Chapter 25 #2
Heath ascended. He’d said it as summah yahd pahties.
“What’s something you directly remember?”
Evan popped a loaded tuna roll into his mouth, and a blissful expression relaxed his features.
Heath tried to think of anything in the world that made him feel that content.
Rainy autumn days curled up on the couch with a book, certainly.
A fantastic tiramisu. Italian nona fantastic, not something out of a supermarket freezer section.
His mind unhelpfully offered waking up with Evan next to him, and he swallowed hard. He would not be following that rabbit. No, sir.
“I remember my grandmother taking me to the beach, or playground, or whatever while Mom worked. My grandfather did appliance repair and refused to retire until he died, so it was me and Gram most days.”
“What was she like?”
“A fucking drill sergeant. Kids in the neighborhood gave her a wide berth, because she called them on their bullshit if they were up to something—and everyone was up to something. There was nothing else to do.”
“What about your mom?”
Everything about Evan softened at that question, and Heath pictured him again as a little boy with shocking red hair and big hazel eyes, looking up at a woman he clearly adored. It was heartbreaking to think of all the years he’d had to spend without her.
He wasn’t close to his mother in the same way he’d been with Dad, but they spoke often, and he was always visiting for one thing or another.
Still, he understood the hole left behind when special people disappeared from your life, and he’d started to recognize the ways Evan had tried to fill those pockets of emptiness.
“She was funny. And kind. Worked her ass off. She’s also mostly responsible for this.” He tugged a lock of his hair, and Heath fell in love with a woman for the first time in his life. Bless her for giving the world another redheaded man.
“She’d take me to Castle Island, and we’d watch the planes at Logan. We’d get ice cream, and she’d make up stories about the flights. Where they were going or coming back from. Places she’d read about and wanted to see one day. She always had her nose in a book. Kind of like you.”
A lump formed in Heath’s throat. Evan’s melancholy fondness was painfully sweet, but it was the kind of like you that sent flutters through his chest. Terrible, awful, evil flutters.
“It was simple, y’know? I look at my life now and…”
“I’m sure she’d be proud of you.”
He chuckled, and the edge was brittle. “She’d have kicked my ass long before I got to where I am now.”
“What? Why?”
“She wanted me to follow my dreams. Find my passions and all that shit. Be happy.”
“You’re not happy?”
Evan’s eyes answered for him. In them, Heath saw a tired man drawn too thin. Someone who maintained appearances and shoved aside what didn’t serve the image he wanted to portray. He was handsome and successful, but happy? Not nearly enough.
It reminded him of Christian, oddly enough. Of the version he’d met in school, before the weight of expectations took their toll.
The kid he’d met wanted to be treated like everyone else, but didn’t actually know what that meant.
He’d tried to fit in, but couldn’t fathom what it was to live a life of average means.
Heath was there on scholarships, loans, and a steady diet of ramen.
Christian was there because his father was an alum and donated more yearly than Heath would make in his lifetime.
They were not the same. They couldn’t be.
The sun had dipped well beyond the horizon, washing the sky in fading pastels.
If things had gone according to plan, he would now know whether his silly little crush on Christian had held any water.
Either they’d be together, or he would have been on an early flight home, wondering who he might talk to about taking on an assumed identity.
“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?”
Terrible goddamn liar.
Heath looked at the man who was at the romantic table with him.
The one who’d just shared a part of himself he admitted to keeping hidden away from most people.
He felt guilty for letting his mind wander.
While the reasons they were there weren’t identical, they both involved other people who were surely front of mind more than they deserved to be.
“Yup,” he admitted, popping the P.
Evan’s outer shell returned, masking the softness behind the devil-may-care aloofness he wore like hardened armor. “Yeah, I get it. This isn’t even close to the vacation you’d planned.”
No, it wasn’t. It was better. Every moment of it. So naturally he’d gone and ruined it with careless introspection.
Christian wasn’t here, and the more Heath thought about it, the stronger the feeling he never deserved to be. Loathe though he was to admit it, Andres was right. This ghosting was a favor. Not only because of Evan, while also entirely because of him.
A week with this beautiful man, in this unspoiled paradise, had accomplished what no one and nothing else had been capable of: showing him what it was supposed to be like.
For all his long-held fantastical notions of love and comfort, he clearly couldn’t have picked either of them out of a lineup.
Not then, anyway, but now? Now his face stung from having been slapped soundly upon both cheeks.
Two mornings of waking with Evan beside him had broken the illusion.
Try though he might, he couldn’t picture the scene with Christian in it.
Couldn’t, and didn’t want to, because it was perfect with Evan.
Everything was perfect with him, even the bickering.
This was the feeling of contentment, and though likely fleeting, he wanted to savor it.
Savor and remember, because it was time to swear an oath he damned well intended to keep.
He was never accepting less than this feeling again.