I sat up, scrubbing my hands over my face. “I don’t want to leave, but I don’t know how to stay.” I looked at him and the words tumbled out in a rush. “It’s only been four days. How do I know if we use the same kind of toothpaste? What if you, God forbid, like colorized Shirley Temple movies instead of black and white ones? What if you hate caramelized onions, or you can’t stand country music, or—so help me, what if you like Jim Beam?” Because that would be a deal breaker. “There are just too many things I don’t know yet.” I hung my head, certain I’d ruined it. “I know I want you. But I want to know you, first.”
Wolff was silent for a moment. “I said it out loud last night, didn’t I?”
I blinked at him. “You didn’t mean to?”
That blush crept up from his beard again. “I thought that I was dreaming, but—”
He was interrupted by the room phone ringing. I snagged it on the second ring, just to shut it up.
“Hello?” I tried to clear the waiting tears from my voice, and mostly succeeded.
* * *
“Hey, Toby, it’s Clay. You’ve disappeared off the face of the earth. Did you forget we go home tomorrow?”
“No, I didn’t forget. I just wanted to.” A thought struck me. “Clay... you remember when you said to go out and get it? Well, I did. I’ve been getting it for four days... and I want more. He wants more, too, but I don’t know how to... what to do.”
Clay interrupted me. “Hang on a second; I’m going to put Colin on speaker with me.” I heard rattling and a click, and Clay’s voice came back on the line with that weird hollow sound that only a speakerphone has.
“Toby, tell Colin what you just told me.”
Very aware of Wolff listening in, I stammered, “Colin, I don’t want to leave yet. I’ve been finding out, but this has barely started. If I leave now, I’ll never know what it could have been. I need more time, but I can’t pay for this. Can you guys help me figure out what to do?”
I heard them giving each other that look. I know that sounds crazy, but I’ve known them long enough to know what they sound like when they’re doing that weird couple thing that doesn’t need words. Then Colin spoke.
“Look, Toby... You’ve worked for us for a very long time, and it occurs to me that we’ve never given you time off. So stay here as long as you want, figure things out. We’ll be fine. You’ll be great.”
I looked at the phone, shocked. “But I don’t have a job.”
“Yes, you do, boy, you work for us. We owe you at least five years’ worth of paid vacations. Anything you need, just call and we’ll make sure you get it.”
“Yeah,” Clay agreed. “And if it doesn’t work out, just come back home. No questions asked.”
The tears started and wouldn’t stop. “You guys really mean this, don’t you?”
They both chuckled. “Yeah,” they said in harmony.
“How... I... Thank you. Just... thank you.” I started to hang the phone up, and then said in a rush, “Text me when you’re on the ground in New Orleans, okay?”
“Of course!” Colin said. “Talk to you later, Toby.”
And they hung up the phone.
I wiped my eyes and looked over at Wolff, who was waiting patiently. “You only heard half the conversation.”
He nodded, his face expressionless. “When you told me you were their boy over dinner the other night, I thought you meant houseboy.” He looked away, then back at me. “Sounds like it was more than that.”
“It was. They were all I had for five years.” I hung the phone up, stalling for time. “Does that change things for you?”
In the silence that followed, I thought And I thought Jim Beam was going to be a deal breaker.
It was a long moment before Wolff shook his head. “After what we’ve already been through, you think that that would change things? I’m not giving you up that easily.” Then his face turned stern. “But I don’t want to be three. I want just two. Does that change things for you?”
I didn’t even have to think about it. “No!” I reached for his hand. “I owe them, but they don’t own me. They made it possible for me to stay here with you and be happy. I want to give that a try, see if we can get what they have with each other.”
Wolff relaxed and took my hand. “Sounds like they’re good guys. I wish them well.”
I thought back to those paper lanterns that had floated out behind Clay and Colin as they said their vows. I hoped they’d light a path to a brilliant future for me and Wolff.
Dare to Live
Notes
Part of the Love is an Open Road Anthology - MM Goodreads Group
Brought back together by time and bonded by loss, Jon and Darrell find themselves on a trek to Machu Picchu. The photographer and writer plan to release their loved ones when they reach the peak, but it’s the journey to the top and the unexpected people they share it with that will change them forever. Can an old love be rekindled when a lifetime has passed between? Can two older men begin life again? What will they really conquer, if they can conquer Machu Picchu?
This was such a fun book to research and to write. Thinking about two older men, living life over again. The people along the way, make the story that much better, I feel.
Tags: friends to lovers, over age 40, grieving, widowers, hiking, Machu Picchu, sweet/no sex, hurt/comfort
Warnings: cancer, death of partners
15
Dare to Live
Jon opened the closet door with a cardboard carton in his hand, and the past hit him in the face again.
He’d had the shirt for thirty-two years. Edwin wouldn’t let him throw it out or even give it away. For years, he’d open their closet and see green-and-black flannel plaid hanging on the back of the door. “Why are you keeping this?” he’d asked Edwin once, about a year before the diagnosis.
“It was the shirt you wore on our first date,” Edwin replied. “This way, even if I don’t see you, I can go to the closet and hold you.”
“So are you saying that you want to keep our love in the closet?” Jon had joked.
Edwin had smacked him playfully and then caught him in a kiss.
Jon blinked away tears. There was no point in keeping the shirt now, was there? It had been Edwin’s memory, not his, and some poor homeless gay man could probably use the shirt to keep him warm. He reached out to take it off the hook on the back of the door and put it into the carton.
Then he pulled his hand back and turned to the clothes hanging on the rod instead. I’m not ready to let that go yet. Maybe next week I’ll be able to.
Edwin had been dead for six months.
The house was his, at least. Edwin had insisted on marrying him on the first day of “the window,” as soon as it became legal in California. They’d already been together for twenty-six years—and their marriage lasted six years more. Five years plus a diagnosis later, he was holding Edwin’s hand as it relaxed and his raspy breathing stopped.
Edwin had been in a coma for a week at that point, but it was all right. He and Jon had said their good-byes, when Edwin had rallied and was really there for the first time in almost a month. The doctors had told Jon to expect that.
“Don’t let yourself fall apart over me,” Edwin had said. “I want you to keep on living, do you hear me?” He coughed— lying in the bed without any activity had given him a good start on the pneumonia that would kill him—and glared at Jon. “You have a lot of living yet to do. Do it for both of us.”
Jon had agreed, because that’s what you did when the love of your life was dying. Let them go out on a high note, or something—don’t be a downer, don’t be negative. They don’t need that as they pass over the bright line between life and death. That’s what the hospice brochures all said, anyway.
So he had stayed, smiling, and nodding, and agreeing. “Yes, Ed. I will. I’ll hike Machu Picchu and bring you back some photos, how’s that sound?”
Edwin had grinned. “Sounds like we should have done it
years ago. I look forward to the pictures.”
An awkward silence fell between them, broken by the nurse coming in to change Edwin’s IV bag.
“I mean it, Jon.” Edwin was serious. “Go do all those things you and I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do. I know that you’ve shut yourself off from a lot of things because I couldn’t do them. Go do them, okay?”
Jon couldn’t answer. The hell with the hospice brochure— he didn’t want to be fake in front of Edwin. Not after thirty- two years together.
“I—will try, okay? I’ll really try.” He looked into Edwin’s eyes. “But it won’t be the same without you.”
“Then find someone to do it with you,” Edwin said. “I don’t expect you to go alone. You’re a klutz! You’d fall over the ravine the first time you weren’t paying attention.”
“Are you saying I should get myself a babysitter, Ed?” He couldn’t help grinning.
“Maybe,” Ed allowed. “But don’t hide away from the world just because I’m not in it anymore, okay? I’ve lived my eighty years. We both knew I couldn’t live forever.”
I didn’t know that until now, Jon thought, but nodded. “Okay. I’ll go to Machu Picchu. And I’ll find someone to go with me.”
“Good.” Edwin coughed again. “Will you stay with me while I sleep a little, hon? I don’t want to be alone yet.”
And he had stayed, but that was the last time he had talked to Edwin. The sleep became a coma, and a week later, Edwin was gone.
The rest of the clothes went smoothly into boxes: suits, shoes, jackets, sweaters, hats. Jon smiled as he held back the ratty old brown fedora that Edwin had insisted on wearing every time they went out in the sun, with its yellowing white band around the brim. I can keep this, can’t I? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.
He was bagging up Edwin’s underwear and socks in a garbage bag when his phone went off in his pocket. He answered without looking at the caller ID. “Hello?”
“Jon? It’s Darrell. Are you busy?”
Jon immediately sat down on the bed he and Edwin had shared. “No, of course not. Are you doing okay?”
“I’m...I’m not sure. Does this get any better, Jon? Or is it always going to hurt like this?” Darrell was suppressing tears.
A wry smile crept onto Jon’s face and he shook his head. “It’s only been four weeks since she died, Darrell—”
“Three weeks. And five days,” Darrell corrected.
“All right, three weeks and five days. You’re still in the early pain. It won’t always hurt like this, I promise.”
Darrell sounded doubtful. “I can’t see living without her. How did you do it after Ed died?”
Jon sighed. “Badly, at first, I admit. But there were things that had to be done, and so I just went along on autopilot for a while. I’m a little better now. And you will be soon, too, Dare.”
“I’ve told you not to call me that,” Darrell groused. “I haven’t dared to do anything since Cece left me.”
“Darrell, she didn’t leave you. She died. It happens, and someday it’ll happen to us, too.”
“I know, I just...she was only fifty-six. I didn’t expect her to go before me. I was supposed to go first.”
“Why, because you always go first?” Jon said, hoping that it would make his friend smile. Darrell had always had a penchant for melancholy, although it was hardly surprising in this case. Jon and Edwin had expected that Edwin would go first, with the twenty-year gap in their ages. But Darrell’s wife Cece had been six years younger than Darrell, and the brain cancer that had hit her came so quickly that the time between diagnosis and death could be measured in weeks, not months.
“No...yes...I don’t know,” Darrell said. “I don’t know why I called you. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe you wanted to see where we could meet for dinner,” Jon said. “I could use a break from packing up Edwin’s things...it’s kind of grim here.”
“I don’t eat much any more,” Darrell said, his voice distant.
“Well, we both need to eat. How about I come over and pick you up? We’ll go out for bad food and worse drinks. What do you say?” Jon grinned into the phone.
There was silence on the other end as Darrell considered. “Well...”
“Come on. If nothing else, we can talk about something that isn’t how bad we miss them.”
“All right,” Darrell said. “Just beep twice when you’re at my house.” The phone went dead.
Jon blinked, surprised. I didn’t expect that. He had been trying to get Darrell to come out of the house since the day after Cece’s funeral, as much for his own distraction as Darrell’s, but so far he hadn’t been successful.
He put Edwin’s hat on his head, pulled on a gray sweater, and headed to his car.
When they’d been younger, back in their college years at UCLA, he and Darrell had been boyfriends, although they didn’t call it that. Three years apart in age and two years apart in class standing, they’d written articles and taken photo spreads of everything from the Los Angeles art scene to the Los Angeles gay scene, publishing as freelancers around their college work and their track and field meets. It was a heady time, before the AIDS crisis hit big, and before they had to worry about real, adult worries. Being young kept them out of Vietnam, and being with each other kept them out of romantic entanglements that might have tied them down.
But Darrell had graduated first with a job in hand, and he’d moved back to New York, editing copy for one of the big magazines. Their last time together had been bittersweet, because both of them knew that a cross-country relationship wouldn’t be possible, and Jon couldn’t leave school without his degree.
“Why can’t you get a job here in Los Angeles?” Jon had asked afterwards as they lay in Darrell’s bed looking out at the night sky.
“It’s my father, Jon. You know that. I wouldn’t have a job if he hadn’t pulled strings for me. I have to go.”
They hadn’t even argued, really. Darrell had just left. Jon had graduated, the AIDS crisis had hit, and they pretty much lost contact. They’d seen each other once more, at Darrell’s wedding to Cece, and until Darrell and Cece had moved to Los Angeles after her retirement four years ago, the most contact they’d had had been Christmas cards. By then, of course, Jon had been married to Edwin for quite a while, and resuming the old friendship was as much as either of them could do.
If it hadn’t been for Edwin and Cece...well, who knew? Jon still had a soft spot in his heart for Darrell—because even at sixty-two, Darrell was still a hot property.
But right now? When he’s grieving? Now is not the time. Besides, I don’t want him on the rebound from a dead woman. An hour later, he was honking his horn in front of Darrell
and Cece’s Laurel Canyon bungalow.
Darrell’s beard had grown out wildly in the three weeks and two days since the funeral. His light-blue cardigan, which he was never seen without, looked like it could use a wash. His eyes were bloodshot, and the bags beneath them sure weren’t from Coach. He looked too much like his house after the second earthquake had hit it a few years back, when the saltwater fish tanks exploded all over the beautiful parquet floor. But at least it hadn’t slid down the hillside with most of its neighbors that year. Neither had Darrell, although he looked like he wished he had.
He walked down the cracked driveway and slumped into the passenger seat of Jon’s MG. “Where are we going?” he said without any greeting, which was typical for Darrell.
“When we get back from dinner, we are taking care of that mop on your face, man,” Jon said, looking at the wild beard. “You look like Hughes after he became a recluse. It doesn’t suit you.”
Darrell grunted. “Cece loved my beard. She thought it made me look sexy.”
“Cece never saw it like this,” Jon said, putting the car in gear and backing out of the driveway. The comment fell on dead air, and Darrell looked out the window towards his house as they drove away.
“So, where are we going?” Darrell
repeated. He sounded like he didn’t care, but Jon jumped into the silence and filled it up.
“We’re going to the Chateau,” he said. The bar and grille had been one of their favorite haunts during college—from the outside, it looked like an old log cabin built up on black bricks. Inside, it smelled of beer and good food, with leather- covered booths and a tall, heavy bar made of slabs of solid redwood. It had rickety wood floors polished by a million dancing feet, and if it didn’t break Darrell out of this malaise, probably nothing could.
Jon had to order for them both. He ordered from memory: Chateau Burgers, onion rings for Darrell, tall local beers from the tap, and a messy concoction called the Chateau De Luxe: a plate of fries smothered in cheese, bacon, sour cream, and incongruously, a sprinkling of capers across the top. Darrell picked them off his portion, while Jon asked for extras.
Despite their agreement not to talk about their late spouses, the topic wouldn’t stay away from their conversation, and by the time they were eating their Chateau Burgers, Darrell was talking freely about the shock he’d been in since Cece’s diagnosis, and how he didn’t understand how she had stayed upbeat and positive even when they told her, six weeks before she died, that there was no hope and the tumor would kill her.
“How do you stay calm after something like that?” he complained, pushing aside his last few onion rings. A third beer waited for him on the table, and he sipped it. “And yet Cece was never anything but positive about it. She dragged us off for that last big trip to Europe, and you’d have never known she was sick.”
Jon wasn’t about to play one-upmanship games with his old friend about how their spouses had died, but he could have wished for a last trip to Europe if Edwin hadn’t been so weak, and he couldn’t help resenting his friend’s good fortune a little bit. “You didn’t get to tell me about that trip, not very much,” he said, trying to keep his voice neutral. “Did you get pictures?”
In His Arms Page 14