the top of his head and close my eyes.
?