Epilogue
Silas
Three Years Later
Tampa, Florida
“When was the last time you checked the app?” Graham asks as I grab two more sandbags from my trunk.
“Two seconds ago. You wanna check yourself?”
“If we need to evacuate, I’d like to know as soon as possible.”
“It’s still optional,” I assure him. The path of the hurricane is pointed at Naples, well south of us. They’re under evacuation orders, but here by the bay, it’s only a flood watch. Hence the sandbags. I would have skipped them, but Graham wants to do this by the book.
It’s his first hurricane, not mine. He’s stocked the fridge and bought enough candles to burn down the house along with a comical amount of lube.
Fish, our one-eyed rescue Golden Doodle, named in honor of Graham’s celebrity crush and the guy who wrote the prize-winning article that set the empowering tone of our coming out to the senate and the country, barks at the window, demanding to be let out.
I learned Fish can’t be trusted around sandbags the last time I had to do this.
“Hiya boys.”
We turn at the voice of one of our neighbors, another former New Yorker, Claudia.
She’s in her forties, has big blonde hair, a leathery tan, and a love affair with floral prints.
Her husband isn’t with her, but Deano—as he likes to be called—is a police detective and works odd hours.
He reminds me of Joe Pesci in every mob movie the guy was ever in.
“Do you have an iPad charger I can borrow for a few hours.” she asks. “Mine up and quit on me.”
“Sure,” Graham says. “I’ll grab it. Need anything else? We have a lot of lighters.”
“I’m all set. I just want to download some shows in case we lose power.”
The wind is picking up, and she has to pull a strand of hair out of her mouth. When Graham goes inside, she sidles up to me. “He looks jumpy.”
“He’s already researching storm cellars for next time.”
She laughs. “What’s it been now? Two—three weeks? How’s it going?”
Graham just moved in full-time a few weeks ago, and how it’s going is fucking amazing.
She chuckles when my cheeks flush. “Honeymoon’s still on, huh? Good. Enjoy it. One day you’ll be sitting there, and he’ll breathe too loud, and you’ll want to smack him. These are the good times.”
Graham returns promptly with one of the iPad chargers and hands it over.
These are the good times for sure. In his white t-shirt and pale, yellow linen shorts, his tan is glowing.
He’s let his hair grow out some, and it falls in careless waves around his face.
He looks both younger, wiser, and happier than I’ve ever seen him.
Not to mention more beautiful than anyone I’ve ever known.
The universe couldn’t have picked a better soulmate for me. Such a pretty package. Such an infinite surprise.
“Thanks boys,” Claudia says. “Time to go make the hurricane chili.”
I raise a brow. “I haven’t heard about this.”
“Oh, I make it every time a storm comes through. It’s good luck.”
“Can he get that recipe?” Graham asks.
I grin.
“Sure, sugar. I’ll text you. Or better yet—come by for a bowl later.”
Graham looks horrified at the idea of braving the wind and rain for a treacherous journey next door.
“Thanks,” I tell her as she starts back to her house. “Let us know when it’s ready.”
Graham walks up to me, close enough to brush arms. “You’re not really considering walking in the storm. A power line could—”
I kiss him to shut him up. One loud smack that makes my point. I’m not meaning for it to lead to anything, but his grip on my shirt tells me it gave him ideas. I’d tell him to chill, but I like him like this. “Go make the margaritas,” I tell him. “I’ll be ten more minutes.”
“I need to call my dad,” he says, unfurling his fist. “He’s been blowing up my phone with storm warnings. Actually, maybe you should talk to him.”
“Margaritas. I’ll call him when I come in. I’ll let you decide whether I do that before or after I fuck you.”
“Hurry up, then.”
He leaves me to finish unloading the sandbags.
I stack them at the front door where water is most likely to enter the house.
Once I’m satisfied that the barrier is sufficient, I head around back and enter the house through the sliding doors on the raised deck.
The backyard has a downward slope and isn’t likely to flood.
The glass doors themselves are specifically designed to withstand wind and impact.
This is all shit I never had to think about before I moved here but was a major selling point of the house—how weatherproof it is.
It’s fifteen years old, so it’s seen its fair share of Gulf weather.
What Graham and his father are freaking out about are tornadoes.
There’s nothing I can say to make either of them feel any better about those.
Fish jumps at me when I come inside. I put my arms around his thick neck and kiss his curly head. “Is daddy making you nervous, bud?” I switch my focus to Graham. “You’ve got him all worked up.”
“It’s not that many margaritas,” he’s saying into his phone. “Here’s Silas.”
I take the phone from Graham and put it up to my ear. “Hey, Dad.”
Paul starts right in on me. “If you leave in an hour, I can fly you here. You can even bring the dog.”
“I think we’re gonna be good,” I try to assure him.
“If you get an evacuation order, can you get to the airport?”
“If we get the order, we’ve got a route all mapped out,” I tell him.
Graham’s dad lasted less than forty-eight hours before reaching out to his son and apologizing profusely for ever making him think he wasn’t welcome in his own home.
Little did Graham know, he’d done the same with Theresa, which she told us that night after we left the Eastmoor, but her rebel streak was a mile wide, and she’d told him to fuck off, never looking back.
Graham, however, daddy’s boy that he is, dissolved into a puddle of relieved tears, which told me he’d been bluffing about how well he was holding up.
In my defense, I suspected it, but once I knew for sure, I did everything I could to make sure the co-dependent father-son pair were reconciled.
They talk every day. Usually more than once. It’s as adorable as it is annoying.
Now that I know what they mean to each other, I realize what Graham was risking when he told Paul he wanted to be with me.
His mother is a different story. I’ve met her, but she’s a cool customer and is happy to pretend I don’t exist. The feeling is mutual.
Paul is suffering some separation anxiety as well as hurricane stress. “Can you text me the route?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say, filling Fish’s water bowl at the sink. Graham is next to me, squeezing a can of concentrated lime juice into a large plastic pitcher. “You want me to send you our margarita recipe? It might help you get through the night.”
He laughs. “Okay, okay. I’ll let you go finish your prep.”
“I’ll keep him safe. Promise. We’ll update you.”
“Thanks, son. Be safe.”
“We will.”
I hand the phone back to Graham who says his goodbye and hangs up. “You two are ridiculous,” I tell him. “I hope we never have a son.”
“Ouch.”
“Just saying. I need attention, too.”
“In two minutes, you’ll have my full attention,” Graham promises. “Do what you will with that.”
“I say we build a fort and have a sword fight.”
He laughs, but a thunderclap sounds, and he stops abruptly. The power flickers but stays on. I rub his back as he stirs a bottle of beer into the pitcher. “Or I could give you a massage.”
“Your massages hurt.”
“They’re meant to be therapeutic.”
“They leave bruises.”
“They do not,” I argue.
“Feels like it,” he mumbles.
“I’m not studying to be a masseuse. I’m studying to be a physical therapist.” And I only have two years left to go. College takes forever even when you don’t have to work full-time. Or at all.
Gibson Hayes’s final paycheck to me was larger, all right. Two point five million dollars more than I expected. I’d cried when it hit my bank account, and then, of course, I immediately wanted him to take all of it back.
Christian talked me out of it, explaining it wasn’t charity—or an insult to my pride—it was what I deserved for what Gibson and his ex-wife put me through. Damages.
Graham had balked at the amount, too, but ultimately supported my accepting the money. It’s given us the fresh start we wanted, and infinite opportunities to build a future that makes sense for us.
Right now, Graham is working with the ACLU of all places, practicing his passion—constitutional law. The pay isn’t much for a lawyer, but my man is all about rights. Civil rights, equal rights, the Bill of Rights. All the rights.
I was asked about a year after Graham came out whether I thought I influenced his supposedly “stark” position changes in the senate.
Fischer was doing another piece for a different magazine, which was a series of profiles in courage in politics.
I said I didn’t think it was me that did it. Not directly.
Growing up as a gay kid in the Catholic church in a very public Catholic family had Graham questioning everything at a young age.
He’s about as moderate a person as the citizens of New York voted for.
The party wielded a sizable amount of influence in shaping him a certain way once he was running for the senate, and his father’s vested interests played no small part, but as he explained to Fischer for the article, once Graham’s empathy was tapped—through knowing and falling in love with me—he began to see injustices he couldn’t unsee.
If he’d actually wanted to be a career politician, I seriously doubt he could have done it without changing party affiliation, but as good as he was at publicity, he doesn’t like dealing with the press. Also, having people comment about him online seriously fucked with his mental health.