247 P.M.
WINSLOW
It happened again. Humiliation radiated from his chest to the top of his head as the reality smacked him in the gut.
He knew it might happen again, but until that morning, he hoped it had been a one-off.
An anomaly. A little bladder infection that would come and go.
He’d started drinking cranberry juice at the office, secretly of course, pouring it into that awful Yeti travel mug his executive assistant bought him for Christmas last year.
I finally decided to take your advice and hydrate more.
Oh yes, I can feel the difference already.
He couldn’t. There was no difference, only near misses every few days, even after he cut back on his favorite thing—caffeine.
But this morning, when he left the suite to get some fresh air (and get away from a sobbing, begging Miguel), he made his way to the bridge deck, then, suddenly desperate to get to the bathroom, he spun on his heel and sped up to get back to their room.
He met Miguel, who clearly wasn’t going to give him the space he needed, in the hallway.
Brushing past him, he hurried along with his husband now in hot pursuit.
Desperation built, knowing that at any moment he might lose the battle.
In the end, he had, but thankfully, it was just as he closed the en suite door behind him.
He stood there, holding his dripping clothes in the shower, disgusted with himself.
Afraid. Overwhelmed with grief. Trying to sort out how to hide these wet clothes from Miguel.
In the end, all the confusion created by Miguel overreacting allowed for the assumption that he’d soaked them when he rushed out of the shower to open the door.
Thank God for small mercies. He had gotten away with it.
But the fact that it had happened again, along with the headaches and his occasional memory blips—and one very big memory blip that would ruin him—suggested he was going the way of his father.
And he knew from watching his father’s decline that it would be excruciatingly slow and undignified, not to mention painful for everyone around him.
Everyone he knew would forget the man he was, remembering him as a confused, frail old man who didn’t even have command of his own bladder.
And now, he sat on the upper deck on the yacht, alone, sipping a vodka and cranberry juice, watching a bird soar high above.
He promised Miguel he would commit to talking at exactly four o’clock, telling him he needed time to think first. Miguel agreed to it.
Of course he agreed to it. He’d been lying to him for weeks now.
Not to mention the fact that the stupid bugger had gone and signed what he was certain was an iron-clad contract without letting Winslow’s personal lawyer, Jagmeet, look it over for him.
He didn’t trust that Enid woman as far as he could toss her.
Jagmeet would’ve spotted any problems immediately, and they could’ve used it to negotiate more favorable terms.
His only consolation (and it was of the most minute and petty variety) was that he had been right about Miguel.
He knew something had happened when Miguel stormed off and spent the night at the Ritz.
He just didn’t realize how bad it would be.
And now that he knew, he wished he didn’t.
He actually would have preferred it if Miguel had cheated.
That would’ve been a blip on the radar. A little bump in the road for them compared to what was.
And not just because he couldn’t stand the thought of Miguel living on another continent most of the time, but because each day since Miguel had signed the contract had been a lie.
But that didn’t matter now. It was done.
He would end things and Miguel would go.
He’d be devastated, and for that, Winslow felt horrible, but in time Miguel would heal.
He’d throw himself into his thrilling new project, and eventually he’d meet someone (probably someone young and gorgeous and silly), and he’d move on with his life. As he should.
He lifted the drink to his lips, then set it down when the fear of another accident crept up on him.
When Miguel confessed, Winslow originally thought he’d end their marriage.
Set him free. But after it happened, he realized there was a much quicker, easier path to freedom.
And he would take it. He was Norman in A Star is Born, and Miguel was his ever-loving Esther, who would be better off without him.
He’d seen every version of the film— his favorite was the 1954 offering with Judy Garland and Talbot Mason.
The audience knows Norman drowned himself, and you don’t have to see him do it to feel his pain.
Bradley Cooper’s way out in the latest remake was too brutal for both Miguel and Winslow.
The way he yanked that garage door down was too violent. So final. But then again, so was death.
Winslow would take the cowardly way out like the studio that produced the 1976 remake with Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson had done— where the audience doesn’t know if he did it on purpose or not.
In the end, it would be an act of kindness.
In the film, the ambiguity allowed Barbara’s Esther to choose a life free of guilt, even though her grief would go with her.
And so that’s what Winslow would do too. And he would do it right away.
He knew what would happen if he tried to fight the disease.
There was no winning. Only prolonging the pain and sadness for everyone around him.
What happened to him this morning was exactly what happened to his father.
It was the first sign of something malignant and terrible that swept through his brain at the age of sixty-four, and completely decimated the strong, highly-capable, incredibly intelligent man he was by the time he was sixty-eight.
Next came the shuffling feet, which Winslow had been fighting for a few weeks already.
He forced his legs to make proper strides even though there were days his feet felt like magnets resisting the pull of the floor.
It would only be a matter of time before he wouldn’t even know his strides had grown too short, his posture bent, his feet refusing to leave the ground again.
His father’s downfall had been a shock to everyone who knew him.
It was the worst thing Winslow had ever seen—once the paragon of dignity and power, in a house robe and pajamas in the middle of a workday when he should have been dressed in his suit sitting behind his heavy walnut desk.
Winslow knew there was a diaper under all that fabric, but he chose not to think about that as he smiled patiently at the man who no longer recognized him.
Shall we play some checkers? Chess was out of the question.
No? All right then. What if we take a turn around the garden?
It’s a lovely day. My name is Winslow. Yes, it’s a pleasure to meet you too.
Winslow wasn’t about to go down that way.
He wouldn’t put his family through it. His mother was in her nineties.
The last thing she needed was to have to go through that again, only watching her son disappear by the day instead of her husband.
And he wouldn’t put Miguel through it. It would be cruel.
Hideously cruel, because Miguel would insist on staying if he knew.
He’d waste the last decade of his youth playing nursemaid to Winslow when he should have been off making his dreams come true.
He would have to act fast and make it look like an accident, because if Miguel ever discovered the truth, he would never forgive himself.
Ever. So there would be no getting a diagnosis.
No lengthy conversations about treatments and care facilities and medically-assisted deaths.
Lord, how they would fight about that last one.
Miguel, who grew up Catholic and still held onto a few of their bigger concepts, would be horrified.
He would refuse to hold his hand at the end, and Winslow would say he was going do it anyway, and Miguel would scream at him that he didn’t love him if he preferred to be dead than with him.
They’d both say things they didn’t mean and it would all be so complicated when it didn’t have to be.
He stared out at the water in the late afternoon sun. Yes, this was as perfect a place as any to have one final farewell. First, he would make Miguel’s dream come true. Then he would duck out.
It would be simple. Quick. Blameless.
It would end as quickly and beautifully as it had begun.
SIXTEEN YEARS EARLIER
It had taken one glance, one tiny moment that could’ve just as easily not happened if one or the other of them hadn’t looked at that exact second.
One locking of eyes through a storefront window, and Winslow was madly in love.
He was on a vacation in Barcelona, and had been standing inside a Louis Vuitton, trying to decide if he wanted a charcoal leather messenger bag, when he noticed a young man with a deep bronze tan and thick, black hair peering into the shop’s window.
It was a cool, cloudy day and Winslow had ducked inside the shop when it started to drizzle.
He didn’t need a messenger bag. He didn’t need anything, but he had just broken up with Vlad, a man who he thought was the love of his life, so his solo trip to Spain was meant as a little pick-me-up.
He had intended to escape the dreary English weather and spend every day at the beach, getting drunk on sangria while he worked on his tan.
But like so many things in life, it didn’t turn out the way he had hoped, the gray skies following him like an orphaned baby duck.
Miguel was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, his hair and shoulders wet from the rain.
Winslow’s face heated up when he noticed that the young man was smiling at him, and at first, he thought perhaps he was looking at someone else.
Surely that grin must be reserved for some hot young store clerk he hooked up with the night before.
Winslow quickly glanced over his shoulder to see who this gorgeous specimen was actually looking at, only to discover it was, in fact, him.
He swallowed hard, then held up the bag with a question on his face.
The young man shook his head, then pulled open the door and marched inside, his light brown Prada driving shoes squeaking on the marble floor.
“That’s too boxy for your frame. And no one can tell it’s even from Louis Vuitton.
” Lifting a bag with the designer’s signature monogrammed canvas, his accent slid more toward Cuban than American as he said, “This says you finally made it.”
“And who says I want to look like I finally made it?” Winslow asked.
He was playing it cool, or more accurately, doing his best to act like someone who knew how to play it cool, even though his heart was pounding like he’d just done three lines of coke.
Not that he did coke anymore. Coke was for Ivy League college kids.
Not for someone who was getting to the age when his doctor would soon ask him to turn his head and cough.
“Everyone wants to look like they made it,” Miguel answered. He gave Winslow an appraising once-over, then said, “But you haven’t just arrived, have you? You’ve been here your entire life.”
“Here in Spain?”
“No, here,” he said, gesturing around the store.
Winslow put the bag down, no longer in need of retail therapy. “I rarely shop.”
“But you’ve always had the means to do so.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad one in your books?” Winslow asked.
Miguel’s lips curved upward on both sides, allowing the most attractive dimples to pop out as if gifting Winslow with one of nature’s greatest treasures. “It depends on if you’re one of those old money men who hoards it or if you’re the type to show a guy a good time.”
“Is that your way of getting me to ask you out?”
“Would it work?”
“Not if you were anyone else.”
“There’s a braseria a few blocks from here where they dry age the beef for sixty days. I heard it’s amazing.”
“Well then,” Winslow said, a voice in the back of his mind already saying, Vlad who? “We should go find out if the rumors are true.”