by Willa Okati
Ford grinned and sat bare naked on the floor for Gavin to lean over and carefully swab him clean.
Gavin wondered if Ford knew how different this was for him.
He thought maybe Ford did.
Ford kissed the back of Gavin’s wrist and rested his head on the couch cushions so close that his hair tickled Gavin’s side. Inexplicably, he began to chuckle.
The quiet rumble of laughter interrupted, again, Gavin’s gathering of the words he had to get out. They needed to be spoken. Tonight. Ford never stopped giving. It might not be a two-sided question of owing, for Ford wouldn’t be one to keep a tally, but Gavin was. He wanted. No. He needed.
He would have if Ford hadn’t found something funny. Annoyed, Gavin flopped over with the last of his physical strength. “What?”
“Sh.” Ford didn’t move except to point beneath a bookcase directly facing them. “Do you see?”
At first, Gavin didn’t. Then -- “My God,” he breathed, holding utterly still. Huddled beneath the bookcase, Oscar watched them with unreadable feline eyes. Closer than an F1 cross should have come with all the ruckus and racket.
“Hey, big guy,” Ford crooned. He shifted forward as slowly as a leaf drifting from tree to earth, as fluidly as water from a pitcher. How such a large man could be so graceful baffled Gavin.
Not so much that he didn’t try to stop Ford. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t try to pet him. He’ll scratch or bite.”
“I’ll be careful,” Ford said, intent on his progress. Beneath the bookcase, Oscar remained anchored in place. “I just want him to know I won’t hurt him.” He stopped within arm’s reach, which for Ford was considerable, and extended his hand for Oscar to sniff if Oscar were so inclined.
Gavin watched, fear skittering up his spine. He wasn’t joking; Oscar would slash bloody gouges in Ford’s hand if he decided Ford posed a threat. “Careful.”
“It’s okay,” Ford murmured. He held still, letting Oscar make up his mind.
Oscar didn’t come any closer, but -- It was a night for firsts, Gavin supposed. From beneath the bookcase, a noise Gavin first thought was a wood rasp emerged.
But no. Oscar was purring. Only for a second before he disappeared into the depths of darkness where he couldn’t be seen, but…
“My God,” Gavin breathed. Did Ford’s charm work on animals too? He stifled a loopy giggle. It made sense; he’d be that kind of man.
Ford’s grin nigh blinded Gavin when he turned around. “Did you see that?”
“Unbelievable,” Gavin said. He wasn’t so thick he couldn’t recognize a parallel when he saw one. Not a sign. Or an omen. Just a sense of symmetry. “Ford. Come here.” He opened his arm as Ford had to Oscar.
Ford swarmed happily over and stopped not quite so happily when Gavin let the words he needed to say come out. “We need to talk.”
His lover looked abruptly uncertain and uneasy, not that Gavin could blame him. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not…” Stupid, stupid way to start this conversation. Gavin patted the edge of the couch, the best way he could think of to coax Ford nearer. “That’s not what I meant.”
Some of the enthusiasm leaked out of Ford as he finished his journey. Gavin hated himself a little for that.
He hated himself far more for what he had to do next. The truth might crush Ford. Might make him pack his metaphorical bags and take off for good.
But it couldn’t stand between them any longer.
Gavin licked his lips, struck by how odd the contrast was between kiss swollen and scared dry.
Leave it to Ford to pick up on the smallest cues even now. He came to Gavin without needing any further provocation and took Gavin’s hand between both of his. He met Gavin’s eyes, and Gavin let him.
Gavin held him there. “You asked me before,” he started. “Questions I couldn’t answer.”
“You don’t have to. Not if you don’t want.”
“I don’t want. But I do have to.” Gavin pressed his fingers to Ford’s lips.
Ford, the annoying romantic, kissed them.
“Stop. Just… let me, while I can, before I can’t. If you want to know. Your chance. This is it.”
Ford hesitated. Of course he wouldn’t want to push, but maybe he knew Gavin meant it about this being a onetime offer. Finally, with a sigh, he nodded.
Gavin let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Best to look at this like taking medicine or pulling off a bandage. One quick jerk to get the worst over with all at once. He should have done it already. Would have, if he could have.
“You’re not the first man who asked me to marry him.”
Ford’s mouth dropped open.
Gavin drove on. “His name was Donny. He was a lot like you, Ford. A lot. Or I thought at first. Not as much now. Risk taking. Excited about life. He asked me to run away with him at nine thirty on a Thursday night.”
“Gavin.” Ford started to reach for him, his dismay near-palpable.
“Stop.” Gavin shifted away from Ford. “By midnight, we’d booked ourselves into the cheapest room at a posh hotel near the Canadian border. Had sex. Me on top. Him watching me, just in the moonlight, saying I was beautiful.”
God, oh God, Gavin didn’t want to go on. But he had to finish this.
“When I woke up at six in the morning, he was gone. I didn’t know where. Or why. Not until he sent me a postcard about a month later. He’d met a guy in a bar who gave him the number of a producer -- Donny was a stage actor wannabe. Maybe that’s why I never figured out that he was a natural liar, or that… that everything was just one big story to him. All the world was a stage and everyone except him nothing but ephemera.” Gavin shook his head.
He’d expected any number of reactions from Ford, but not the one he got. Not Ford drawing in on himself, somehow small now despite his hockey-giant body. Dismayed. Broken somehow.
No. No. That was not meant to happen. Gavin wouldn’t let it. He reached out to Ford, caught his hand, and refused to let go. “That was then. This is now. And you are not Donny,” he said, shaking Ford’s arm hard to drive that point home. “You are not and I don’t think you ever will be. But that’s why I can’t marry you. Why I won’t.”
Ford’s expression grew unreadable; Gavin grew uneasy in equal measure. Nothing more at all came out, nothing but empty air.
Gavin waited. The silence of uncertainty was the most terrible of all.
Ford got to his knees, both of them, and propped his crossed arms on the couch. Eye to eye with Gavin. “There’s something I don’t know how to say.”
Gavin snorted a surprised laugh. “There’s a first.”
Ford began slowly. “Don’t think you’re going to make me run even with something you know I don’t want to hear. Okay?”
Gavin wanted to say thank you. He didn’t have the words anymore. He tried to show it instead in the way he copied Ford’s signature move and brushed the backs of his knuckles along Ford’s cheekbone.
Ford shifted, moving in a way Gavin couldn’t make sense of until he was on one knee. “I know you’re still not used to hearing it, but I love you.” He took the hand he’d held between both of his and pressed it over his heart, then over Gavin’s. “Keep that with you. Because it’s true.”
Ah God. Ford…
Ford rested his cheek in Gavin’s hand and looked at him with the kind of love that still, even after this night, Gavin almost couldn’t handle.
Head bowed and eyes closed, Gavin shaped the words on his tongue without sound. I wish I could say yes. For you.
Chapter Seven
The earliest part of the morning was when Gavin kept himself busy with all the little things. Checking schedules, making coffee, taking care of paperwork that no one wanted to bother with but someone had to.
Today he’d accomplished almost nothing. Would have been an absolute nothing if he didn’t count starting the pot of office-staff coffee. After that, the always tall stack in his in-box lay
ignored by the wayside while Gavin stared out at the street, seeing and not really seeing it at the same time.
He could still feel Ford inside him when he moved, especially when he sat. All the more reason to stick to one place. The sweet burn when he twisted his feet to make the chair swivel left to right was something to be savored.
More, it kept him focused in a way he wasn’t accustomed to. Sharper. Clearer. Inward facing, examining heart and mind and wondering at what he found there.
Mostly, what he found was Ford. All roads led back to him and the ever-circling what-if questions to which Gavin could yet find no answers, but constantly, annoyingly felt them just beyond his grasp.
Every so often movement outside would catch his eye and draw him up to the window proper. So far this morning he’d gone three times. Once when a fleet of yellow school buses, freshly painted and waxed, drove by with such a shine to them they reflected the sun so sharply as to make Gavin squint and cover his eyes.
A second time, when clouds rushed fast across the rising sun, making Gavin wonder if there’d be a sudden storm or an eclipse he’d forgotten about. Nearly as dark as night, and then as fast as it’d come on, the clouds drifted away.
“Weird,” he’d heard more than one person mutter, and Gavin was inclined to agree.
The last time Gavin had gotten up, he had lingered at the window, shaking his head in amazement. Of all the things in the world, a line of ducks quacked and flapped their wings as they made their way across the street in a haphazard but stubborn row and brought traffic to a standstill. Ducks! There wasn’t even a pond nearby. Gavin would have seen it from his window.
Children’s exhibit. He remembered as if he’d heard about it a hundred years ago. Behold the wonders of nature. Quack, quack. Right. They must have escaped.
Gavin snorted quietly behind his hand so as not to draw attention to himself. More than he already had. Curators and office staff had to have noticed Mr. Machine’s abrupt cease and desist.
Oddly, Gavin found he couldn’t make himself care.
He watched the last of the ducks make its way across the street, shaking its wings at the car that dared honk at it. Who’s afraid of the big Buick wolf? Not I.
Ford would have seen all of these as omens, Gavin thought. Idly, just for amusement, he tried to see them as Ford would have. The buses: a bright new journey. The darkened sky: unexpected storms that made the passage perilous. The ducks: a “come hell or high water” determination to make it to the other side without looking back.
Gavin frowned and rubbed away the shiver that made his arms prickle with goose bumps. Weird, and if he let himself believe, it could make a sort of sense, but it was all games, and Gavin knew he’d made it all up.
Strangest of all this morning, even knowing he’d invented the whole string of omens and disdained their reality didn’t stop Gavin from wanting to look for more and to wonder what these meant beneath the surface. Poking at himself with the sudden insight. Against all odds, do I believe?
The ring of his office phone came as a welcome distraction. He straightened his sweater to bring his mind back away from the fantastical and into the professional, lifted the phone to his ear, and said, “Mill Museum. You’ve reached Gavin Yamea. How may I assist you?”
“Gavin?”
For a moment Gavin thought it was Ford, but it didn’t sound like him. For another blankly confused moment he couldn’t figure out who it might be, and the bafflement kept him silent.
“Open the door, would you? I’m standing right outside and getting some funny looks out here.”
Still puzzled, Gavin did as he was told. No one dangerous would have gotten past security. “You’re not Ford,” he said, knowing he sounded like an idiot. “Who is this?”
“Baby, it’s me. I know it’s been a while, but don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
Oh God. No. Gavin wanted to click the phone off; he wanted to pitch it out the window; perhaps he would have if his hand hadn’t been already on the knob and turning in when comprehension clicked.
The door swung inward to reveal Donny leaning on the jamb, larger-than-life and brighter than ever, the brilliance of his smile dazzling and the entire effect rendering Gavin stunned into silence.
Donny laughed, that big, ebullient laugh Gavin remembered all too well. “Would you look at you? You’re more gorgeous than I remembered. Can I come in?”
* * *
Donny didn’t wait for Gavin to answer yes or no. He sailed in as if the invitation was a formality, a teasing sop to courtesy and nothing more.
Gavin would have stopped him. Only he couldn’t seem to move.
Either ignorant -- or maybe “clueless” was a better word -- or just not caring, Donny meandered around Gavin’s office as carelessly as he would have three years ago, poking through papers and lifting the few small trinkets Gavin had collected since Ford entered his life. “Man, talk about close quarters. Don’t you get claustrophobic in here?”
“I go outside when I like,” Gavin said. Poke, poke, prod, prod. Donny went about shoving his nose in wherever he liked. “Watch it. Some of that is confidential.”
“You’re joking, right?” Donny sat on the edge of Gavin’s desk, nudging a stack of folders as askew as the Tower of Pisa. “It’s a museum. What’s gonna be so secret in here?” He grinned gleefully at Gavin and patted the desk beside him. “I’ve missed you.”
Gavin didn’t speak. Couldn’t. He’d have thought he’d have oceans to say right now. He did. The words refused to come out, choked in his throat.
“Huh.” Donny tilted his head owlishly, a move so like Ford’s that Gavin’s tongue froze to the roof of his mouth. “Hey, I just noticed. You finally dropped the stutter. Good for you.”
Gavin said nothing.
“Or maybe not,” Donny said, laughing again as if that were actually funny. “You’re not coming? I came all this way for you.” He beckoned Gavin.
Despite the invitation, he didn’t notice Gavin didn’t come to him, already distracted by the makeshift sculpture Ford had put together with eccentric affection. “What the hell is this?” He picked it up to turn it to and fro. “A deer and a cat on a bike? Weeeeeird.”
Gavin found some words. “Careful. It’s a gift.”
“From who, a five-year-old?” Donny tossed Ford’s gift from hand to hand and thumped it down carelessly.
The kitten fell off the deer’s back and tumbled to the floor. Gavin watched it roll beneath his desk. A cold knot of uneasiness made his stomach twist. Ford would have called that an omen too. Not a good one.
“I think you should leave,” Gavin said. It would have been “blurted” not too long ago. A fine shade of difference; the words still not conceived with care, but this time no regret in speaking them. Just relief. “Now.”
Donny either didn’t hear Gavin or ignored him. Gavin saw another difference now between Ford and Donny. Ford might spin off on a tangent. Donny just didn’t care.
“Donny.” Gavin cleared his throat. “You should go.”
“What? I just got here.” Donny scooted farther back on the desk and swung his legs. He tossed his hair out of his face, or pretended to. Gavin might not have been a fashionista, but he recognized hair cut and styled and painstakingly arranged into a bedhead look. He gave Gavin a smile that had done the trick every time. Back then.
Not now. He’d known Donny was an idiot. Why had he never realized that Donny was a fool?
“Gavin, seriously. Don’t be this way,” Donny coaxed. He gazed at Gavin as if Gavin’s growing temper was adorable. Ford did the same. Only… that was different. It had to be.
Gavin searched for the difference between the two.
Donny rolled his eyes. “Come on. How long’s it been?”
“Three years ago. Today,” Gavin said, the date on the calendar jumping out at him. Dear God. “Around one a.m.”
“The way you keep time in your head. Anal to the last. And that was some pretty good…” Donny waggled hi
s eyebrows. He patted his knee. “Come on. Be nice.”
Ah. There. The pieces snapped into place. Donny looked at him as an adorable doll, something to play with. Ford looked at him as something treasured. Neither terribly flattering to the masculine ego, but by damn there was a big difference between the two.
And there was more. “Why did you leave?”
Donny made a face. “Gavin, don’t drag up the past like that…”
“No.” By damn, he wasn’t going to get away with a dodge. “I’ve waited three years to find out.”
“You know why. I got cold feet, I guess. Marriage? I mean, it’s pretty big.” Donny shrugged in a way that would have been and still was, in a skewed sort of way, endearingly sheepish. “And then there was that chance the producer offered.”
“Did you have to get down on your knees for him to seal the deal?” Blurted. Not regretted.
Donny’s rare silence answered that question. He recovered as fast as ever, though, and hurtled on. “Look, let’s leave the past in the past, okay? I mean, three years is a lot of water under the bridge. Bygones. Turns out Les Misérables isn’t so much happening after all. Not yet, anyway. I’ve got weeks off between performances, and since I’m in town, I thought maybe we could hang out.”
Weeks off? You mean you were fired. And “hang out”? The direct translation for that would be “pick up right where we left off.”
“Anyway. How about you and me go hit the town tonight? It’s a pretty far cry from New York or San Francisco. Wow, Gavin, you would love those places.”
“You don’t know me at all, do you?”
“Huh? You and me used to stay up until the break of dawn.”
They never had. Either another lie or someone Donny had confused Gavin with. Both made Gavin sick.
“Say yes. We’ll have so much fun, I promise. For me?”
“No.” One word. Clear. Ringing. Ford would have understood how much Gavin meant that. Two more: “Get out.”
“You don’t mean that, sugar.” Donny moved as quickly as Ford. Gavin had forgotten that about him. And he could pin a man into a corner just as efficiently, blocking out the light. Gavin couldn’t help the way he reacted, three years’ worth of reflex drawing him as still and silent as a graven image.