The Rainbow Clause

by Beth Bolden

  “I’m not here because I was assigned, you asshat,” Nick grumbled. “Yes, in the general Floridian area, but not here. This is actually the opposite of what I should be doing if we’re talking about my assignment.”

  “Oh.” Colin’s voice was small and still bewildered.

  Suddenly it was too hot, even for Nick, and because he could, he leveraged himself upright and took a dive into the balmy water of the Caribbean Sea.

  It did both things Nick needed desperately: one, it cooled him down, and two, it stopped an increasingly non-productive conversation in its tracks.

  Except when he finally finished swimming around, cooling off his blood and his brain, and climbed back onto the boat, dripping water everywhere. Colin, who’d dug into the cooler of sandwiches and was currently nursing a beer, said, “I feel like we’re having two different conversations here.”

  How had he managed to forget that Colin was one of the most stubborn people he’d ever met?

  Nick stuck his hand into the cooler and dragged out a beer. Popping the top, he took a long drink. And then another. “Probably because we are.”

  “I thought that was just men and women that did that. Aren’t we supposed to understand each other better than that? You know, because we’re both from Mars?”

  Barely restraining his eye roll, Nick dug around in the cooler for his sandwich. Pulling it out, he focused on unwrapping it, anything not to throttle Colin sideways. There were a lot of great things about spending time with Colin. It turned out his dogged persistence was not really one of them.

  “What nobody tells you is that it doesn’t matter,” Nick finally said between bites of meat and bread. “Personal relationships are still fucking hard. You still speak a hundred different languages, no matter what sex you are, or who you’re banging.”

  “Hard, but not impossible,” Colin said, because of course he’d chosen to focus on that.

  This time, Nick didn’t bother to hold back his eyeroll. He might be head over heels for this dork, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t completely aware of his shortcomings.

  “Did you mean what you said?” Colin asked after a few moments of silence had passed. “About you being here being the opposite of what you should be doing for your assignment?”

  Nick swallowed hard. “Think about it,” he said, not unkindly. It also turned out that it was really hard to stay mad at Colin. “Jemma didn’t get assigned to write your story because she was too close to you – and that was platonic. This sure as hell isn’t platonic.” Nick barely managed to rein in all the additional word vomit he could have said about his feelings. Sure as hell isn’t platonic was about as mild as he could manage.

  “You don’t think you can be objective?” Colin’s voice had finally lost that puzzled edge, and he seemed particularly pleased about Nick’s confession.

  Chuckling wryly, Nick grabbed another beer and settled next to where Colin was sprawled on the deck. He smelled like sunscreen, clean sweat, and salt. Nick wanted to eat him up and never stop gorging. It was a problem. He wrapped an arm around Colin’s much broader shoulders and rested his head against his bicep. “Not a chance,” he admitted quietly.

  “I trust you,” Colin said, that intense fondness creeping back in his voice. “Probably more than if you’d stayed objective.”

  What Colin didn’t understand was that no matter how he tried, Nick knew his article was going to read like he had a huge crush on Colin O’Connor. And not like all those bro articles, like on his perfect spiral or his footwork or his vision on the field, but on the man. It was going to be all right there, between the lines. Nick didn’t think he could help it, it was so big sometimes it felt like his feelings were going to swallow him whole.

  Nick didn’t know if it was good or not that Colin seemed to have similar feelings. He’d turned off the logical, forward-thinking part of his brain the moment their lips had touched for the first time, and he was terrified to return back to LA and reality.

  Maybe it was time to take a step in that direction, no matter how much it killed him. “The day after we get back to Miami, I have to fly back to LA.”

  Nick knew by the way Colin stayed relaxed against him, a hand carding through his salt-crusted hair, that he didn’t realize the implications of this.

  Maybe that was for the best.

  When they returned to Miami, Nick knew he needed to say something.

  The problem was that the words had gone from difficult to practically impossible.

  It was never going to be easy to say, Hey, listen, we had a great time together, but this isn’t going to work. Not like you want it to. As they’d driven back to Miami, Nick had run the variations through his head so many times he was sick of himself by the time they drove up to Colin’s house. Towards the end, he’d begun to add, Not like I want it to.

  Even though he’d known he was in deep shit for at least a week, it was even more painful than he’d imagined to admit to himself that he wanted more, that he wanted Colin, while acknowledging that it was possibly impossible to actually achieve.

  They’d gotten another late start, which Nick would fully admit later was his own idea to make this shitty thing a little easier on himself and on the man next to him, and so they didn’t get back to Miami until late in the day. And his flight was first thing in the morning.

  He faced his suitcase in the room he’d pretty much abandoned, and started to pack as Colin puttered around downstairs, calling in a grocery order to his PA.

  At some inevitable point, Colin would stop delaying the inevitable, and he’d come upstairs and start the conversation that Nick really, really did not want to finish.

  As he moved clothes from the dresser to his suitcase, he tried to tell himself that he was being overdramatic, that Colin would accept Nick’s decision easily. That he’d just gotten carried away while being locked away with Colin, and when he went back to LA, the feelings wouldn’t follow.

  Except Nick already knew that wasn’t going to happen, unless he carved out his heart and left it as a bloody gift for Colin’s housekeeper.

  Yeah, definitely not overdramatic at all.

  He’d pretty much finished packing and was in the bathroom pretending to gather his toiletries, but in reality was avoiding looking himself in the eye, when Colin walked in.

  Nick knew from his awkward stance, the way he’d shoved his hands in his pockets, and that he also couldn’t look Nick in the eye, that the time had come.

  He fought the urge to manufacture a reason to leave now, before everything that had been good between them soured completely. But instead, he felt rooted to the ground, frozen in place, unable to dodge the bullet that was absolutely coming his direction.

  Definitely overdramatic, he tried to remind himself, but even his usual snide comment made him want to cry.

  “I keep telling myself,” Colin said, “that there’s a reason why you haven’t said anything about what happens when you go back to LA. But the truth is, I can’t figure it out. I know you like me, I know you do, and I know you’re not with anyone else. We had such a great time these last few weeks, it would be nuts not to want this to continue.”

  He paused, and Nick knew it was going to be worse than he could ever have imagined it.

  “So I’m going to be the one saying it to you. What happens now?”

  Nick took a steadying breath, even though he didn’t feel even remotely steady. “Now, I go back to LA.”

  Colin shot him a look like he was crazy. And he probably was. He’d finally found this great guy – the guy, really, if he could stop reminding himself of this particular fact – and he was going to tell him that it was over.

  And that was the nice version. Nick had already thought of and dismissed another half dozen lies that he didn’t think he could force past his lips. Besides the idea that Colin deserved better and deep down, the thing Nick wanted most was for Colin to get what he deserved.

  Nick ignored the voice in his head that told him that sort of insanel
y self-sacrificial behavior was almost certainly love.

  “You know I was talking about us,” Colin said, a perplexed look on his face.

  “Right.” Nick leaned back on the counter. “Well, I go back to my life, and you go back to yours. I write the article. You come out.”

  Realization was beginning to dawn on Colin’s face and it was so much worse than Nick could ever have dreamed.

  “You really mean that.”

  “I...I don’t want to. But I don’t see that this is a legitimate option. You’re a football player. I report on you, on and off the field. It’s a huge conflict of interest.”

  Colin’s jaw took on a stubborn angle, and Nick wanted to tell him to leave it alone, it’ll be so much easier if you just accept it. “Were you or were you not a reporter when you came to my house? Was I not a football player then?”

  Nick wanted to cry. “I was. You were. I know, it was stupid, I was so goddamned stupid. I just...I couldn’t not. I tried really hard not to, God knows I did.”

  “I would never ask you to change what you do for a living. I know you love it.” Colin sounded wretched, and Nick was there every step of the way. “Isn’t there something we can work out? Something we can do to move forward. I...” Colin hesitated and Nick prayed, fervently, that he would not choose this moment to try to tell him how he felt, in a last-ditch effort to change Nick’s mind. Because that might actually work. “I care a lot about you,” he said instead, and that was bad enough, but not as bad as it could have been.

  Nick knew what he was supposed to say. What he had intended to say. Instead, at the last moment, his uncooperative lips stuttered out with, “I don’t know. I care about you, too. A lot.”

  And that was just enough of a reprieve that Colin reached out and grabbed Nick, wrapping him up in those big arms, holding him tight and close, like he couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. And Nick was right there, his face buried in the cotton of Colin’s t-shirt, holding back the tears.

  He was supposed to say, ”No,” and that was supposed to make Colin so angry and so hurt that it was inevitably over. A wound, undoubtedly, but one that they’d both cauterized when Nick flew back to LA.

  Now it was open and bleeding and painful as fuck.

  It was worse, if that was even possible, in the gray, early morning light outside the Miami airport.

  They sat in Departures, and Nick knew Colin wasn’t supposed to just sit here, parked at the curb, but he hadn’t moved in five minutes, and so neither had Nick.

  Colin’s bottom lip was trembling when he finally turned his head Nick’s direction. Nick felt a new wash of guilt and pain and he just wanted it to stop. When this thing with Colin had started, it had felt so goddamn good. He’d not even considered the possibility that when it ended, it could cut back with just as much power.

  That had been incurably stupid of him. He was thirty years old, he’d been in relationships before, unlike Colin. He should have known.

  “Promise me you’ll call me in LA. Promise me you won’t just stop talking,” Colin begged, and each word felt like the knife in Rio, plunging in over and over again. The knife in Rio might have hurt less.

  Nick had already hurt both of them enough by his inability to just end it, but he couldn’t do it again. He leaned over and pressed one last kiss to Colin’s mouth. The same burst of heat, the same happiness bubbled up inside of him. But it wasn’t really the same. He pulled away before he could start bawling into Colin’s shoulder.

  “I promise,” Nick said, and he opened the car door.

  “You look like shit,” Gabe said, shoveling eggs and hash browns into his mouth like he was starving to death. And maybe he was; god only knew what sort of sustenance he needed to keep up with Jemma.

  The thought edged too close to the pain Nick was still trying to pretend didn’t hurt so bad, so he dropped it like a hot potato. Glowering into his coffee cup, he didn’t even look up at his best friend. “Thanks.”

  “You should tell me what happened in Miami,” Gabe suggested, though his tone hinted it was more like an order than an option. “You barely even texted me when you were there. I think Jemma talked to you more than I did.”

  “That’s because Jemma actually talks on the phone, unlike some people,” Nick retorted. He was fully aware he was heading towards full-on grouch territory, curling up the raggedy edges of himself like a blanket to ward off everyone.

  If Gabe hadn’t showed up at his loft, threatening him with physically carting him to the diner they frequented, Nick would have stayed, wrapped in his favorite comforter, feet tucked underneath him, at his desk, where he’d been for the last four days. Ostensibly, he was working on deadline – he had the article on Colin to write, which was just about as painful as he’d guessed it would be – but even he usually needed fresh air after forty-eight hours.

  “Did O’Connor fuck with you?” Gabe asked – no, demanded.

  “Gratifyingly and many times,” Nick said, because even though he knew the details wouldn’t bother Gabe, he still childishly wanted to punish him for asking.

  “Then why did I find you moodily staring out the window, buried under days of gross coffee cups?”

  “And you say I’m dramatic,” Nick muttered.

  “You are, which is why you’re sitting over there like a 2010 Panic at the Disco! album instead of telling me what the fuck happened.”

  Nick glowered. “You’re the absolute worst. If I want to marinate in my own pain, who are you to stop me?”

  Annoyingly, this only made Gabe grin. “Maybe the sort of person who wouldn’t let me?”

  “I’d just been stabbed. I was on heavy medication. Normally I would have just let you stew.” Which they both knew was a lie. While Gabriel was Nick’s best friend, he’d also grown close to Jemma, and when Gabe had fucked up early in their relationship, Nick had instantly called Gabe on his bullshit.

  “So you like him. O’Connor,” Gabe clarified, since he’d apparently figured out that Nick wasn’t going to volunteer anything.

  “Yes.” The word like seemed too mild and too small to even come close to encompassing how Nick felt. He’d gone without Colin O’Connor’s presence in his life for most of his thirty years, and somehow, after a few weeks, he couldn’t handle even a break. If this was even what this was.

  Colin had texted twice, the first to make sure Nick had made it home to LA safely, and the second time to remind Nick that he’d promised. Nick had returned the texts because he’d given his word he would. Not because he was dying to. That definitely had nothing to do with it.

  “And he likes you.”

  Nick ground his teeth together and forced himself to nod.

  Gabe jauntily pointed his fork in Nick’s direction. “And yet this does not seem to be a positive development.”

  “For a detective, you’re not very good at this interrogation thing,” Nick said.

  Gabe’s sympathetic glance back was galling. “Right. So you’re basically crazy about each other.”

  The problem was there was no basically about it.

  “And,” Gabe continued, “you’re still sitting here, with hair that has permanently scared our waitress away and a pissed off expression that nearly scared me away.”

  Nick scoffed. “You’re made of stronger shit than that.”

  Gabe just kept smiling. He leaned over the stained, chipped, linoleum tabletop. “You’re afraid to be happy.”

  Even Nick could only take so much. “He is the worst person for me to get involved with,” he practically wailed.

  “Because he’s a player and you’re a reporter? Come on, don’t use that tired excuse. You’re afraid of your goddamned feelings. I was too, which is why I can spot it a mile away. Did you piss him off enough that you can’t fix it?”

  “It’s not a tired excuse. When he comes out, it’s gonna be the biggest fucking story on the planet. And his new boyfriend wrote the article about it?”

  “You’re afraid of the implications oversha
dowing what he’s trying to do,” Gabe guessed.

  “Closer,” Nick grumbled.

  “So wait a few months before going official. There’s ways around this, you don’t need me to tell you that. This is what you’re good at, Nicky. You invent the story, it’s yours to control.”

  “I really hate when you start spouting my Forrest Gump pseudo-media psychology back at me.”

  Gabe shrugged his shoulders, like what are you gonna do about it?

  Unfortunately, Nick was pretty certain that Gabe wasn’t just talking about his Forrest Gump pseudo-media psychology. He was talking about Colin. And frankly, Nick wasn’t sure yet.

  “Do I even want to ask how the article’s coming?”

  It was horrifically difficult to write while also being alarmingly easy. Like Nick had been waiting his whole life to talk about the brave new world that Colin O’Connor was creating. But every word yanked on the band-aid he’d attempted to use to contain both his feelings and his fear that in the end, they wouldn’t matter.

  “Not terrible, actually,” Nick confessed. “I mean it sounds like I’m in love with him, which I guess I am, but other than that, it’s fine.”

  Gabe leaned back, crossing his considerable arms across his considerable chest. His brown eyes gleamed. “Are you now?”

  “You fucking know I am.”

  “Just glad you can admit it.”

  “Admitting it to you is a lot different than writing it in an article that millions of people are gonna read.”

  Gabe looked suddenly thoughtful, which was never a good thing. “Maybe you should tell Colin about it first. He shouldn’t have to read about it with the millions.”

  It wasn’t like Nick hadn’t thought about it. He had. Pretty much every moment of every minute of every day since he’d gotten on the plane back to LA. Part of that problem was the profile he was supposed to be writing. The other part definitely wasn’t because he’d been a melodramatic asshole.