Chapter 19 Luca
THEN
The beach is the same beach. Same flat sand, same water pulling back from the shore in long slow sheets. I have been walking it for two days trying to find last year in it.
Wes is beside me. His feet are bare, his jeans rolled to his calves the same way they were twelve months ago when we walked this same stretch of beach.
"The sand is different," I say.
"The sand is the same sand."
"The sand is coarser. Last year it was finer. I remember it being finer."
"You're rating the sand?"
"I'm observing the sand. Rating requires a spreadsheet and I don't have the column for ground texture yet."
"And none of them are for sand."
"Sand is not a restaurant category. Sand is an environmental variable. Different index entirely."
He laughs then turns to look at me. "You're quiet," he says, after a moment.
"I'm rating."
"You've been quiet since we got here. Not rating quiet. Quiet quiet."
"Those are the same."
"They're not. You rate things when you're happy. You catalogue things when you're not."
I reach for his hand. He takes it. His grip is firm.
His thumb runs across my knuckles. I am standing in the one week a year where the closet lifts, where we can be in public together.
A year of standing beside him in rooms full of people and keeping my hands at my sides.
This week is supposed to be the week where we don’t have to be careful.
We go to the same restaurant as last year. Tile floors, ceiling fans, a patio facing the water. I pick the outside table because I picked the outside table last year.
"The ceviche here was an eight-one last time," I say. "I want to see if it holds."
"You remember the exact number from a year ago."
"I remember every number."
The server walks toward us.
Wes's hand opens. His fingers slide out of mine.
He picks up his water glass and drinks from it.
His face doesn't change. There is no flinch, no flicker, no moment where the decision crosses his expression.
The hand just opens. The fingers just leave.
The glass is in his grip before the server is close enough to see anything and the whole sequence is so smooth it could be choreography.
I watch the place where his hand was. The server sets the ceviche between us and asks if we need anything else and Wes answers her and his voice is easy and warm and his hand is on the glass and I am looking at the empty space on the table.
She leaves. Wes reaches for my hand again.
"Don't," I say.
"What?"
"You let go."
"I didn't..."
"When she came to the table. You let go and picked up your water glass like you were sitting here by yourself."
He looks at me. His brow pulls together. "I didn't realize I did that."
"She walked toward us and you dropped my hand. Last year you didn't do that. Last year your hand stayed."
"Luca, nobody here knows us."
"Then why did you let go?"
He doesn't answer immediately. His jaw works. His eyes drop to the table.
"I didn't realize," he says. Quiet.
"I know you didn't. That's the problem."
"Luca..."
"A year, Wes. We have been doing this for over a year. I stand three feet from you in the weight room and I don't touch you. I hide in the bathroom when someone knocks on your hotel door. And I do all of it because you asked me to. I have never once said no."
"I know you haven't."
"And now we're here. The one place where none of that is supposed to matter. And you still can't hold my hand when the server comes to the table."
"That's not what this is."
"That is exactly what this is. You hold me when it's safe. When nobody's watching. When the door is closed and no one can see us. The second there's a person, you let go."
"That's not true."
"It's what you just did."
"I picked up a glass of water."
"You picked up a glass of water because she was three feet away and your hand was on mine and you couldn't let her see it. Even here."
The ceviche sits between us, untouched. The ceiling fan turns overhead and I can feel my pulse in my throat.
"I want to be someone you don't put down when the room fills up," I say. "Not just here. At home. At the facility. In a restaurant in Aruba where nobody is looking at us because nobody has ever looked at us. I want you to stop letting go."
His face changes. Not anger. He looks like I've hit him.
"I am not putting you down." The words are slow. "I have never put you down."
"You do it every time you let go of me."
He doesn’t say anything for a minute then stands and puts cash on the table. He doesn't look at me.
"I'm going to walk," he says.
He crosses the patio and steps off the curb and turns toward the water. His shoulders are set, his stride long, and he is past the palms before I can decide whether to follow.
I sit with the ceviche and the empty chair. The server asks if everything is all right. I tell her yes and go back to the villa.
He is not there and I sit on the balcony and watch the water turn dark.
The door opens at nine. I hear him go into the bathroom and the shower runs for a long time.
When I go inside he is on the edge of the bed in a clean shirt and shorts, his hair damp, his hands on his knees. He looks up.
"I didn't know I was doing it," he says.
I stand in the doorway.
"The hand. I didn't know. I believe you. I'm not arguing. I want you to know I didn't feel myself do it."
"I know."
"And that makes it worse."
"Maybe."
He rubs his face with both hands. His head drops forward.
"I don't know how to stop doing something I don't know I'm doing," he says.
"I'm not asking you to stop doing it. I'm asking you to want to stop."
"I do want to stop. I have wanted to stop for a year."
"Then why haven't you?"
"Because I'm scared." He doesn't take it back. "Because every time I think about what happens if someone finds out, I see the version where it costs you something. More than something. I can't be the reason you lose your entire career."
"What's in your head is keeping us from really being together."
"Come here," he says.
I cross the room. I stand between his knees. His hands come to my hips. His forehead presses against my stomach and I feel his breath through my shirt.
"I'm sorry," he says into the fabric. "I'm sorry about the hand."
"Sorry about the hand isn't the same as sorry about the last year."
His grip tightens on my hips. His head lifts. His eyes are steady and stripped of every layer I'm used to seeing. No patience. No steadiness. He is looking at me like I am the most important thing in his life and also the thing that just took him apart.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to say it's going to change."
"I don't know if it's going to change."
"Then I don't know what we're doing."
He pulls me down. His mouth is on mine and the kiss is not an answer. I kiss him back because my hands know him better than my sentences do right now, and his hand is on the back of my neck holding me there and I can taste the salt on his lip from the walk and neither of us has stopped being angry.
I pull his shirt over his head. He pulls mine.
His chest is broad and the tattoo sleeve catches the low light.
I press my mouth to his collarbone and he smells like soap, and under it the warm steady scent I know from a year and a half of sleeping beside him.
His hand is in my hair. He pulls me up and both hands are on my face.
"I want you to fuck me," he says quietly.
"Is that supposed to fix this?"
"Nothing is going to fix this tonight. I still want you."
I get my shorts off. He gets his off. I reach for the lube on the nightstand.
He opens his legs and I settle between them and press one finger inside him.
He exhales and his jaw loosens and his eyes stay on mine.
I add a second finger and curl and his back lifts off the mattress and the sound he makes is sharp.
"You let go of my hand," I say.
"I know."
"In front of a stranger. On the one trip a year where it's supposed to be safe."
"I know, Luca."
A third finger. I stretch him and he rocks onto my hand and his cock is hard against his stomach and I cannot tell where the anger stops and the want begins because they are sitting in the same place in my chest.
I slick myself and push in. Slow. His legs come up around my hips and his hands grip my shoulders and I watch his face as his body takes me in. His mouth opens. His brow pulls tight and then smooths. His eyes find mine and stay.
I move. Deep, slow strokes. Each one full.
His hand finds mine on the pillow and he laces our fingers together.
Our hands locked beside his head while I fuck him careful and unhurried and outside this bed there is a table where his hand left mine and a year of hiding. All of it is in the room with us.
"I love you," I say. Not loud. Not the way I said it last year with the relief still in my voice. This time it lands heavy and worn in and I do not know if he can hear the anger still running underneath it.
"I love you," he says. "I love you, Luca."
"Then stop letting go."
His eyes change. His hand tightens in mine.
His body clenches around me and I wrap my free hand around his cock and stroke him in time with my hips.
He is slick in my grip and his hips push up to meet my hand and his breathing is ragged against my mouth.
I come first and bury myself deep and hold and let go with my forehead pressed against his, both of us breathing the same air.
I feel him come in my hand, hot across his stomach, his back arched, his body clenching around me in waves.
His hand is still in mine on the pillow. His breathing slows.
I pull out. I lie beside him. The ceiling fan turns above us. His hand opens and closes once beside his hip.
"I meant what I said," I tell the ceiling.
"I know you did."
"All of it."
"I heard you."
"Hearing isn't the same as answering."
The fan turns. The ocean is steady through the door. He does not answer.
The spreadsheet is on my phone on the nightstand. The ceviche has no score. Some meals don't get rated. Some nights don't fit inside a column.
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