Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
So, it started with me jumping off a cliff.
It was amazing. I ran. I leapt. And I didn't even notice for a while. There was the sky and it was nice and warm and weightless. Suddenly, I couldn't remember what anything else felt like.
That's when I saw you. Right next to me, smiling.
You didn't know it, and you still don't, but you did something I've only dreamed about for years.
You made life easier.
But easy isn't real, right? It's an illusion.
This feeling will fade.
But it didn't. You didn't.
The ground never met me after walking with you through the clouds.
Years later and I'm still here.
Waiting for you again.
Waiting for another smile.
Waiting for it to be easy.
Jack wished he hadn't read it.
He wished he'd just stayed in bed, arms wrapped around Benny's sleeping form and stayed happy in the fact that the night before had been one of the best of his life.
That the party had been a total success, he'd been surrounded by noise, and it was all thanks to a beautiful man who danced horribly to eighties rock.
But that night couldn’t last forever.
The next day came.
With it, a reminder of what Carol had said at the party before she’d left in a huff.
“I finally read it,” she'd said, without a single segue in sight.
“You know, the 'fan-favorite' blog post about him. About Guy. I get why it made so many people go back and try to solve the mystery of who he is.” She'd smiled that smile.
The one that warned any other predators around that she was going for the kill.
Not them. “It was short and sweet and, considering Benny only wrote it—what, five months ago?—extremely intriguing.” She'd over-sighed, all dramatics.
“The rest of us would only be so lucky to feel a love like that.”
Then Carol had looked pointedly behind her at the table Benny and Marcus were sitting at. Laughing and smiling.
It hadn’t bothered Jack.
At least, not then.
“I guess we’re lucky,” he'd said, simply.
After that, he'd shaken the comment off and enjoyed the rest of the night.
Who cared what Carol the Destroyer of Worlds Robertson said?
Everyone had already caught wind of how the town hadn’t cared about her attempt at a separate party.
They’d chosen Cassidy’s Place.
They’d chosen Benny.
She was just pissed.
Jack wished he’d been as firm in his stance in the light of the next morning. But his curiosity had finally needled through his resolve.
Jack had finally, finally read the post everyone seemed to have loved the most about Guy.
About Benny being in love with Guy.
And Jack had hated it.
Just as much as he hated that Carol had goaded him into reading it.
She'd poisoned him with the truth.
And there was no cure for the fucking truth.
Jack wasn't Guy. He'd just been the bartender who had used a man's secret to his advantage. Sure, they had gotten closer—real close—but the one thing they hadn’t done?
Talked about them.
About what they meant to each other.
About what happened after the festival.
About the future.
About…Marcus Golden Boy Robertson.
Being attracted to Marcus wasn’t the same as Benny being in love with him.
After the short-but-sweet blog post?
Well, Jack knew Benny enough to understand that that meant something.
That he might not have told Marcus about his being Guy, but Benny also hadn’t told Jack what Jack meant to him either.
Jack also hadn’t asked.
Maybe that was why he’d read the post, led to dirty water to drink by Carol. Part of Jack knew Benny couldn’t be with him. Wouldn’t be with him.
Not the way he would have been with Guy.
Jack had closed the browser on his laptop, a flash of The One Who Said Nothing the last thing he saw before he got up and dressed.
Could he even be upset?
Benny and he had made a deal—an agreement—and they’d kept it so far. They’d just made it a bit spicier along the way. A little more interesting than faking it only in public.
And they’d never addressed the extra things.
Was it Benny’s fault if Jack had started feeling more?
No.
No. It was Jack’s.
This feeling—this epiphany—stayed with Jack throughout the day.
From when Benny woke, through breakfast, to meeting up with Ethan to get ready for the parade, and up to Callum and Dewey helping him hook up their float. He smiled when he needed, he kept quiet when he could.
The entire time he felt like an idiot.
An idiot who could have asked at any time what they were but instead never had.
Now?
Now wasn’t the time.
Though, Benny must have realized something was wrong. During the lull between everyone getting ready for the parade procession to start, Benny lowered his voice and asked if he was okay.
Jack had nodded, their Jaws-themed float as their backdrop making the whole situation seem more ridiculous.
“You seem kind of quiet, is all,” Benny added. “I thought you'd at least comment on the Movers and Shakers' float.” He nodded to the float directly in front of them.
The Movers and Shakers was a historical club that was big on reenactments.
They'd taken that kink and created a hodgepodge of weird decisions for their float.
For some reason they'd tried to make a miniature Lincoln Monument by putting papier-maché around a lawn chair and then had fake-Lincoln holding stuffed dolphins and squids.
Jack definitely had thoughts about the float. Same as the local accounting and tax firm's trying to do a twist on the Tom Hank’s movie Splash, but instead of having the mermaid part emphasized, they’d just put a lot of Tom Hanks cutouts among fake carboard waves.
He'd almost been jolted out of his pissy mood long enough to ask for a selfie with the absolute shit show that the Rotary Club put up.
They must have run out of time or funds—or just the will to care.
All they had done was take their winter-themed float that they parked outside of the grocery store the week before Christmas and added rolls of blue streamers around their snowflakes while their painted paper fish were wrapped around their still-erect fake fir trees.
Of course Jack had wanted to talk about it all, even the good floats he'd seen when they were walking up, but there was a stone that had formed in his stomach after reading Benny's blog post.
It was weighing all of his words down.
Now it took everything Jack had to roll it away enough to give the most basic responses. Which, apparently, he wasn’t doing a good job of.
“I'm a bit tired after last night is all,” he finally said, which wasn’t entirely untrue. “I think I talked to more people at the party than I have all year.”
Benny searched his expression.
Jack wasn’t sure what he found.
Now he realized that maybe he’d never been able to actually read Benny. Maybe it had been his ego instead. Even wearing his billowing pirate’s shirt and eyepatch, Jack couldn’t see the humor anymore.
Not around Marcus Robertson.
It made the fact that Jack was the one lying across the front of Roger’s boat, wearing a merman’s fin hanging low on his hips and a coconut bikini top, grate against his nerves more than it would have otherwise.
Jack was grateful when a bell sounded somewhere up the street.
Dixon was fast. He hustled over, matching coconut bra clacking as he made it to the front of the boat.
“Watch out, Benny,” he yelled out. “Merman numero uno is ready to shine!”
Benny gave Jack one more look before moving out of the way. He and Santana took their stations at either side of the middle and adjusted their respective pirate outfits. Dixon laid out like he and Jack were supposed to and pulled his fin down over his bare feet.
Dewey and several volunteer bar patrons hurried to their places next to the boat.
Most wore shirts with the bar's logo on them, and all had a pint glass in one hand and their cell phones out in the other.
Callum made a whooping noise from the rolled down driver's side window of Jack's truck in front.
Jack looked back at Benny one more time. He was adjusting the stuffed parrot on his shoulder and holding the plastic sword Justus had loaned him in his other hand. Santana said something he didn't catch and Benny laughed.
Everyone was excited.
Dixon had even started talking about next year's parade as they were putting on their body glitter earlier.
Jack should have been excited right there with him.
Cassidy’s Place was finally getting its groove back.
Yet, Jack couldn’t help but focus on the most important part Dixon had glazed over in his excitement.
Next year, Benny won’t be here.
It only made the stone in Jack’s gut feel like a boulder.
One he knew he couldn’t move.
* * *
That afternoon Arbor Bay High's auditorium was prepped and ready for the pageant rehearsal, but with a vibe that was a far cry from the fun and lightly chaotic parade.
The mood was strict, almost military-like as contestants were told where to go, what to do, and to do it just like this by Carol Robertson herself.
Still, Jack and Benny had already been stopped four different times and told—in four different ways—that Cassidy's Place had had the funniest float. The mermen had been a total hit, while the pirates who had been with them had made the float feel more like a play than a decoration. It hadn’t been the cleverest thing, certainly not the most thought out, but Jack had been pleasantly surprised at the positive reception.
Then again, Benny had put together almost everything, so maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
Jack had a feeling that Benny wasn’t just good at writing his feelings on the internet, but really and truly was great at his event planning jobs.
He liked to make special days shine?
If the party and the parade were any indication of his thoughtfulness and skill, then having him as an official planner would be something to really see.
Thinking about Benny’s job, about their future, took Jack’s already-dangling mood and dropped it farther.
And he knew Benny noticed, just like he had at the parade.
Still, he didn’t say a word.
Not after Jack’s lame excuse about being tired.