Chapter 43
Danny’s been talking for an hour straight, a camera-ready smile wobbling on his lips, and Sasha doesn’t know what to do.
They’re sitting in some breakfast place by the water, neither of them touching their food—Sasha because he doesn’t have an appetite, and Danny because he’s chatting about everything from his toast to the seagulls outside the window, barely pausing for breath, talking so quickly that Sasha can’t get a word in edgewise. Which he thinks might be the point.
“Danny,” he tries once, but Danny gets a panicked look and starts talking about the weather, so Sasha gives up.
It’s obvious that Danny doesn’t want to discuss what happened earlier, and it’s not like Sasha can blame him for that.
After all, Sasha’s the one who fucked up—no, fucked up is an understatement.
He doesn’t know if any language has the right words for how much he’d hurt Danny, and how awful it was to watch Danny try to pretend he hadn’t.
But there’s a part of him that’s angry with Danny, too, for saying those words when he wasn’t expecting them. For saying them at all in the first place.
Because I love you is a luxury. I love you means you have a future, the kind where you grow old together, maybe even get married and have children.
And Sasha won’t be growing old with Danny, won’t be exchanging rings with him or deciding who’s on diaper duty this time.
Instead, he’ll be watching Danny experience all those things with someone else, stalking his Instagram stories long after they’ve broken up.
And if Danny ever stops posting online, he won’t even get to do that.
Mostly, he’s angry with Danny for making him wonder what he might have said back.
If he hadn’t been caught off guard, if he hadn’t been so unprepared, maybe—he doesn’t know.
He’s not sure what it means to love someone like that, because it’s never been an option for him before.
But maybe he could have told Danny he did, and then tried to figure it out on his own later, so Danny wouldn’t have been hurt.
He wishes he had thought of that earlier.
“We should go on a hike with Buddy and Luna,” Danny says once they get the check, which takes forever; the waitress started avoiding their table after the third or fourth time Danny tried to keep talking with her instead of Sasha.
“There’s a ton of trails around here. And my mom and dad aren’t gonna be back until the afternoon, so we’ve got a lot of time to kill. ”
Sasha knows Danny’s trying to avoid being alone with him, and sure enough, the trail they wind up on seems unreasonably crowded for a Saturday morning, like Danny googled busiest trails in Newport Beach and picked the top result.
Wherever Sasha looks, he sees cyclists and joggers weaving around tourists and influencers, the latter barely glancing up from their phones, intent on finding just the right angle to get the Newport Bay shining like a ribbon behind them.
Danny stops to chat with almost everyone who has a dog, and it’s pretty much the exact same conversation over and over again: “What’s this guy’s name?
” and “How old is he?” followed by “Buddy and Luna,” endless small talk about behaviors and diets.
Sasha forces himself to tolerate it, to smile and nod at so many strangers, because he knows this is his fault.
And if this is what Danny needs to do to feel better, Sasha can deal with it.
Up to a point.
“What do you want to do now?” Danny asks when they’re in the car again, the lack of people around making him visibly anxious.
“We could go to the dog beach”—Buddy and Luna, conked out in the backseat, don’t even stir at the suggestion—“or we could, uh, play video games, or I could see if Patty’s free, we can do something with him—”
“Danny.”
Danny flinches, opening his mouth again; but before he can say anything, Sasha takes his hand.
It should be a hug. That’s what Danny had asked for after the high bar final in Rio, and he looks just as broken now as he did then, no matter how many smiles he’s scotch-taped over his hurt.
But Sasha isn’t brave enough to risk someone coming off the trail and seeing them; this is the best he can do while they’re still in the parking lot.
“I am sorry,” he murmurs, and that’s the best he can do, too, an apology instead of the words he should have said earlier. “I… I was surprised…”
He doesn’t know how to keep going without sounding like an asshole. But Danny seems to understand what he’s trying to say, because after a moment, he swallows and squeezes Sasha’s hand back.
Somehow, they make it through the rest of the morning, playing video games that don’t require them to talk to each other.
After a subdued lunch of leftover pizza, Danny asks if they can cuddle on the couch in the living room, and Sasha says yes almost before he’s finished the question.
If Danny had wanted him to run a marathon, he would have done it; he would have run until he had to crawl, desperate to burn off his guilt.
Instead, he holds Danny as they watch—something, he doesn’t know what.
He’s only paying attention to Danny’s profile, his fluttering eyelashes, the downturned corner of his mouth.
The living room feels far too quiet, even with the TV on, and Sasha has to keep fighting back the impulse to say he’s sorry again; all he’d be doing is breaking the silence and maybe Danny along with it.
The Hartmans return in the late afternoon, and Danny practically bolts off the couch to greet them.
Sasha follows, hanging back as Danny asks about their trip and the hotel, if they hit any traffic, if they went to the gallery.
He deflects his mom’s questions about how their evening was, and he mostly sounds convincing—although Sasha notices Diane looking curiously between them, like she can sense the awkwardness in the air.
She keeps glancing at them during dinner, too, which is why Sasha excuses himself early to pack. But once he’s up in the guest room, staring at his empty suitcase, he can’t bring himself to do it. He doesn’t want the trip to end, let alone on such a horrible note like this.
So when Danny knocks at his door and asks if he wants to go to the beach one last time, he says yes.
He’s expecting Danny to take them to the same beach as last weekend, but Danny heads in the opposite direction, driving a few minutes down the highway before pulling off and parking the car in a small lot almost hidden in the sandy scrub.
They follow a paved trail to a beach that extends further than Sasha can see: towering bluffs to his right and the ocean to his left, looking like it’s on fire as the sun sets into the surf.
With a start, he realizes he recognizes this beach, has almost a hundred pictures of it on his phone.
This is where Danny watches all those sunsets, where he’s sitting when he texts Sasha look at this or wish you were here with me.
And now Sasha is here, in one of Danny’s favorite places, feeling like shit because he doesn’t deserve it.
At least being by the ocean seems to make Danny calmer—he’s not rushing to fill in the silence as they walk along the sand, or striking up conversations with strangers to avoid talking to Sasha.
Though he wouldn’t have had much luck there: the beach is emptying out, children whining as they’re toweled off by harried parents, a line of stragglers trudging back up the trail with their chairs and coolers.
Yet some people are staying to watch the sunset, including a group of teenagers who aren’t fooling anyone with their water bottles.
Danny and Sasha keep walking until the shrieks and laughter fade away, until the scattered blankets become fewer and farther apart; eventually, they reach a stretch of sand that’s almost deserted, with no one near enough to pay the slightest attention to them.
Danny puts down a towel, and Sasha hesitates before sitting next to him, careful to leave a gap in case someone walks by. He can tell Danny notices—his eyes dart between their legs—but he just exhales and looks out at the ocean, which makes Sasha feel guiltier than if he’d said something.
They watch the sunset. Well, Danny does; Sasha mostly watches Danny, taking in his slumped shoulders and blank expression.
It’s like Rio all over again, but a thousand times worse, because Sasha’s the one who caused it.
He didn’t say I love you back, and now he won’t even sit next to Danny like a normal boyfriend.
He can’t go back in time and undo what happened this morning. But maybe…
He looks at the thin strip of towel between them.
There’s a lot less light now than there was a few minutes ago; he can barely see the pattern on the towel, never mind the other sunset-watchers in the distance.
He wonders if it it’s dark enough—safe enough—for him to be that normal boyfriend for Danny. Or at least pretend to be.
Slowly, his heart thumping in his throat, he shuffles closer to Danny until their thighs touch; then, before he can chicken out, he loops his arm around Danny’s and laces their fingers together.
It’s not much—the other couples on the beach were probably doing this already—yet even this scares the shit out of him, thinking about how easy it would be for someone to walk down the beach and see them like this.
But it’s worth it when Danny looks at him, surprise and gratitude in his expression. “Thanks,” he says, squeezing back.
Now Sasha has to keep an eye on their surroundings, but Danny visibly relaxes, and as the last sliver of the sun slips into the sea, he starts talking again.
“You usually get some time off in the spring, right? Like after the Russian Championships?”
Sasha nods.
“Well, maybe we could meet up somewhere? Like, in Europe? And go on a vacation?”