Chapter Fourteen #4
Chris pulled away to look at him quizzically. “You never say that.”
Matty smiled down at the ground. “I’m going to have to start. I, uh, I called Tabitha.”
A wide smile broke out on Chris’s face. “Aw, yay!”
“Yeah, we’re meeting up over winter break.”
“Good. She misses you.”
Matty laughed. “Way to ruin the suspense. There was going to be a tearful dramatic reunion and everything.”
Chris ruffled his hair, though he tried to duck away from it. “Love doesn’t need to be dramatic.”
“As long as there’s a happy end,” Matty agreed.
The car pulled up, and Matty got in. Chris waved goodbye, and he and Luca waited until they were out of sight.
Chris let out a long breath.
“How are you feeling?” Luca asked.
“I don’t even know what I’m feeling, let alone how.”
“Would you rather go to the hotel? We do not have to—”
“No way,” Chris said. “We have some time left before curfew. And I’ve been looking forward to spending time with you all day. It got me through saying those things to my parents.”
Luca’s stupid heart pounded just for him again.
“Okay, well. Not an easy task, planning a fun thing to do in town for a Montreal native. But I did my best.” He’d done his best to find as unromantic an activity as he could.
No boat rides, no restaurants, no arnica gel massages.
Outdoors, fresh air, meaning Luca couldn’t smell Chris’s pomegranate deodorant, and in the relative dark, meaning he couldn’t ogle Chris in his suit.
Luca was going to salvage this friendship if it killed him.
They caught an Uber to the botanical gardens. When he heard the destination, Chris bounced in his seat with excitement.
“Oh, I’ve never been there! Cool!”
“We got very lucky,” Luca explained. “They’re doing a special evening opening for the holiday today. Usually, they don’t stay open past dark after October.”
“The holiday?” Chris asked, then smacked himself on the forehead. “It’s Remembrance Day! How could I forget!”
“We live in the US,” Luca pointed out. He hadn’t known Remembrance Day existed until thirty minutes before the game started.
“But it’s a holiday, and I yelled at my family.”
“They yelled at you first. Anyway, what family doesn’t yell on the holidays?”
“Preach,” the Uber driver said. “I take the Christmas shift on purpose.”
Luca rubbed his pinky over Chris’s in the space between them on the back seat. “You did so well. I am so impressed with you. Don’t undo it.”
“You think?”
“Yes—” he started, but the Uber driver pulled over, and Luca was distracted by getting out of the car and pulling up the digital ticket on his phone.
They passed the turnstiles and walked into the gardens. Other people, families and couples and groups of students, milled around under the streetlights.
“Okay,” Chris said, unfolding the map they’d gotten at the entrance. “So, if we go right, we’ll get to the Chinese gardens first, and then there are the First Nation gardens and a Japanese garden.”
“Mm-hm. What happens if we go to the left?”
Chris consulted his map. “I think we go past some greenhouses first? Looks like we can cut across in a couple of places.”
“Let’s go left.” The main route toward the Chinese gardens teemed with visitors, and Luca had already seen three people give them a double take. He’d forgotten, somehow, that Montreal was in Canada, and Canadians cared about hockey.
The path on the left was less crowded, only a few harried families with strollers heading toward the exit.
Lamplight illuminated the way, and the air tasted cold and crisp.
Chris pulled a Sea Lions toque out of his pocket to cover his ears.
Something about the contrast of the woolen hat with his sharp, perfect suit was so Chris.
Luca stuffed his hands into his pockets (a crime against menswear) to stop himself from touching.
“Okay, I think there’s a shortcut here,” Chris said and led them onto a narrower path, surrounded by leaves and underbrush. They probably passed important plants with little plaques stating their scientific names, but the lights weren’t bright enough for Luca to see.
The farther they got off the main drag, the quieter it became.
Their footsteps crunched fallen leaves beneath them as they walked.
Luca started to wonder if Chris had read the map correctly, or if they were about to get lost in the woods, when they rounded a corner and a sea of lights spread out before them.
“Oh,” Luca said, a shocked, breathy exhale. These must be the Chinese gardens. He’d seen pictures online of the colorful, fantastic statues lit up at night, but it wasn’t the same as being here, in the dark, with the distant lights illuminating Chris’s shape beside him.
“This is really beautiful,” Chris said. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
You’re really beautiful, Luca didn’t say.
Chris’s hand pressed gently to the base of Luca’s spine, and the heat of his body next to Luca’s, the sight of the bright lights on the water in front of them, the knowledge he was experiencing this moment with the man he loved—all of it made Luca’s breath catch and emotion build up fiercely in his gut, rising to choke him.
“Chris,” he managed.
“And thank you for being there tonight. I know I made things awkward between us, and I’m sorry, but I hope you still want to be my friend.”
Luca did want that. He wanted more than anything for Chris to be his friend always, and when it was light out again, he would remember he was lucky to have Chris in his life in any capacity.
But right now, in this moment when longing filled him right up to the brim, the thought of being Chris’s friend and nothing more brought tears to his eyes.
He dashed them away.
“Luca?”
“Sorry,” Luca managed. “I will get over it. I just need some time.”
Chris’s hand pulled away from Luca’s back, which only made Luca cry harder.
“Luca?” Chris asked again. “Get over what?”
A terrifying, vulnerable sound, part laugh and part sob, tore its way out of Luca’s throat. “You know what.”
“Okay, um, pretend for a minute I am the stupidest person you’ve ever met—”
“You’re not stupid.” Luca tried to be angry about Chris’s self-deprecation, but he could only be fond. “You’re nice. There is a difference.”
Chris stepped closer to him, so close Luca could feel it when he exhaled. “Yeah, but this one time, pretend I don’t know anything about whatever you’re talking about. Luca, what are you trying to get over?”
“You!”
Chris kissed him then, hard and deep and so exactly what Luca wanted it was cruel. He forced himself to pull away.
“Don’t,” he said. “It’s not—I know you don’t feel the same way I do.”
But Chris kissed him again. His hands anchored Luca steady by the hips, and Luca couldn’t help but return the kiss. How was he supposed to deny himself the one thing he’d been craving for months? He knew it wasn’t real, but with Chris’s lips on his, he could fool himself for a moment.
When Chris pulled away, he said breathlessly, “Yeah, so I’m going to need you to tell me how you feel.”
“I am in love with you,” Luca told him. What more did he have to lose?
One of Chris’s hands slid up to cup Luca’s cheek. He let out a disbelieving laugh and then asked, “Really?”
Luca tried to wrench himself out of Chris’s grip, but Chris was too strong. “Of course, really!” Luca spat the words. “I told you yesterday—”
“You said you couldn’t keep teaching me how to have sex, and that I knew why,” Chris corrected. “I thought you meant you couldn’t because it was a weird way for you to pay rent, and you wanted to stop.”
“I—” Luca supposed he hadn’t said the words out loud.
But he had been so obvious Chris must have noticed.
“Chris, I took you on a moonlit boat ride down the Chicago River. I went to Berkeley to buy you cheese. I massaged arnica gel into your bare legs. This—” He gestured at the shimmering lights extending before their feet.
“—was me trying to plan a platonic activity for us. I could not have been more obvious if I tried.”
“Oh.” A note of wonder registered in Chris’s voice as if he truly hadn’t understood how ridiculous Luca had been all this time. “Oh. Oh wow. You—and me—but why? I mean, I’m just—”
“You are not just anything, all right? You are kind and earnest and generous and beautiful, and I love you, and it is killing me, and if you don’t stop holding me this way, I will never get over you.”
“Good,” Chris said.
“I—wait, what?”
“I don’t want you to get over me.” Chris slid their mouths together in a brief, tender kiss. Luca wanted nothing more than to sink into it with his whole body, but he didn’t understand.
“You don’t even like men!”
“Oh, right.” Chris pulled away. Cold air rushed into the space between them, and Luca reached out to pull him close again, but he stopped himself. They needed to talk before more kissing happened, or maybe they never would. “So, did you know some people aren’t interested in sex with anyone?”
“Yes,” Luca said. “I thought maybe you were asexual at first, but you said you did want to do things with me, so I wasn’t sure. But then tonight, you told your mother you didn’t want to meet any more women, and—”
“Yeah, exactly. I only want to do things with you, and I don’t want to meet women.”
Luca opened his mouth to say something, anything, but his brain couldn’t process beyond Chris wanting him.
“It turns out some people don’t want to have sex with anyone. But sometimes, when they get close with someone and know them well and have feelings for them, that can change.”
Luca blinked. The information was vaguely familiar. At the same time, hearing it applied to Chris was a revelation. “And it has? Changed?”
Chris nodded.
“So you—”
“So I don’t know if I like men or women or whatever, but I do know I’m in love with you.”
Blood rushed in Luca’s ears, and he swayed on his feet. “You…”
Chris leaned in again and caught him tight around the waist. “Can I kiss you again now?”
“Please,” Luca said, and then he couldn’t talk at all for quite some time.