by Xavier Mayne
Sandler blushed deeply. “It’s not rocket science, Gabriel. You wear your love for him so transparently—I know exactly what you’re feeling just by watching you. It’s easy to know what to say to you because your emotions are so honest.”
It was Donnelly’s turn to blush. “I think you’re being too modest. But it’s a lovely thought, and I will treasure it.” He tipped up his glass and finished his drink. “Now, I think I’d like to crawl between sheets that were no doubt woven by the angels themselves and get some sleep.” He set the glass on the sideboard.
“I think I’ll stare at the sea a little while,” Sandler said, sitting down in one of the leather armchairs that faced the windows. “Good night, Gabriel.”
“Good night, Sandler. Sleep well.”
Chapter Five
Monday
Early morning, Madrid airport
AS THE clock on a nearby information panel counted out the minutes that slowly marched on after one in the morning, Kerry softly broke the silence.
“I can’t sleep either,” she said.
“My body has no idea what time it is,” he replied, looking over at her, seeing how tired her eyes looked.
“That’s a pretty fierce expression you have on your face,” she said. “No wonder you can’t fall asleep. You look like you’re trying to think about him hard enough to make him feel it.”
“That’s definitely what I’m doing,” he said with a dark chuckle. “I can’t imagine why it’s not working.”
“Maybe it is. You never know—he may be sitting bolt upright at this very moment, wondering why he’s seeing floating visions of a deserted airport terminal and transit maps in Chinese.”
Brandt laughed. “Great. So now I’m making my fiancé think he’s gone insane. I should stop before he ends up in an institution.”
Kerry punched at the sweatshirt she was using for a pillow, then lay back down and wriggled in an obviously pointless attempt to make herself more comfortable. “Tell me a story,” she said, once she’d given up wriggling.
“About what?”
“About him,” she said simply.
He smiled. “You’re probably tired of hearing about him by now.”
She shook her head. “Not at all. I’m intrigued by the man who can make the strong, silent Officer Brandt lovesick. So tell me, sir, about the first time you knew you were in love with this amazing specimen of humanity.”
“Hold up there,” Brandt objected with a chuckle. “Part of the strong, silent deal is that no one expects you to talk about your feelings. Because no one expects you to have feelings.”
She fixed him with a scolding glance, and shook her head slowly.
“Okay, so I’m clearly not going to get off the hook. Fine.” Brandt shifted a bit, trying not to feel the armrest poking into his hip. “The first time I knew I was in love with Gabriel?”
“Yes. Now no more stalling. Tell.” She looked at him expectantly.
Brandt took a moment to collect his thoughts. When had he known he was in love? He’d spent the last two years being in love, and it had happened so suddenly he’d never really reflected on whether there was a particular moment at which he knew it happened. Then it came to him, out of the depths he’d never spent much time plumbing.
“It was a little more than three years ago, right before Christmas,” Brandt began. “Gabriel and I had been partners for a year and a half, ever since I graduated from the academy.”
“Wait, so you two were together before you even joined the police force? Like, college sweethearts?”
“No, we weren’t partner partners yet, not at that point. We had just been partners on the job for that long. We wouldn’t actually get together for another six months or so. At this point, believe it or not, we were both straight. Never been with a guy, never intended to.”
Kerry sat up and waggled her finger in her ear in a cartoon exaggeration of mishearing. “What, now?”
Brandt closed his eyes for a moment. This never got easier to explain. “We were straight when we met. We were straight right up until the time that we had this undercover job to do, and we suddenly… well, let’s just say I showed him a side of myself I’d never let anyone see—even me.”
“I would love to hear all about that—I mean, all about that—but right now you are going to tell me about the moment you knew you were in love with him, six months before you were actually in love with him. By the way, you’re like the Robert Altman of late-night airport storytellers. I have a feeling none of this is going to make sense until I get to the end, and maybe not even then.”
“Keep your expectations low. I’ve never told anyone this story, so I have no idea if it’s going to make sense or not. I don’t think I even understand it, to be honest.”
“That’s the best kind of story. Please, continue.”
“So, we’d been together every day for a year and a half, except for when Donnelly’s niece was born and he took a week off to help his sister out. We had our usual shifts during the week and every other weekend, and on our days off, we worked out and watched sports and generally hung out together. So, it’s Christmas, and my family wants me to come home for the holiday, because I’d had to work it the year before. They all live on the other side of the state, so it’s going to take me four hours to drive there and four hours to drive back, and I only have Christmas Day off, so it’s a lot of hassle for a little bit of family time. So I’m not all that excited to go. At least that’s why I thought I wasn’t excited to go.”
“The plot thickens. Nicely done.”
“Thank you. I’m glad uncertainty about my own emotional state makes such satisfying narrative.” Brandt propped himself up on one elbow, warming to his storytelling task despite his sarcasm. “Anyway, the end of our Christmas Eve shift finally comes, and Gabriel drops me off at my place so I can change and get on my way home. But then he shuts off the car and gets out with me, and I ask him what’s up. He says he’s going to make me some coffee for the road, because we’ve had a long day, and I need coffee to stay awake for the drive, and I’m shit at making coffee. All of which is true, by the way. So he comes up, and I change while he brews up some coffee. Five minutes later, after I’ve put presents for my family in my car, I come back into the apartment and he’s got this thermos full of coffee, and he’s made me a little snack in a paper sack—a sandwich and some carrots and a couple of cookies—and they’re sitting on my kitchen counter like I’m a kid heading out for the first day of school. I look in the sack, and I can see that I had none of that stuff in my kitchen. He’d actually brought it all with him so he could send me on my way with a goody bag for the road. And the coffee.”
“Oh, that’s sweet,” Kerry said, smiling a little sappily. “Is that when you knew you were in love?”
“No, that’s when I knew my partner thought I couldn’t take care of myself. Which, actually, I couldn’t—I was going to stop at McDonalds along the way for terrible coffee and something that would make my arteries clog before I’d finished chewing. Anyway, he walks me out to my car, and I realize it’s going to be, like, twenty-four hours before I see him again. A full day without Gabriel Donnelly. And the thought actually made me really sad.”
“And that’s when you knew.”
“No, I just thought I was tired and not all that excited about having to drive across the state for less than a day with my family. But then he says Merry Christmas, and there was this note of sadness in his voice that so perfectly resonated with what I was feeling that I thought, just for a second, he knows what I was thinking. And that scares the crap out of me. Just flat-out panics me. So I say Merry Christmas back to him, and try to sound all jolly about it even though I’m completely freaked-out, and I jump in the car and drive away as fast as I can. Didn’t even need the coffee after that, because I spent the entire drive trying to sort out why saying good-bye to him is the worst thing I’ve had to do in a long, long time. I kept telling myself—like out loud—that he’s my best friend an
d of course I’d be sad to leave him, but mostly I’m not buying it because it’s only for a day, and who gets choked up leaving their buddy for a day? Anyway, then I get home, and it’s still dark because the sun won’t be up for a few hours, and I just sit in the car in the driveway and drink the coffee he brewed for me and eat the snack he made for me and doing that makes me feel so close to him that I’m completely freaked-out all over again. As soon as the first light switches on in the house, when my mom comes down early to make cinnamon rolls and get the place ready for everyone to barrel down the stairs and open presents, I go inside and have what is probably the worst Christmas I’ve ever had because the entire time I’m thinking about Gabriel and about how his family doesn’t seem to be all that close, and he wasn’t going home for the holiday because they don’t even talk to each other, though at that point I had no idea why. I get presents from my parents and brothers and sister that clearly show they have no idea who I am anymore, because they are the same things they would have given me when I was eighteen, but now I’m twenty-four and they’re still giving me the same things as when I was in high school. I smile and pretend and give them the gifts that Gabriel had pretty much picked out for me to give them because he’s amazing at gifts and I’m worse at it than I am at making coffee, and they are so happy with them and thank me, and the whole time I’m thinking that I’m not really a complete person without him around, and that not only scares me, it kind of makes me mad. Mad at myself for leaning on him so much that I couldn’t even pick out presents for my own family anymore—not that I was ever any good at it, but still.”
“Take a breath there, chief. You’re kind of hyperventilating.”
Brandt sighed. “Like I said, I’ve never told anyone this before. I didn’t think how telling it would affect me. Sorry.”
“No apologies needed. I asked you for a story, and you’ve got me completely wrapped up. Please, don’t leave me hanging.”
“Okay. So. We have Christmas dinner, and it’s wonderful. At least the first two bites are before I start to think about how Gabriel doesn’t have anyone to spend Christmas with except his sister, and he’s never told me much about her, so I have no idea if they’re even having dinner together. I can’t even enjoy eating what has always been my favorite meal of the year. I should have brought him is all I can think at the moment. He should be here with me. And that starts another round of freaking out, so I give up, and halfway through dinner I say I’ve got to get back because I have an early shift in the morning, and they all wish me a Merry Christmas again, and my mom packs up this huge cooler full of leftovers, and everyone gets up from the table and waves as I back down the driveway. I drive like a maniac all the way back to the city and call Gabriel when I’m almost there to tell him I’m coming over. Didn’t even ask him what he was doing, just said I was driving to his house. So I get there and drag that cooler up onto the front porch and bang on his door, and when he opens it, I yell Merry Christmas at the top of my lungs and basically tackle him with a hug. I think it was the first time I’d ever hugged him, and judging from the look on his face, he figured we’d die of old age before I ever did. Finally he staggers back into the house, and I let him go, and I stumble in with my cooler full of leftovers and tell him we’re going to have Christmas dinner. So we load up plates with my mom’s cooking, and all of a sudden, it’s the taste of my childhood—everything’s so good, even though I could barely swallow it when I was at home. Here, at his house, it’s the best thing in the world. And he looks so happy, I just couldn’t keep from smiling stupidly every time I look at him. And I still feel that freak-out feeling deep inside, but at this point I don’t care anymore because seeing him happy is all I need.”
“And so that’s when….” Kerry ventured but then checked herself. “Never mind. You tell me when.”
“Thank you. After dinner—it must have been ten o’clock by that point—he says that he has something for me. He gets up and goes over to this Charlie Brown Christmas tree he’s put up in the corner of his living room, and picks up the only present under it. And it’s for me. He hands it to me, and I feel like an idiot because it never even occurred to me to get him anything. But of course he tells me that he’s enjoyed the dinner I’d brought more than any present I could have gotten him, because he’s amazing and would never make anyone feel bad about anything ever. So I open the box, and inside is a coffee mug.” Brandt fell silent, breathing deeply.
“He bought you a coffee mug for Christmas?” Kerry asked, seeming a little confused.
“It wasn’t just a coffee mug. It was from this roadhouse that we’d raided a few months before. It was my first big bust in the department, and it got me noticed by the higher-ups. It was run by this biker gang with organized crime connections. It looked like a diner on the outside, but it was really a front for sex trafficking—ugly stuff. Anyway, when we did our initial surveillance of the place, we went and had breakfast at the counter, pretending to be tourists from up north. The cashier was a little twitchy and started asking us questions about where we were going and saying they didn’t get many people in the place who looked like us. I was still new to the whole undercover deal and started to get panicky, and then Gabriel breaks in and asks if they sell the mug with the place’s logo on it. Turns out he had overheard the cashier talking about how his son had drawn the logo, and all Gabriel had to do was say he liked it and wanted to buy one and the guy is suddenly all smiles. He even let his guard down enough for me to get a glimpse of the prison tattoo on his wrist that linked him to the gang we were tracking. That was the last piece of the puzzle, the piece I’d been missing, and now I had it.”
“Ah,” Kerry said. “So it wasn’t just a mug….”
“No. Gabriel gave it to me to remind me of what I could accomplish, of the difference I’d made, of the new person I’d become. It was everything my family didn’t understand about my career, my new life. But it was more than that to me. It reminded me of how much I owed him, of how we were truly partners.”
“That’s so sweet.”
Brandt nodded, but was determined to finish his story. “So I take this mug out of the box, and all of this hits me: how he understands me better than my own family, how he saved me from being badgered by that twitchy cashier with the gang tattoos, how he helped me put the whole case together to close down that awful place. And I look at him, really look at him, and I realize that he’s the person who means the most to me in the whole entire world. Of course I didn’t want to be away from him for a whole day, because I’m only who I want to be when I’m with him.”
“That’s the moment!” she sang out.
Brandt shook his head. “You don’t know how guys work. On the inside, I mean. We have an automatic defense mechanism that protects us if we start to get emotional about another guy. It’s what makes us say ‘I love you, man!’ even if what we really mean is ‘I love you.’ But it’s even deeper than that. It’s like software that gets installed at the root level, and it subconsciously changes ‘I think I’m falling in love with him’ into ‘I’m glad he’s my buddy.’ Even though what I was feeling in that moment was actually love—I see that now—at the time I was protected from the implications of that emotion by this deep wiring. And that’s what we both had to overcome to reach each other, and that wouldn’t happen for another few months, when we were caught up in a huge mess that left us no other way out. It takes a nuclear event to break out of the programming that our culture installs in the back of men’s minds to keep us from feeling connected to each other.”
“That’s the saddest thing I think I’ve ever heard,” Kerry said with a long sigh. “Sorry, go on.”
“So I’m standing there, holding this mug, feeling all of the conflicting things that it brings up in my mind, and I look up at him, and he’s just beaming at me. He tells me that now I’ll have a proper mug for drinking that horrible coffee I make. And I just shake my head—don’t know what to say, but know what I have to do. I walk into his kitchen, and I
put the mug on the shelf next to his. He’s looking at me like I’m insane, but I just tell him that only good coffee should go into it, and I only get that at his house, so I’m going to leave it there so I can use it when I’m over. Which, again, is just about every day. He laughs it off, but just before he does I could see it on his face for just an instant. The look. The look that says he’s happy that this little part of me will be in his house, just as happy as I am to have it there. It’s like I’ve brought my toothbrush, like we’re starting to move in together. Anyway, I see this flash across his face before the programming kicks in and he socks me in the arm and laughs. Then he says we’ve got a big day tomorrow and the shift starts early, and we should hit the hay. And honestly….” Brandt looked down, silent for a long moment.
“Ethan? You okay?”
Brandt nodded, feeling the tears already overflowing despite his best effort to blink them back. “He tells me that the guest bed is made up for me if I want to stay, and of course I want to stay—I don’t know what else to do, or even what to think, but there’s nowhere else in the world I want to be. I just nod, because I don’t know what to say and probably couldn’t say it without crying even if I did. He says good night and goes into his bedroom, and honest to God I want to go with him. I am too wiped out by the whole long day, the awful dinner with family and the amazing one with him, the terrible gift exchange at home and the amazing one with him, the awkward, distant, frustrating emotions of being with people I’m related to who don’t understand me, and then him, the person who knows me best and accepts me and… loves me. And just for a second, maybe two, the programming falters and I see it. See it clearly. I love Gabriel Donnelly. Not as a buddy, not as a work partner, but as a person. As a man. I get this one moment of terrifying clarity, and then the darkness closes over it. But from that moment on, I knew. I wasn’t ready to deal with it, couldn’t even think about it or say it to myself, but… I knew.”