Chapter 26 – Luke
LUKE
By five-thirty Friday evening, Luke was dressed and standing in the hotel hallway, the low hum of voices bleeding through the closed doors ahead of him.
He checked his phone.
Still nothing from Jack since the morning text: “Happy birthday to the sexiest man in Colorado.”
It's fine, he told himself. It's early. He said he'd be here. “Not worrying” was high on his own strategic plan for the evening, at least this early.
He put the phone away and opened the door.
Also high on his list: Enjoy the party being given to him by people who loved him.
If Jack ended up being involved, that would be great.
If not… well, this might push Luke over the line of doubt and into full acceptance that this thing wasn't going to work out, and he’d have to end it rather than continue like this.
With his “enjoy the party” mindset, Luke opened the door to the ballroom and immediately smelled sugar and floral. The flowers Mara had placed on every table, pale pink and cream, were so exactly right that Luke stood in the doorway for a moment, taking it in.
Swingin’ Sinatra played on the speakers.
The barman was already busy.
And late-May evening light was shining gold through the tall windows.
"Happy Birthday, Uncle Luke!" Nita came running around a table, with Marco following at a more dignified pace. They both grabbed Luke around the waist.
"Did you see the cake?" Nita demanded. "I did the sugar flowers on top. Grandma Patty helped, but mostly me."
"They're perfect," Luke said. "Almost as pretty as you."
By six, the room had filled. Dale and Evan arrived in the middle of the pack, one of them louder than anyone else combined, the other his usual quiet self. Amir showed up with a gift basket stuffed with protein powder and energy drinks, grinning like he'd done something hilarious.
"You trying to tell me something?" Luke asked.
"Just that you gotta be sure to maintain, now that you're old, Boss."
The room laughed. Luke laughed. Someone pressed a club soda into his hand before he could go looking for one.
"Jack get held up?" the same someone asked.
"Yeah," Luke said. "Work thing." Easy. Practiced. The smile held.
But he'd checked the door twice already.
He danced with Suze, her wife Molls watching from a chair, looking slightly bored, like she usually did, even when she wasn’t.
"You look good, kid," Suze said.
"I feel good," he said, which was mostly true.
She was quiet for a bar or two, then said, "Lotta folks in this room who love you."
"I know."
"That's not a small thing."
"It's not," he agreed. He felt it, the warmth of the room, the realness of these people. He also kept feeling the door at his back.
He didn't say that to Suze. He smiled and meant it, kept dancing, and told himself to stop checking the damn door.
The evening moved. Dale's story about the first time he and Evan skied Calder Ridge.
The cake, forty candles, Nita blowing out three of them before Luke could lean in.
Julio's playlist climbing through Motown into disco, shoes coming off, the space between tables opening into a dance floor.
Alex and the gay ski gang mixing in, fabulous as ever, having a better time than anyone.
At some point, he drifted toward Mara on the pretense of refilling his water. They stood together watching the room.
She raised her eyebrows.
Luke shrugged once.
She put her hand briefly on his arm.
"It's a great party," he said. "You did an amazing job."
"You good?"
"Yeah."
He was not entirely good. He was forty years old at his own birthday party, watching the door like a teenager, aware of how ridiculous that was and unable to stop.
He was spinning Patty under his arm, and she was laughing, light on her feet, when his phone vibrated.
It was "September" by Earth, Wind, and Fire. Half the room was singing along. “Ba-de-ahh, say, do you remember…?”
He kept dancing. He held it together until the song ended, then excused himself with a strained smile and walked out into the hallway.
Nervously, sure who was texting and what the text said, but still hoping—hoping—he was wrong, Luke looked at his phone.
Jack's name was on the screen.
“I can't get away. I'm really sorry. Have a great night.”
He read it once. Then he called.
It rang four times and went to voicemail.
Luke stood in the hallway and looked at the wall till his eyes crossed. The hotel wallpaper had some inoffensive pattern that seemed to animate a bit as he fixed on it. He breathed.
Then he called again.
Voicemail again.
Something hot moved through him, fast and clean, and he let it move through.
He called a third time, knowing he would get voicemail. He needed one more irrefutable point of evidence before he could force himself to turn this corner with Jack. The one that was now unavoidable.
He put the phone in his pocket.
For a minute, maybe two, he stood still and let himself be furious.
He walked to the storage closet farthest down the hall, found it open, went inside, and screamed as loud as he could into a stack of fresh towels in anger more than pain.
That fucking asshole. That was the thought. He didn't dress it up. He let it be exactly what it was, flaming mad in a janitor’s closet on his fortieth birthday.
Because this was what Jack did, the presence, the warmth, the full-beam attention, and then the withdrawal. The choosing of the next necessary thing. He'd felt it building the way you feel the weather changing, and then deliberately looked away.
And wasn't that the other thing? The pattern Suze had pointed at more than once. The way Luke found a good man and waited for the floor to fall out, and then behaved in ways that made sure it did. The way he kept enough distance made the abandonment inevitable.
But his father leaving. How was that his fault? He was 12, and he could still remember sitting on his bed, still in uniform after a Little League game, when he hit two home runs and couldn’t wait to rush home and share the news. But no one was there.
And Jack leaving the first time? No one’s fault, right?
Except it started Luke on an endless path of casting every decent guy he dated in the role of Person Who Would Eventually Leave.
And here he was, having done it again.
He thought about that Christmas twenty-four years ago, waiting. Jack had said he'd come home for the holiday break. He hadn't. Spring break, nothing. Then the calls stopped, and Luke had told himself he was fine. He would spend years actually getting there.
And then Jack walked back into The Ridge, and Luke had opened every door, easy as breathing, like the lesson hadn't already been taught.
He’d wanted this so badly. That’s what hurt the most.
But Jack was still an asshole.
Okay. Enough.
He stepped out of the closet, washed his face in a men’s room, and gave himself a pep talk in the mirror. He was done negotiating with himself about what he needed. Done being cool with it. Done twisting himself small to fit around someone else's limitations.
He wanted to be chosen—above the meeting, above the mission, above the next necessary thing. He'd spent his whole life telling himself that wanting it was too much, that a man as capable and self-sufficient as he was had no business needing it.
But now, he was done with that story.
He was done with Jack.
He was done taking a backseat to whoever came along next.
He straightened as he walked down the hall, put on the real smile, not the performed one, the real one. The one that had gotten him through genuinely terrible things, and sashayed back into his birthday party.
He first stopped at Suze and Molls’ table, where most of the skiing gay foursome had gathered. He relaxed into Molls’ hug, and they all argued ceaselessly about why Taylor’s latest album was better than the previous one.
Perfect, Luke thought.
He saw Mara across the room, got up, did a quick disco “bump” with Dale and Evan on the dance floor, and took a big forkful of somebody’s birthday cake that had been left on a table.
"I'm sorry, baby," Mara said when he got to her, immediately placing her hand on his arm.
"It's all right. I'll be fine."
"Luke—"
"I mean it, Mar." He looked around the room at the flowers, the people, at what was left of a really good night. "Look at this beautiful party. You did an incredible job. Thank you."
"Do you want me to stay?"
"No. Go home. Get the kids to bed." He squeezed her hand. "It sucks that he didn’t come, don’t get me wrong. But I'm good."
She held his gaze and looked for the lie. He let her look.
"Okay," she said, convinced enough.
He watched Julio bundle up the kids, said goodbye to the last of the stragglers, and let Patty tell him birthday boys don't clean up. She kissed his cheek.
He got his jacket. He took one last look at the room, saw the empty chair at his table, pushed it under the table, turned his back to it, and left.
He drove home with the windows down, the May night cool enough to remind you it wasn’t summer yet.
He didn't turn on many lights in the house. He sat on the couch with Marley's head in his lap and let himself come down from the party, the hallway, the three voicemails, all of it.
The anger had moved through and gone. That was the thing about actually feeling something instead of rooting around it—it didn't stay long. He wasn't furious anymore. Now, he was tired and clear and forty years old.
The party had been good. He was keeping that. The friends, the love, and the killer gourmet cookies his mystery boss always sent.
He’d had six weeks of something real with Jack. He was keeping that too, because it had been real, and pretending otherwise would be its own kind of lie.
What he was setting aside was the story about the exception.
The version where Luke Calder was the thing that finally taught Jack Garrison to stay.
He'd been so careful not to believe that story, but then he'd bought it anyway, the way you do when you want something so bad while you're telling yourself you don't.
He wasn't going to do that anymore. He was allowed to need what he needed and to stop accepting less.
His phone buzzed.
Suze: “You okay, kid?”
He typed back.
“Yeah. Thanks for being there. It meant a lot.”
Mara: “I love you. Call me if you need anything tonight.”
Amir: “Great party, Boss. Sorry, your man didn't show.”
Luke set the phone face down on the coffee table, turned off the lights, and went to bed.