Chapter 8
We didn’t talk on the walk down. That was new.
The first time we’d made this trip, Wes had filled the path with easy chatter, the kind a person uses to put another at ease.
Somewhere over the last day, we’d stopped needing it.
Now, we just walked. His camera bag bumped against his hip.
The sound of the water grew louder as the path dropped toward the cove.
The quiet between us had slipped from a thing I tolerated to a thing I’d begun to want.
The cove was ours now. By some unspoken arrangement, the universe had kept it empty both times we’d come. Only the black shoulder of rock and the still blue water and the shade where Wes set his bag down with care surrounded us.
This time, though, he didn’t reach for the camera.
That was the second new thing.
The other time we’d come down here, his camera had been our excuse, the reason a working man could justify an afternoon at a beach. Today, he left it zipped in the bag and turned to face me instead.
I think we had both finally stopped pretending this was about the light.
“You’re not taking pictures?”
“Nothing down here I want to photograph today.” He held my eyes when he said it, and the meaning sat there in the open between us, unhurried and inviting. I felt the back of my neck go warm in a way that had nothing to do with the sun drenching my skin.
I’ve never been good at this part. I want that on the record.
I spent twenty years being the largest, quietest thing in any room.
Somewhere along the way, I decided—consciously or not—that it was safer to wait than to reach out.
Reaching meant a man could step back. Most of them did.
I had a whole architecture built around not reaching.
Wes had spent four days quietly dismantling it without ever once making me feel the walls come down.
“Then what do you want to do?”
“Honestly?” He took a step closer, into the shade, close enough that I could see the sea salt drying pale at his hairline and the gold shimmering in his eyes.
“I’ve wanted to do one thing since you walked up to me on that pool deck and told me my light was wrong.
I just figured a man who measures everything would want to take his time getting there. ”
“I’ve been told I’m slow.”
“You’re not slow. You’re careful.” He tilted his head. His grin came, but smaller, with the heat underneath it now instead of on top. “There’s a difference. I’ve watched you be careful all week. It’s one of the better things I’ve ever watched.”
The space between us was about a foot and a half.
I was aware of every inch of it the way you’re aware of the drop when you stand too close to an edge.
“I keep measuring it,” I admitted. “The distance, I mean. It’s a foot and a half. I don’t know why I do it.”
“I do.” He didn’t move, but everything about him leaned in. “It’s so you know exactly how far you’d have to go. You’ve already done the math, Mark. You did it days ago. You’re just waiting for permission to act on it.” His voice dropped. “So I give you permission to close it.”
“What?”
“The distance.” He breathed it, barely above the sound of the water. “Close it.”
I hesitated, blinking, my heart somehow seizing and racing simultaneously.
Then I stepped forward.
I closed the foot and a half I’d been measuring all week, and I kissed him, right there in the shade, with the warm rock at our backs and the impossible blue water in front of us. Every calculation I’d ever made about who would want me—or the look of me—drifted quietly out with the tide.
Wes made a sound against my mouth like he’d been waiting on this longer than a few days, like maybe his whole moving life had been the long way around to a cove he hadn’t known he was walking toward.
His hand came up into my beard, and held me there like he had no intention of ever giving the sensible answer about anything again.
A few laps of the waves later, he pulled back just far enough to speak, his forehead against mine, both of us breathing like we’d swum a distance.
“Took you long enough, Mark Apparently.”
I didn’t bother answering that.
My mouth closed the distance again instead.
This time neither of us came up for a good long while.
The camera stayed in the bag.
The light went gold and then receded.
For once, Wes Calloway didn’t seem to care about missing the shot at all.